I gaze at the bay of Sant Feliu from a balcony of the house where I was born. I remember myself here in front of me, on the sand, when I was six years old, running to the water's edge with Daina, a playful German Shepherd, at the exact same time of sunset, leaving school, just before nightfall.
Half a century has passed, and nothing has changed within me. I am the same foundation, the same blank page on which consciousness is written. It makes no difference; nothing has been sharpened, nothing has been perverted or purified within me. I am the same flesh and the same bones. The experience of life has been superficial; I have changed as little as the waves that lick the sand but neither carry nor take anything, only maintain the murmur of their breath. Since the beginning of time, the wave stretches across the sand and then recedes.
The valley is a horseshoe that expands the shell of this bay, nothing more. The town hall clock strikes six; the roar of the sea barely drowns out the bells. The less daylight remains, the louder the sound of the lapping water and sand grows. The sea longs to escape the sea, yet it cannot.
The small lighthouse at the end of the pier pulsed the same way half a century ago, guiding me toward my center. It keeps time with the waves, its beams a greenish tinge. No difference between the boy and the fifty-six-year-old man, nor between the living Daina and the buried Daina. The four of them run across the fine sand after the wave recedes. I like to leave footprints on the smooth, shimmering sand after the wave. The wave washes them away again and tries to chase us and wet our feet. I leap out of the way of the wave, and when it recedes again, I run toward it. I stop abruptly, and suddenly, because Daina has passed me. I turn and run, and she gallops after me to catch me.
There's still a glimmer of light in Sant Elm, but the blue is darkening, and the sand and the foamy edge are fading too. The water turns to ink, the tip of the pier has melted, and the Blood and Liver rocks are gone. The entire Mediterranean is a well. I am six and fifty-six years old, and I have been staring into this well for millions of years, and will continue to do so for millions of years to come, with Daina.
The velvet curtain is wet in the water. This December blackness is so clear because the southwest wind has been blowing all day. A thin trail of clouds still lingers in the sky, but the sea and sky have merged at the horizon, as if they had never existed. The well is above and below, Daina and my fifty-years-ago self are fused into my present self. I could leap upward and plunge existence into the depths.
