Tide lessons

Usually, on a sunny wednesday morning in the summer, the beaches start filling up around 9am. But not this one. The sand, thick and heavy, powdery but still retaining some of the moisture from the night before, showed little signs of footprints or really any kind of human disruption. With the exception of a few surfers trying to catch some of the morning waves, the beach was abandoned. I'm not sure wy. Perhaps people are turned-off by the 45 minute busride required of them to reach this beach, perhaps the history of the town being a "slum" (an image it just can't shake, despite the influx of middle-class elderly residents), perhaps stories of surfer gangs or viscious tides or the allure of beachside shops and restaurants instead of houses and quiet modest cement block buildings that are reminiscent of mexico, with their offensively brightly painted exterirors in pastel blue, teal and green, the signs painted on by hand which hold up fine now but I can already see them in a few years, the paint chipped and worn by salt-water breezes. What then, small town, what will you do then?

But despite its shabby appearance, I've grown fond of the little town by the ocean. The water a striking blue, different than any ocean water I've seen, its tide paced a bit more rough, just like the people of this town, a little worn, a little tired, but tough. After our run up and down the beach, these two french girls and I jumped into the water, immediately pulled into the waves and to the left. Then later, pushed and pulled back to the right. We splashed and rolled around in the water. How strange we must've appeared to those lone surfers, bobbing calmly past the breaking point of the tide.

There's a line from one of my favorite latino movies that says ""La vida es como la espuma, por eso hay que darse como el mar", "Life is like the surf, so give yourself like the sea." It's unpredictable. It comes and goes, and so do we. It's a thought I've just been coming to terms with, what it means to be temporary, versus simply coming and going. Temporary is being here and then being gone. Coming and going implies a chance of return. (Will I always want to return to places I've been?) And I think it also implies that you leave something behind, a presence, or perhaps its just that chance of return again. I've always hated the idea of being temporary, a simple fleeting blip on someone's radar. Maybe it's because I rarely find temporary people in my life. I rarely let them be temporary. There's always a story or a memory, something they've left behind to keep them coming and going in my life. like the tide.

Maybe someday someone will have a story about me too.