Metamorphoses
No alarm clock today. No beep-beep-beep hammering through my head at the wee hours of the morning. No painfully long commutes with their share of somber, mummified travel partners or men rubbing against my body while trying to befriend me. Far, far away from the world of concrete and steal, of wires and wheels and mechanisms, I am under a powerful spell. The spell of the sea.
A ray of golden light steals its way into the room. At the light of dawn, I rise to my feet with the melodic and orchestrated sounds of birds and bees and crickets; the eyes, the ears, the nostrils catching faint whiffs of sea salt on the breeze coming from the balcony door left ajar. Listening to the gentle waves, I look out into the ocean; the landscape pounds before my eyes, jumping out and kissing me tenderly as it is meant to, soothing, appeasing the soul, awakening each and every sensation. I want to dissolve into and become one with this tableau the only way I know how--running--running infinitely, weightless and bodiless on the silken cushion of sand. At last, here I am, on the island of Langkawi. I knew from the first moment, a few seconds after my plane landed, I had slipped into these wide spaces, this atmosphere of salt and sublimity, this amazing piece of natural heaven and haven, like a ship gently slipping into her berth. Unable to resist the siren call of the Andaman sea, I put on my running shoes, gently rub sunscreen on my face, arms and legs, drink half a cup of water, and set out to explore the depths of nature — my nature.
I begin quietly on the tip of my toes to avoid startling nature out of its sleep, for the first rays of sunlight reveal a sleepy coastline. There is no sign of life. An eternal sensual, I exist in a state of near constant amazement at the immense beauty of my universe. Once again--in solitude and serenity—a far cry and rare commodity from the busy streets of Washington D.C. This is the real me. Alone first time in weeks and months, to take up my real life at last. Friends, passionate love, work are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. I taste it fully only when I am alone. For five years, running in the streets of the big city, I found myself longing for the solitude and the bliss I had grown accustomed to on the outskirts of the Rocky Mountains. I had battled every inch of the way to a share of bliss and serenity against the constant drone of existence. Mile after mile, it was the same agony; people, cars, dogs—the usual relentless assault of noise, speed, pollution. Like dragging a reluctant pooch by the neck, everyday I dragged myself to the flat terrain and pavement that hurt my knees and ankles, blistering my feet. How different I am here…Within my vast solitude, I want to crack open the inner world.
The sun pounding at my temples, pearls of moist running down my side, there is the sweet and sensuous joy of inhaling and tasting a hundred pleasures of the senses that I had only begun to know. I am besieged on all sides by color; though the first attack came by way of exiting the plane, the greatest assault rests in the moment-the shimmering cool emerald green water, foaming clouds are a beautiful sight from this run. Sweat spraying from my skin with each foot strike, I run in the cool haze of my own creation. With each slap on the powdery white sand, my soles absorb the heat that rises like electricity through my arches and ankles and the stem of my shin. It is a carnival of sweet pain, but I love each stride, as it brings me closer to this breathing vibrant mother earth. How gracious, how benign mother earth is left on its own…and yet we live in a world with vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness; a universe prodded, paved, mapped and chopped up in an endless quest for the ultimate “civilization.” It might have been Aristotle who asserted that “nature makes nothing in vain.” I wonder what gives humanity the right to skin, to deplete, to wreck and to destroy this lovely planet trusted upon us. What is life anyway, but the flash of a firefly in the night, salt-scented breeze brushing on your face, the whiff of ripe berries in a forest, or the little shadow which runs across the golden sand and loses itself in the sunset?
Here I am, bathed in sweet joy of nature like a rippling pool, beside which the remainder of my life falls into a shriveled, motionless, worn-out daydream; a case of an impoverished soul and body, a shackled servant to the human-made world. So full of thoughts and the echoes of the sounds of water music, suddenly my heart weighs down with the longing of a life that could have been, and the reality that all that would be irretrievably lost once I returned home. Perhaps, I would spend the remaining of my life trying to find my way back into this state I had fallen into. I would spend many months and days seeking to quench my thirst for that perfect peace, of being, of living in the moment unencumbered and liberated. If only I could live like this forever. What could be sadder than the inability to wholly participate in this life—our infinite capacity to better recognize and understand the subtle coaxing messages our eyes, ears, skin, and nose pick up?
Possessed by something between panic, dread and joy, I begin to leap faster, higher; aware of its ephemeral state, I look more closely, listen more attentively, trying to sense things more deeply. Brilliant rays of orange and gold pierce the sky like beams from a flashlight. I sigh, shut my eyes, and feel the radiant glow inch up my face, my skin rippling with chills at the felt presence of the cool waters... Water, water and more water, stretched out in every direction and as far as my eyes could see…I drag my eyes away from the green enchantment and notice a bird dipping into the swirling clouds, reemerging, then tracing back my path… The moist, virgin sand beneath my soles squeeze like foam, enveloping, drawing the focal point of my body. A gentle breeze with scent of fresh salt breathes in my face. A vivacious crab weaves in and out of sight as I float through space. I only hear the resounding sounds of my footsteps and my gasping breath. One at a time, migratory birds make their way through the sky. I wonder why they all take the same route in the morning…
Flirting with nature, I am doing the beautiful dance, each stride a leap through space. I feel my heels cushioning my return to earth, the toes springing me off again. Half naked, I am reaching out to the clouds, the wind sweeping across my belly and streaming my hair expressively. How safe I am here… Running alone on powder, my heart burgeons with a deep and quiet joy, a reverence for life. My footsteps growing even louder, heartbeat pounding like the rhythmic beating of African drums, legs like weightless coiled springs propelling me forward. I am running hard. Against the foggy gray backdrop of my entire life, this is the rainbow; this is the play, the energy source, the unstoppable laughter, the outrageous flirtation, the Cup Which Runneth Over. This is the harvest, the generous, excess and gusto...To really run is to let go of the constraints of life, to dive deep into the uncommanded, uncontrolled and uncharted waters of life... The old angst-ridden self and world has vanished; instead I am in a fluffy, borderless, weightless, thoughtless world where immersion in the moment reigns. At last I am waking up and shaking off the grogginess of a long, long nap.
I feel close, so close to this animated and fluid world where nothing is fixed, concrete. Rainer Maria Rilke, the poet, understood this all too well: “Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given to us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing.” I sense a flash of pain on my left shin. No, not now, I decide. Whatever hurts, I don’t care. Soaked, panting, sweat stinging the corners of my eyes; I swing my arms high forward. Wave after wave, happiness gushes over me madly. I am out on the fringes of the out-of-human world, the dazzling water, the translucent skies, the slight breeze drawing me farther out, into the unknown. I sail like a deep-sea diver in a dream, a daydreamer …de facto, sensual perceptions leaping out at me, vision narrowed one-pointedness. A feeling known only to those whose strange deviations of the mind take them to an altered state of consciousness, suddenly I see the cloud shadows darkening the large crust turn into frizzy black lichens radiating, shining across the rock’s surface; the discarded half buried tire in the beach transforms into a seal that barks at the menacing foot slaps and galumphs into the water, the breeze rustling the leaves abruptly metamorphoses into a cluster of monkeys foraging for food among branches, gaping with eyes as full as the moons. Nothing here is ever completely certain or fixed; the world shifting and transforming, growing fluid and animate with every glide, every breath, every heartbeat. It is a violent, blood-red, long drawn-out wave of euphoria, and when it is over; my spirit will belong to the seashore…
