Still Waters: The beach and great heat

When Africa blows northwards. It's not the sort of scirocco or "xaloc" that can whip up gales, but a sharp and engulfing Saharan electric blanket of wind that lashes the interior and which, mysteriously, leaves the beach and sea serene and becalmed. When Africa blows northwards, the hundred mark is nudged and sometimes tipped over.

Serene. When Africa blows northwards, the beach and sea are an s-word of the sublime, the soporific, the sensational, the sensuous and sensorial. Contrast this with when elsewhere blows, and the sea is all of a "t", turbulent, tumbling and troubling. Our moods are determined by the senses, and the beach and sea play games with us. Surf is up, and it leaves us agitated, buffeted by movement into fretfulness or a pressure towards activity. Waves bring noise and turmoil. The "ventus" of marine energetics creates a hyperventilation of both mind and soul. We cannot rest or relax.

Serene and still. Much as we might pit ourselves against force, much as we might even enjoy doing so, when the sea ceases to move we are consumed by the dream-world consciousness it creates, a sensorial state of being heightened by the sensuousness of the sensational drifts from blues to greens, of the sheer statics, of the caress of discreetly lapping water on the sand. Of all colour combinations, no others hold greater symbolism than the conjoining of the largely imagined blue and yellow of sea and beach. They are imagined, because they aren't quite that simple. And only when all is serene and still - on the beach - do we really begin to appreciate the complexity of colour that gives rise to this imagination.

There are times, as there will have been times these past couple of days, when Africa has blown northwards, when the chatter and babble of the beach evaporate. It is a soporiferous and collective will of quiet, one induced by the barely audible lullaby of waves and the mass hypnosis of observing a sea without movement.

Wrapped in this colossal heat, but soothed by the maternal and gentle strokes of breeze, we are aware as to how perfect, or rather perfection, came to be a word, and if it's the case that it is one we strive to attain or at least be party to, then when Africa blows northwards and the beach and sea play a quiet game of somnolence, we might just have realised it.

Playa de Muro, late August.


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