P52 Week 3 - My Favorite

Hands down, my favorite place is the beach.

Here’s an excerpt from my memoir that I hope to publish soon:

I was fourteen the first time it happened. Usually, I would stay with my family in the grassy area above the sandy [Queenscliff in Sydney] beach. This particular day, for some reason, I decided not to. Perhaps I wanted to hang out with the younger hip crowd, or to escape after some family member’s teasing remark. I don’t recall. But I remember grabbing my towel, finding a spot amidst hundreds of others, and sandwiching myself into a small space in the sand.

I dozed as a cacophony of sounds roiled around me: the ocean roared, transistor radios blared, and kids yelled and laughed and hooted. The sun warmed me. The breeze kissed my skin and cooled my burning back. I welcomed the brief shade each time a wispy cloud skimmed by. The hot sand radiated underneath and around me, and was occasionally flicked on me as thoughtless types scurried by. The scent of coconut Coppertone oil was everywhere. The tang of salt and sea tickled my tongue.

That glut of heightened senses catapulted me into a transformed state. My boundaries loosened. My skin no longer contained me. I became the sun, the sand, the breeze, the ocean roar, the Elvis song, the dim and the strident voices. An inexpressible joy swelled in my chest and throat. A glittering thrum and glow pulsed through every cell in my body. The beach welcomed and caressed me. My tears flowed as I silently sobbed into my beach towel.

People nearby were not privy to my sensuous dance with the beach. I looked like just another pudgy Aussie teenager sprawled out on a towel sunbathing. At first, I had no idea what to make of my experience. I thought my brush with the ocean might have been a fluky sensory rush, but it felt like so much more. I couldn’t dismiss it. It wasn’t trivial. Quite the contrary, it felt really important. I wondered if it might be a spiritual experience, but my only context of God was what I’d learned in my religious indoctrination from the Catholic Church – that of God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The possibility of God as nature was not on my radar….

On the occasions when I would later recall my beach encounter, my body responded with a similar glow and the reliving became a secret pleasure. It wasn’t until years later that I learned the true significance of what I had experienced: nature in the form of beaches and oceans were one of my sacred portals, a way for me to access the holy and the divine. I have since begun to visit the ocean regularly to commune and to find counsel and consolation.