I ride out on my Scooter rather regularly to a place called Galgibag, a sandy beach flanked by pine trees, untouched by buildings or the marks of man that so often fill much of the coastline. The water is warm and the sun sets here in the afternoon by melting into the sea at the far horizon, casting beams of gold & yellow across the water as it dissolves into nothingness. It is a place where it is not possible to feel anything other than a sense of tremendous peace, walking a little further to the end of the beach there you will find a a little bay, where the river meets the sea, if Eden was ever a real place then here I think I can understand how Adam once felt.
To get to Galgibag from where I am staying takes perhaps fifteen minutes, along country roads, that meander and weave through jungle, over and along river valleys, across a long iron bridge wide enough only for one car at a time. I pass through little hamlets, past country schools alive with the sound of the future, I pass old ladies outside their homes or in their gardens, gossiping or sweeping, or just watching the world go by. The houses are beautiful, Goan-Portuguese balustraded porches, ramshackle, painted in bright colours. Along the road one learns to dodge the dogs sleeping, the cows who seem to have an innate sense of being the owners of the road, we the biped travellers work around them. This journey and destination I think of as an act of perfect meditation, as a man that has tried to meditate and found the process fruitless thus far, this is what I imagine a meditation to be, alive in the moment, no busy thoughts, no problems, no must do’s or should do’s just alive in the journey and the destination.
I have the most peculiar sense of having been on this road a long long time ago. Now this will sound strange, it feels very strange to me, but I feel like I was here before I was here, in some other life, in another story. Coming here takes me there, again.
When the sun begins to fade and the darkness begins to descend then I climb back onto my scooter, retrace my route back to civilisation, in the coolness of the evening, I pass homes now busy prepairing evening meals, lit with lanterns & sparkling lights, I head back to my home, my shack, to the beach bars and the aroma of fish being grilled over barbecue and to the tourists, and all to soon to the busy thoughts of my head that I forgot all about for a few hours. As I wend my way through the ink black night and home lights it strikes me that there are many Edens, not just one, we may find them along curious roads, we pass through them & they in turn through us, but they leave a memory, for a lifetime, perhaps for many lifetimes.
fiftyfreeandsingle 