have you ever seen the new tv ads for singapore airlines? it boasts a classic line:
the singpapore girl. what a great way to fly.
i'm sure. reaaaaaally sure you can FLY them pretty well. FLY. together.
gees who the hell writes all these ads?
i think you remembered that it was just yesterday, though, it really wasn't, that you felt the sand sticking to your feet. you squatted down to build yourself the grandest of forts to guard yourself against... something. maybe it was the monsters under your bed. maybe it was that bully in the playground at lunchtime. maybe it was dad fueled on alcohol. whatever it was, you were terrified by it. you wanted to barricade yourself and just dissipate into the salt spray that brought the respledent colours that ever rested on your jaded parallel vision. you wished you could be like that. just like those colours, so vibrant like the sun tempering on the ocean, watercolours flowing like when you poured too much water on your painting doodling.
you wanted to return. you knew nowhere's home, and you don't belong. so you squatted down and pounded at the sand with your angry little fists to fashion yourself the armour you would wear for protection from the elements. the blueprint for your grandiose confabulation materialised in a space of moments; you set off on your endeavour right away.
and then it was done. you fell backwards on your rear, tired, but extremely estactic that you had accomplished such a feat. such a feat for such a small being. but your immature worldview had discounted a vital fact: that you had build your self-believed impenetratable rampart too close to the building and crashing waves upon the shore. suddenly the sunlight dimmed from above you. you looked up; and then all you felt was the unpleasantness of sand brushing against your face as you lie face down in the sand with the seawater draining away; coarse sand granules slowly piling up at your nose.
you looked up again. and all was gone.
was that yesterday? maybe. and so here you are filling in the spaces in your memory, from that moment you got up from the moist sand, to this very moment, in silent contemplation.