I note that last night I received letters from my parents and good friend Vanessa. The latter contained sad and tragic news – two of her friends had been killed in a car crash while hitch-hiking in Greece. Unsurprisingly, this made me feel sad and weird. When I wrote my reply this morning, a praying mantis was reading over my shoulder. Well, probably not reading, but you know what I mean.
I spent the evening alone on the beach watching the sun go down. Further along, there were couples and other solitary figures sharing the experience. The same setting, but a myriad of idiosyncratic meanings and experiences. I tried to describe the colours in the ever-changing sky, the rhythm and patterns of the waves and their breaking, little explosions of white surf, the tension between the currents of ebbing and flowing, a sense of eternity but also of mortality. My description of how I tried to describe it all those years ago carries the weight of time and knowledge, but this is how it appeared to the 20 year old me…
…gold light playing on the water, swirling in the foam, left glistening on the wet sand like gold plate…a golden sun shield, molten on the water and sand…monotonous, insistent crashing of waves on the beach…and in the blue, the faint half-moon waiting to dominate the darkness of fast-approaching night…sun lower now, fiery and yellow, tending towards orange…I watched the sun sink below the mountain…the last fraction slipped away so quickly…the source of life disappearing, as life goes on…
I think that is all for today. My next post will be on Day 122 (11th August 1973).
Psychologist on the Move 