all the (lost) things

i recall a beach and the park you had to walk through to get to the sea side. the park was graced in flowers and there were squirrels running up the trees and there were so many of the squirrels and i remember being scared. i have always found small animals scary, and the fact that they might feel my insecurity towards them, makes me even more terrified. i hated them, but at the same time i sometimes found myself envying them.

i wished i was as clever as the acorns who knew when to save their food for rainy days. and what about the rat’s skill to live with its own ugliness? isn’t that admirable?
what a vein and mean person i am, what can the rat possibly do to change its appearance anyway.
some would say that that rats are beautiful in their own way but do you really believe in that? and do the rats feel the same way? maybe the rats don’t even know what beauty is and thus don’t comprehend ugliness?

i know what ugliness is, and therefore i know what beauty is.
does this even make sense?
i don’t really know. maybe it’s all just in my head.

the first thing that comes to my mind when i think about the beach is the aqua-coloured water, never have i seen a beach filled with such a beautiful shade of blue. and then i think of the flower beds we walked through to get there, even though there was a path made for people like us to get through the park - and the gates made of thin metal pipes painted black – the ones that i never found closed - and the pavement that we skated on the night before christmas - the same night i learned how to knit.

i never thought of it then – how vividly i would remember the beach. i didn’t even want to remember it. it wasn’t important at that time. i was always too busy with something else, but now i don’t remember what i actually thought about, i just remember the things i saw – the things i never took the time to find pleasure in. would i have found it beautiful if i back then had seen the importance of it?
the hotel behind the park, was it built with bricks or cement? was it light pink or green? what difference does it really make? would it make any difference to you what i actually saw compared to what i tell you that isaw? what if i didn’t really see the things i remember seeing? how can i remember seeing something i never really looked at?

i am standing with water up to my chin, i turn to look to my left side, and there is no-one to see. i turn another 90 degrees and i see him standing behind me, with the waves slightly touching his knees and i can see that he is trying to say something, but i can’t hear him.

i am now looking at the pier on my right side. the pier was fading white and on the end of it there was a theatre, but i never had the money to go there.
where i was standing was as far as i could get to the middle of something, but i still felt like i was so far away from everything.
i asked myself if i could swim to the end of the pier and still not be taken by the waves.
you see, i’ve heard that it really hurts to drown in the ocean: one of the first thing that happens, is that your eyes get scratched out and you will feel extreme pain before you actually drown. i don’t want pain to be the last thing i feel as a living person. or maybe, if i do feel the most excruciating pain my last seconds of life, then everything i feel after my death is bound to be better than that, isn’t it?

he tries to shout again, he knows that i didn’t hear him the first time, but when i actually hear what he says, i ask myself if it’s possible to pretend like i didn’t.

“COME BACK! IT’S TOO DANGEROUS OUT THERE!”

when i do get back, i keep my wet t-shirt on and he kisses me like i was asking for it. i lie down on the sand and look at the blue sky – my eyes are overpowered by the strength of the sky that day before i eventually am able to focus on the clouds – now i can see the dinosaurs and the bears.
“do you really think that there is a god behind those clouds?” i ask him. “the clouds symbolise beauty because they can be exactly what we want them to be whenever we need them to. can you see it? can you see the houses and the trees up there? do you think that there is anything more precious than the magic that already surrounds us?”
he looks up at the sky too. none of us say anything for a while, before he opens his mouth and tells me can’t see the things i see.
i don’t know. maybe i just made him up in my head.