Writing Love Letters in the Sand

'Love can't you see I'm alone,
Can't you give this fool a chance,
A little love is all I ask - a little kindness
In the night...'

A thousand million years ago,the first waves of the mighty ocean first ran upon the sand.A thousand million years later,when everything that is today has ceased to be,the waves will still continue to roll ashore-as if everything in between was just an illusion.Only time is eternal...and the waves.Those rushing roaring giants flecked with white who play their repetitive symphony round the clock.

'Every time I see you,
All the rays of the sun,
Are streaming through
The waves in your hair.
And every star in the sky,
Is taking aim at your eyes,
Like a spotlight.'

Letters.Five of them.A name.That is all I have at present.And what means a name without she who answers to it.But the Bard was wrong.With it is an image,no,images-hundreds of them.And with the images are the memories.A potent combination.One which haunts your waking thoughts.And your non-waking ones.With the same regularity that the messengers of the sea touch the shore.A name may not be much,but I have no choice.I make what I can of it and I can make a lot.For I must.Thus I scratch out those alphabets in the sand with my forefinger and begin a letter.

'Ocean deep -
I'm so afraid to show my feelings,
I have sailed a million ceilings -
in my -
Solitary room,
Ocean deep -
Will I ever find my lover?
Maybe she has found another,
And as I cry myself to sleep,
I know this love of mine Ill keep -
Ocean deep'

Poetry is not an easy vocation.Nor,for that matter is prose.Words-the very same words that seem to flow in torrents everyday are suddenly hard to come by.The best of authors have spent countless hours trying to put down their thoughts on paper,especially when it comes to professing the deepest and the most mysterious of human feelings.I have not a fraction of their skill.I wish I did.But I do have countless hours in which to undertake the task.For,what else is there for me to do?

The crying of the seagulls carries over the sound of wind and sea.It is not separated from the scene,it is a part of it and lends to its utter calmness and detachment.A perfect setting for my thoughts.Do the gulls cry of love?Of the madness of joy it can bring followed closely by the depths of despair?Of its inevitability?Do they try and persuade me of its futility?Do they relate stories in unknown tongue of lovers they have seen thus melancholy in a million such unknown settings?And a few hours hence,will they carry my tale and the few words I have inscribed on that golden slate to whichever such tranquil environ they fly to next...

'I was feeling insecure,
You might not love me any more,'

Fear is omnipresent.The fear of rejection.The fear of not knowing what to do with my life after that rejection.Of the utter bleakness and despondency beyond.Of those fatal words,"But I don't like you like that,you know!"So I hang back.As long as that doomed finality is not reached,hope still remains.Very faint perhaps,probably only a fantasy in my mind.But nevertheless,one that I draw comfort from,a reassurance that all is well and some distant day,the impossible will happen.And there is a touch of irony,a touch of disbelief that even Lennon was gripped by the same fear that besets me and moved to write these lines.A poignant understanding as the oncoming wave obliterates the name he scratched out in the sand.

The letter is finished.Very elementary,but the perfection of the muse is belied by the inability of the artist.This will just have to suffice.And now,another touch of Quixotism.In a world where communication can be instant,I trust the most ancient messengers of all.No cyber cafe or phone booth or even a post office awaits me.

'Just a castaway,
An island lost at sea,
Oh,Another lonely day,
With no one here but me,
Oh,More loneliness than any man could bear,
Rescue me before I fall into despair...
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle,
Yeah,Message in a bottle,
Yeah...'

There is an old legend about the sea.The seventh wave is always the one that comes furthest up the beach.Watching the ocean for hours at a stretch,I fancy that the legend is true.But perhaps it is no more than a fancy.At any rate,I fancy that this same wave will wash upon another shore a thousand miles away where crowds throng the beach in hundreds.Yet the one person who comes upon my anonymous message will be the one it is meant for.And she will understand.Sometimes mere thoughts are so much more explanatory than words.

The gulls do not cry of the futility of love.They cry of its power to bring happiness,of the inevitability of its success and most importantly,of its timelessness.Only time is eternal...and the waves...and human emotion...

'A thousand goodbyes before the eternal hello...'

I read that line in an article somewhere.It gives me hope.I have said my goodbyes.Perhaps too many of them and some too permanent for my liking.But it is that one eternal hello that I look forward to,the one that serves to compensate for all of them.Maybe today,maybe tomorrow,maybe next week and maybe in thirty days time.And this time,once we say hello,we will never say a goodbye.The next time I have to write a love letter in the sand,there will be two of us writing it...to each other...