Days in Goa drip like honey from a spoon, thick & sweet, I have been here for more than three months, one hundred & four days to be precise. I came to Goa to escape London & winter, but I came here looking for much more besides. Goa is about sun & sea, I wanted a lot of both of them in my life now, beyond these I like how simple it is in just a few minutes on a scooter to leave the hustle and bustle of tourist beaches and to dive into another India, a place beyond time of Jungle & rocky coves and deserted Crusoe beaches these are just some of the things I have found here.
Soon after I arrived I fell into a routine, at 6 am the sound of singing from the minaret of the local mosque is carried the half kilometre to me in my bed, I like to hear it, melodic, tuneful, devotional………….. with the call to prayer I know that dawn will follow shortly, I make myself coffee, thick & black, add a spoon of honey to give me my fix of sweetness and I pull on a pair of shorts and a T shirt and head to the beach to walk & to watch the sunrise. When I begin my constitutional the light is grey, monochrome shades, somehow or other that first light seems to wash out the colour from everything I see, the tree line of the jungle is pale,misty, ghostly, the sea grey, the sand devoid of colour. Then as I walk the sun begins to climb from the tree line, it grows from red to gold to yellow, and with it everything comes to life, everything else under the sun begins to find it’s own colour. In the afternoon as the sun begins to fall to the western horizon & melt into the sea i am there again, witness. I came here still carrying my neurotic thoughts & my discomfort with myself but in those sunrises and sunsets I have found a kind of serenity, all be it fleeting when the chatter subsides & I am at peace with myself.
I’ve asked myself many questions over the last couple of years, wide ranging, external & internal, all of them one’s I had not really asked myself before. & I’ve searched for answers, in myself, in nature, in the eyes of others. One that I come back to often is love, at some point or another I came to realise that my idea of how you showed love was deeply flawed. For some reason or another I thought that to show love to someone else you handed over your heart, made a gift of it, the biggest gift you could offer.
It has taken me a very long time to realise that this is a crazy way of thinking, that you keep your heart for yourself, nurture it, feed it, keep it beating steady & strong. Everything stems from the heart, without it we are nothing, we cease to exist, its worth taking great care of. & then from time to time sometimes you get to show your heart to somebody else, and maybe they show you theirs, and you dance for a while, heart with heart. That moment reminds me of walking on the beach, in the grey dawn, the moment when the sun begins to climb and everything under it finds it’s colour & comes to life. In sunrises & sunsets and a little dancing with life I have begun to find a little faith in myself and the path I am taking, after months and months of having no idea where I have been going, finding no sense in myself now I realise, I needed all of this, everything that has happened, to feel rootless & lost, to feel empty & hollow, to wander and question, this was my way & I could have chosen no other.
fiftyfreeandsingle 