Friday, 15 February 2008

The Peach in the Desert

After days or weeks of dreary rain that left puddles on our tent floor, the sun showed herself from between mauve clouds. We stepped out of our tent, blinking our eyes in surprise.

We packed our things in the unfamiliar sunlight, holding onto our useless torches out of habit. The sun is out, we mumbled to each other, we must have a picnic. With only a vague recollection of what a picnic involved, we tried to pack our things in the unfamiliar sunlight. We paused to hold up our water bottles and books and biscuits up to the light, marvelling at the sudden transformation.

The beach stretched on forever into oblivion over the horizon. Looking back, the city, which we knew to be a vibrant labyrinth of laneways and rooftops, seemed to us from that distance flat, as if it were painted onto the hill that sloped away from us and into the azure sky. The clouds were sparsely scattered towards us from some mothership over the horizon, which gave birth to leonine cumulior else lennonesque strata.

At some point, we came to a stop. Putting down our bags and our towels, we survey the area. Before us, the endless bottomless pacific. To either side, white sand as far as we can see. And behind, green undulating dunes covered in close shrubs.

Reaching down to open our bags we find an uneaten peach resting on the hot, squeaky sand. We look at it for a second, an illusion of consideration before we each take a bite. There is a sepia sunkissed airbrushed quality to this moment.

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I am walking amongst the green, verdant dunes and everything around me rises and falls as if I were actually out there on the great rolling ocean, which I can still hear clearly when I reach the top of a dune - but in the valleys I can only sense a low rumble, which might well just be my stomach, or my imagination, the cogs of which must be very rusty as they churn out this bizarre fantasy.

As I continue inland, the broken beer bottles and apocalyptic litter gives way to little patches of green sprouting between my feet, until I break the crest of the next dune and then I'm walking on a carpet of clovers beneath the azure sky.

I am luminous, standing here. I consider my own luminosity with my head cocked to one side. The sun runs her hand down my neck.

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From the top of any one of these dunes, not more than three or four metres high, the whole world is visible. But no sound reaches up there, except the wind which whips and lashes about. Nowhere could be further apart from the rest of the world, even as it is laid out so clearly at the foot of the dune, like a map for the taking. And it is so removed from what it beholds because from here, the ability to describe that world laid out like a map is almost - but not quite, in reach. The words are there - the wind lashes, the sun caresses, the waves roll in silently - but then there is the urge to just gaze benevolently and stop speaking or writing or thinking, to just let it come, just this once more, because who can say when, if ever, such glorious sight will be granted again?

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The world comes crashing back in a motorised roar. A teenager whizzes past on a dirt bike. His friends, in their utes and their four wheel drives, criss-cross over the dunes, blasting tunes across the sand. We clutch at each other fearfully but the magic is gone. We cannot will them away. Looking at out hands we see that the peach is gone - we've eaten it all. The taste lingers on our tongues but the hoons close in, circling.

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