I BUILD SANDCASTLES IN MY DREAMS - Peep Show at the Beach
10 years ago, I told my 12-year-old best friend I'd never run
for a tram, I don’t know why I said this, it was neither true nor practical. I
think I just wanted to be a tween with inviolable woman-like opinions, and I wanted
Sarah to know that.
But as I do most days, I betrayed my ombre haired tween self
once again and ran for the tram that would this time take me to the end of the
line. Skipping in polyester, to watch the assemblage, stillness and fall of
three ply wood walls by three boys.
Sand finding its lodgings in places its never met, windswept
hair slapping our eyes, sea spray whips my already raw cheeks, made red by
month old boxed wine from Tomas’ studio. High on the 401 frequency of crashing waves
or my increasingly prominent histamine allergy brought on by said wine, nonetheless
I’m beaming at a sand pile.
To the hum of the ocean, we start to surrender to the inevitability
of dirt under our nails, the goosebumps that will pepper our skin and as the
sun sets, we play…
Its play, we are playing, mouths with no baby
teeth left are brimming at their baroque kingdom, precision in every stroke for
the architecture that will be eaten by the tide when dawn breaks.
I never thought I would utter sentences like “Don’t touch my
shells” while my almost adult hands brim with a seaweed collection, I hear men shrieking
as the water catches their feet and watch the same hands that ratchet these
walls to the roof of a 2010 Volkswagen caddy maxi, meet the sand to make their
castle.
The ephemerality of the structure is our surrender, we have
feasted on land for long enough and now we offer up a meal on a silver platter,
one adorned with oyster shells and sea foam, a fifteenth century feast fit for
the bite of the next big wave. As I’m lulled, a rumination on the
hands and mind is setting in. Manipulating 75 shells into a spiral next to the
gallery walls. This spiral of shells will be my contribution to this collective
meditation.
I found out that the oxygen atoms near bodies of water, the
ocean, have an extra electron in them, negative ions that physically calm you. The
sand and water are strong signifiers of calm, we are placeboed into transient
joy as we step back to view what has been made. A sculptural project dependent
on minimal intervention, rudimentary ideas of shape and decoration and please
no fucking wind.
Maybe one of the only human creations, that we make to serve
no purpose and with all intention of abandoning or destroying, we sat with bare
feet, gently enjoying the way dry sand sparkles on top of the wet. It’s almost
ritualistic, shovel scraping breaking the silent surface we let warm us up. Watching
the mound, billions of sharp-edged particles tumbling and rubbing up against each
other, huddling from the Melbourne cold.
Building a sandcastle feels like opening a Tupperware of cut fruit
or putting on Velcro sandals or drawing faces on a paddle pop stick. Like the
closing title page of a 2000s Australian sitcom.
Meditation is back in a big way, make a shell spiral, touch
grass, keep calm and unplug, build sandcastles in your dreams.
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