A Day At The Beach

It was a bright weekday afternoon. Dust blew helplessly around with the wind that carried it, ever transient , carrying with it the coolness of the ocean which it just traversed. It seemed more purposeful than the clusters of human beings that loitered around aimlessly.
The eccentric young man strode swiftly past the moving yet still public all around him. He perched himself on a secluded stretch of granite lining the sidewalk, which gleamed forebodingly in the blaring sunlight. The excessive warmth pierced his body, but he didn't bother to flinch. His ability to bear extreme weather was beyond ordinary. He slid his arms out of the backpack he was carrying, and opened a zip at the rear of the backpack. From it he took out a pair of slippers packed in a polythene bag. He wore the slippers and replaced them with the shoes he had been wearing until now.
He took a deep breath of the comfort that he could already feel, getting up on his feet. He put his hands in his pockets and began wading through the sand, on a long walk till he reached the shore. On the way he laid his eyes upon various anomalies in a place that should be beautifully natural. He watched a man ride a horse till the shoreline and watched the horse slow down to enjoy the water streaming across its hooves. Then he watched the owner whack a stick on the horse's tired thigh, forcing it to move on...

He picked a relatively clean spot just over the slope of the shore where the sand was still dry, placing his backpack down, pulling the end of his trousers up slightly. He let himself collapse onto the ground in bliss, watching the incoming waves push the outgoing waves back, both losing, a compromise being reached, a beautiful sight being created...over and over again. He took off his spectacles when the sand particles and the spray clouded them too much. In the bright sun, he counted the various layers of the oceans , each coloured a different shade...

Ten minutes later he got bored, and took out his lunchbox, about which he had completely forgotten until a moment ago, when his stomach got bored of the scenery. He ate with a sense of tactile detachment, not tasting but just stuffing his mouth repeatedly whenever it got emptied. It was at this point that he was interrupted by a young boy wearing a yellowish saffron cloth round his torso, walking towards him with a cloth bag slung round his shoulder and a cane in the other hand. He said something that the man didn't understand. Presuming that he probably wanted some alms, the man held up the lunchbox in an offering gesture. The boy again said something, which sounded like a refusal followed by a clarification. Apparently the boy was offering to read his palm for a price..The man smiled, shaking his head. The boy stood there for a couple of moments, then walked away. A couple of minutes later, a beggar came by, with a baby in her arms. The man offered her the lunchbox again. She refused, saying the baby can't eat that stuff. It was all the man had. So he just went about finishing it, and waited for the beggar to go away. She took a long time to do so.

The man finished his lunch, and lay back, using his backpack as a pillow. He gazed at the ocean disappearing into the horizon. He tilted his head up and watched the clouds merge into one another, in an unchoreographed motion that was far more aesthetic than what he ever saw on television dance shows. He longed for his camera...

He had just come from college, giving an exam after reading hardly for 10 minutes prior to the exam. And he couldn't care less that he was probably going to flunk. It's alright, he thought to himself....after all, he did top in yesterday's exam.

The man was a bipolar social misfit whose behaviour baffled most people around him. He could stay silent and alone for hours, even days on a stretch and feel completely happy. Solitary confinement would actually be a treat for him.
All he wanted was a thought to fill his head. Like right now, he was thinking of the completeness of nature and its ways. Imagining a world without humans. Without senseless chatter, malls, polluting automobiles and the works...but then one thought struck him. He couldn't live without music.

He fished out his Cowon s9 from his pocket and lay there in bliss, feeling the music speaking to him, communicating back to him what he felt about the wretched world of today...what other song but

Anesthetize - Porcupine Tree ?