Castle of sand

2:00 p.m. The beach is eerily quiet. There is something surreal about the place. Hazy. As clear as the view of the beach is, with strong sunshine generously pouring onto the sand and all, where's the sea? I squint and strain my eyes, and there it is, under the veil of an opaque-white spell, indecisive blue along the beach line. The haze now covers the entire ocean as far as the water continues. The sea and the sky melts together in the whiteness to an imaginary horizon.

People have sparsely settled. Funny. This place used not to be like this when I was young. It was a melting pot of people's desire, teeming with groups of young girls, and the matching number of boys' groups, with tacit communication about possible aventure...with their whispers, sporadic giggles, carried in a breeze of summer until drowned in the sound of breaking waves. How many lines of sight crossed each other only to part with a sigh of disappointment. How many sparked and fixated to step forward to a next stage? Courage mustered up, tactics tried, a few loves fulfilled, most failed, thrills enjoyed anyways.
There was a pure fun for the part of children. The enormous energy given out from them were drifting in the air when they were running around, playing catch, making a castle of sand or splashing water to each other, screaming and laughing all the while.
Peddlers of summery stuff, ice cream, cold coke, beer, or slices of water melon were threading through all those people, with their own share of desires to make the most of other people's desire.
Now they are all gone... like a sandcastle made on the beach in a dream of a night. Another desire may have slipped in our mind. That is a desire to avoid anything troublesome. A typical symptom of a declining country. Who cares? I care.