Tuesday, May 23, 2006
i must admit i was quite aghast at the thought of a small cramped room with no bathtub and a hotel floor filled with sand and mud and seawater. But on hindsight, i rather enjoyed the idea of roughing it out, just like in OBS. So now that i'm back home i feel strangely misplaced and disorientated. It was liberating tasting nothing but salt, sea, sun and sand, dressed in the barest minimum and having fun the whole day. Now when i sleep, i imagine myself rocking gently on a boat, or being carried away by the water's current to some shipwreck or coloured corals orange and blue. We went snorkelling twice and on the second occasion the fishes virtually swam around you as if you were one of their own. A bit too close for comfort i say, especially when i got bitten on the toe and finger in a feeding frenzy when i tried to give them bread.
I came with a checklist to Redang: tanning; which i did, but i wish i wasn't so intent on the idea that i missed seeing and enjoying more of what the beach had to offer. But what i did discover was the simple act of swinging on the hammock, tied between two coconut trees bending inwards and watching the sky meet sea, listening to the distant sounds of happy shouts, rhythmic waves while riding high on a specially made playlist on podywody.
You could stand at the edge of the sea and think of what people call the existentialist moment. I saw the the waves crashing and imagined a giant cauldron bubbling in the centre of the ocean sending concentric circles of ripples. Then i blinked my eyes and thought i saw white foamy fingers spreading out, pulling and pushing and fingering the shore. Once, while we were on the boat going back to the mainland, all i saw was the expanse of the ocean which if you looked out far and hard enough you thought you were drifting towards a giant plateau of a waterfall. And then on the last night hong and i looked at the waves, now more menacing than gentle, and i scared myself looking at the angry waves that resembled a host of unearthly sea creatures gliding towards the surface and rising at the shore. a big host, an army, spectral and treacherous. and then the morning before we left, i hugged my jacket and stood on a wooden makeshift flight of stairs and looked out for as long as i could, saying my goodbyes in the gloomy drizzle.
My favourite moments were nothing like sublime. i didn't scream in frenzied excitement just cause i saw lovely fishes and corals and starfishes and massive prehistoric garoupa fishes and shipwrecks. My favourite moments were in the intermittent snatches of perfect inward silence while the rest of the world rolled by in indiscernable noises, while I, swinging on a hammock and looking up at the filtered light through the trees, or staring deep into the ocean blue, thought the world wonderful.
So just as i arrived at Redang full of expectations and targets to meet, fell short of them but found something else more precious, so i write this post teeming with joy and photos and beautiful moments to share, but never quite precisely putting my point across.
but i think to myself, what a wonderful world.
in the morning i feel the breeze
the sun washes over me
the sound of water the crashing sea
is it only me
that feels alive Joyce Lim unzipped at 8:32 PM with 0 comments
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