The Art of Getting Lost

‘Why on Earth would you travel to Vama Veche?’ my mother reluctantly asked me before hopping on the night train. There were many rumors about that anonymous seaside village. Rumors that made it intriguing enough to put it on my travel list. A list that also included places like Bora Bora or the Caribbean. I was not an easy person to convince but this I had to see; however, as I would later discover, Vama Veche was a place to be felt, not to be seen.
I got there early in the morning. It was too quiet for that time. Not until dusk I realized that during the day the whole village was actually warming up for what was about to come. Even the sun was anticipating the dazzling panoply of the night. He shyly hid under the sea and never came back; the moon gracefully filled in.
Then it started. A night of redemption.
The waves were singing in concert with the ecstatic music turning the beach into a psychedelic odyssey. Everything was vibrating; the sand, the air, the people, my body and my soul. A warm breeze was applauding the jubilation of life that was taking place on that summer night in a minuscule village on the Black Sea shore. Music and dance melded into a burning spectacle of beauty, emotion, love, joy and abandonment. The stalls that were brimming with an eclectic mix of cheap gypsy souvenirs during the day were now contemplating the human parade that was taking place just under their wooden eyes.
Where did I travel myself into?
I didn’t care at all. Harmonizing my dance with the beach was far more important at that moment. I liberated my feet from my sneakers as this seemed the most logical thing to do at that time in that place. The sand had committed to give me electric feelings. The sea was watching - how unbelievably wonderful is it to have the sea as a spectator? That night we did and it was surreal. We all got lost in the spellbinding haze. Some people were skinny dipping a bit further, some other were having sex. No one cared; our energy was screaming for freedom.
Then the illusion ended as suddenly and mysteriously as it started.
As I watched the morning light exercising its rights, I could not help but notice that the village was metamorphosing again into the humble and timid existence that I had initially met. It was like a cycle; a never-ending rhythm of a small village on the Black Sea shore.
Thinking back, I am still not sure if that kaleidoscopic beach made us escape life or induced us to actually live.
Maybe we can choose.