An SMS from Mikey about playing golf brought me back to reality. I crawled out of a bed occupied by a Finnish co-worker breathing dreamily in the aftermath of a night not spent sleeping. It then dawned on me that I'm late, in the normal sense of the word. By Broome's definition, I was probably three days early. A strong Matso's coffee and I spent $20 going to a golf course that was closed. Oh well, back to Mikey's it was. 10am is not too early for a beer and a few bongs when you have two days off in Broome.
Nuk surfaces for a few bongs too. He has work in 3 hours, so plenty of time to get more stoned. His night included a police escort to the front of the taxi line, ironically enough to the very place they thought he wasn't trying to get to. The last they saw of him was his grinning face disappearing down the dirt track while he flipped them the bird. He went back to Matsos to spill more drinks on himself, then passed out on the tiled floor at home. A couple of kicks from his girlfriend couldn't arouse anything from him, and only the lure of brekky bongs had managed to convince him to move.
With work everyone else's immediate future, I walked home. My very recently developed stagger-stroll-stagger technique took me through streets still dozing after a huge day previous. Looking like they had come straight from Madagascar, or a Tim Burton film, I marvelled at the big boab skeletons that punctuated the pindan sidewalks.
It was about 29 degrees, the weather was perfect for the 27th day in a row and I could feel my brown skin soaking up some more cancerous pigmentation. I hadn't had any beach action for six weeks so sun, surf and a sandy orifice beckoned. On a scooter built for minors, I cruised along at 45kms/hr through a soft breeze whose slight chill dried my sweaty torso. That is how winter should be. No wonder people are so laid back here, what is there to worry about? The only concern is where are you going to have the next beer. Or life changing experience?
It seemed that that day, it was going to be the beach. I descended the stairs non-plussed at the cable beach vista that spread before me. It looked like the white sands that line the gates to heaven. St. Peter greeted me at the bottom and told me my pleasure could be doubled by taking off my shoes. For the sake of maintaining my love for life, I overlooked the fact that it was actually a homeless dude and he had said my pleasure would be doubled if I took something other than my shoes off. I remembered his offer for later, more desperate times and set off in search of entertainment less morally ambiguous.
I discreetly turned on the boob radar and adorned myself with a pair of mirrored aviators, the carpenters hammer to a pervert. The sand felt like I was walking through ice cream with taste buds on the soles of my feet. I took a call from a Hobart friend telling me what parts of their body had succumbed to frost bite. A world away, my feet stepped in and out of the warm ocean waters that tasted like frangelico to my toes.
Nearby a jelly fish the size of a small child floated sedately. Metres of stinging tentacles streamed out behind in a curtain of bad times and vinegar baths. It's menace was severely reduced by the fact that it wasn't moving much, possibly aware that the range of movement offered by its anatomy wouldn't really change its circumstances much. That it was dead meant it's personal circumstances were passed the point of change anyway, and awareness of anything other than the afterlife was beyond the range of its current abilities. We were probably getting more enjoyment out of looking at it, than it did out of living anyway.
I waded deeper into a ocean cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough not to turn your balls blue. With the surface smooth like a pond, the water was clear like polished glass. A sting ray skimmed gently along the sandy floor, the edges of his dinner plate like head rippling constantly in aquatic flight. Soon after it disappeared into the depths, a whale's fin rose gently out of the waters no more than 50 metres away from where I stood. A large tail fin followed soon after, as a large majestic whale rolled around playfully like it was all a very normal thing to do.
I drew in a deep breath and smiled at the beauty of life all around me. A Michael Franti song started playing in the dark recesses of my mind, and memories of all the amazing times in my life flooded back like a Kimberley monsoon. The lyrics repeated my latest mantra as having a new mantra is like, sooo the 'in thing to do'. Like Michael sings in 'Stay Human', I too “give thanks every day for being human”. I offer up my sincere gratitude to life for letting me enjoy it so much I feel like I should pay God for the privilege of playing in his personal theme park for 35 years; so far.
