awesome

it was the rustling—like that of a skulking rain—that woke up my neighbor. this was at dawn of the very first day of his costa rican vacation two weeks ago.

outside his thatched bungalow, the air was dry. so he plopped back to bed. but the dry crackling noise, this time like desiccated leaves raked by the wind, went on. and strangely, the susurration seemed to issue forth from the ground.

then he saw it. hordes of fiddle crabs carpeting the beach. a great number of them, as if in a murderous frenzy, brandished their asymmetrical oversized claws. they seemed, my neighbor explained, to be in a great hurry to scurry back to their burrows on the edge of the beach.

my neighbor told me this as we chanced upon each other retrieving our mails the other day. awesome, he kept mumbling as he trudged back up the stairs, his hands clutching his mails, mostly drab fliers.

sea grapes

had a dream last night. one of the few ones i thought i can summon back the morning after.

in it, i, still the yearling half crazed by this inexplicable urge to tramp around the lilliputian island i grew up in, was combing a parched cove.

(in my dreams, the beach is always pristine. why?) and my feet kept getting snarled by the beached vines of sea grapes.

it was such a beautiful spring day today in new york. i forgot again to scout online for a decently priced airfare for my trip back home next month.

sea grapes. what a lovely name. beauty, in whatever incarnation, is, sometimes, just enough.

i lost track of the rest of my dream. perhaps, i must have seen later a sail sighing through the swell of the afternoon riptide.