My first day was spent at the beach. So that I would lack anything, fate was farsighted and placed everything I could miss close to me. The radio cassette player is at full volume. Those who have shovels and balls are very close to me, to us, to people. With their voices. With an “Oops, I fucked everything, I almost gave it to him” voice. The shore was also: docile, rhythmic with its small waves. The Mediterranean continued with those little white handkerchiefs, as Alberti said, on a blue background. There was a boy who built sand castles on the shore. With his shovel and bucket. Even though he hasn’t grown as much as he should have anymore, I think he’s the same kid every year. The child who builds sand castles on the shore is a metaphor in itself, it is innocence and ambition, time passes slowly, it is summer that is missed. And her mother yells at her. The mother calling out to the cold and the father remembering that he could not digest it. The kid who already has three cans of beer, not him. The almond shop passes, the massager passes, the ice cream shop passes.
-Hey, are you going to the beach or to the Seville Fair?
Strange and exotic accents are heard. Listen to what could be Catalan and German, English and Russian or Finnish. There are not few people who speak with signs and want to shamelessly change their swimsuits and teach us the hips. When the acclimation period is over, after a while, and the umbrella and chair are set up and the cream is applied, some relaxation and pleasure comes, relaxing contemplation, reading, the shock of seeing the afternoon and the sky, the little planes coming and going, the glorious bodies and the devastated ones. The beach is a sensual and divine delight. Sand and beach bar is a pleasure at hand. Enjoying a nap after a gazpacho and some sardines. The silver sardines Camba praised in The House of Lucullus. The beach is a fauna and a philosophy, a way of life, a calmness when you isolate yourself from the disturbance or set off early on a weekday morning. If you catch an evening on the beach, poems, verses and philosophy of life will rain down on you. We imagine from afar the lives of those who go on a small sailboat, moved by the wind and the notes come out. The world is better on the beach. The beach is tiring, but the long winter without a beach is even more tiring. Walking on the sand while counting the seagulls strengthens the heart. The memory of those distant days with breaded steaks, tortillas and a Fanta strengthens the spirit, yes, jumping on the shore with a bucket and shovel. Disturbing the rest of the bathers, these things bother us now that we’re getting old. Or not. Longing on the beach and that lucky towel, the neighbor in a bikini, the ice cream crowning the day, returning home. I ask if we will come back tomorrow.