Surrounded by blue

Fragment #70

A boy kicks an iridescent blue football printed with black hexagon patches from one side of the beach to the other. There is no-one to return the ball to him, so he runs to his future self again and again. The tasselled fringe of a blanket blows and brushes gently against an ankle. Stray dogs stray. A girl strokes at the wisp of grass hanging limply from the umbrella beneath which she is sheltered from the sun. A blistering whiteness. More blue: this time a polythene bag, lifting on the wind, being dragged along a floor of sand, shale and stone, catching on the corners and jagged edges of that which the sea has not yet softened. The bag is the same colour as the water – that is to say the colour of where the sand, sky and sun conspire to be most beautiful. And yet the sea is not blue, but merely part of the same lie of that mother sky above, also without colour: parent and child both dashed by a smattering of light waves. Close by, water rips gently and folds over clear, then white, then clear again. Light everywhere, moving and flowing: a rhythm that is possibly the most serene of any that we know. All a dance: one of light – shimmering, dizzying light. A breeze and warmth finger delicately at the edges of each sensation, picking at the blue. Stone buildings and concrete roads watch over the granite minds of the inland city beyond. Blue is a call for humility; a warning to slow. Blue is the incomprehensible beauty of something we won’t ever fully know. The water returns the ball to the shore. The boy runs and meets it there, next to the rock, a friendship with solitude, brown skin glowing in the light.