Through the Forest to the Beach

OR Let’s get the hell out of here.

Okay, let’s say you accept that if you or I are in pain of any kind, whether it be emotional or mental, it’s a kind of hell.

It’s hell only because I believe that hell is possible.

We are told that what we believe becomes real, if only in our minds. Imagine how much more powerful our minds will be, then, believing in what is actually real. Now our mind is aligned with something eternal, something perfect, something true, something beautiful. Only those who see this as some sort of chimera, or false representation of the profound truth in those concepts, would not want that.

So I can always see my brother as one with me, and I can communicate with him through my body, which tells him all the really important things about our interaction. I don’t need to use words; I can communicate love merely by being comfortable, open, honest, trustworthy and happy in another’s presence. My attitude toward him, and feelings about him, whether positive or negative, are communicated wonderfully efficiently in the body; much more is said this way than we generally realise. I often proved this long ago when I was still married, and my then wife and I would have intense conversations on the phone, often explosively disagreeing, but a conversation face to face on the same subject, whether  before or after, would be calm and collected. I began to realise that maybe half, or even more, of the “conversation” was missing.

This realisation now has wider implications, touching on everyone with whom I come into contact. I’m writing for myself here, the message is always for me first. I can’t tell you anything you don’t know. What it means is that not only can I have fuller conversations face to face, but I can communicate wordlessly, as proved just this afternoon when Rupert turned up to visit Johnnie, who is staying with us. Rupert had been up to the lighthouse and found two Korean tourists, a young woman and a young man, perhaps in their late twenties, who only met as Rupert showed up in their lives.

The thing about the young guy was that he knew almost no English, and he was going to be sitting through an English conversation between two old friends. Since we live in one of the world’s great beauty spots, I thought we could go for a stroll to the beach instead.

He readily agreed, smiling, and we set off down the track, which we joined at my back gate and which took us over the abandoned railway line, where you need sandals to climb up the blue metal (stone) filling. Then across the creek, where you have to walk the plank if the water is high, as it was today, and back across it again the same way moments later. Now you are in a tiny patch of subtropical rainforest, with a high canopy and strangler figs and elkhorns attached to trees, and the whole atmosphere is filled with the sound of crickets and cicadas, with frequent bird calls punctuating the rhythm. I pulled a strip from a paperbark tree, feeling how flimsy it was, and he did the same. Stopped and motioned to him to listen. In the distance, faintly, was the distinctive sound of a kookaburra. “Kookaburra”, I said and he repeated it.

From here we turned right and then first left in the maze of paths and moved into a more open space, picking up the sound of the great Pacific Ocean surf. After a few hundred metres you turn right again across the rickety bridge and follow one of the many tracks that land you on the beach, at a place where the ocean cuts a knee-deep channel a hundred metres or so into the wide strip of sand. Here it carves a deeper pool of water that, although refreshed by a warm ocean current, gathers up the sun’s warmth too and provides a natural bath that a group of seven or eight young men were enjoying. On the sand adjoining the channel was a gathering of gulls and little terns, and a game of Frisbee going on. I spread my hands. “Byron Bay,” I said. “Beautiful”, he replied, and looking over to the right in the distance, “Lighthouse.” “Lighthouse,” I agreed. We smiled and laughed.

I began to roll my jeans up and waded into the water of the channel, which quickly wet the bottoms as I ploughed on across the channel, looking back to see my young friend following my lead exactly, even to holding the rolls up at each knee like me in a vain attempt to keep them dry. We laughed again. Wading into the ocean proper, we felt the cooler but still warm waters of the edge. Conversation would have been, or might have been, to no purpose as we paddled and looked around at the bay, up at the paper-thin clouds, two as one. I found a smooth stone and sent it skipping over the surf, and he found his own and did the same. This was so much fun we did it several times. A feeling of harmony continued though our return as we waded back and took the path through the forest. A tiny bright yellow and black butterfly appeared and seemed to be leading us, keeping our pace and flying at eye level in front of us for several metres. “Butterfly,” he said. “Butterfly,” I confirmed. We retraced our steps back to the house where we washed our feet under the tap at the front door and dried with the same towel.

Throughout the time we spent together walking and not talking I had a strong feeling that we were sharing a moment of unison, that he was effortlessly just allowing me to lead and he was following, not because I was ahead in any way, other than I knew this territory that was foreign to him, just as he would know territory unfamiliar to me. I know that Korean culture looks up to its elders, and I may have appeared to be one to him, but there was no deference in his manner. He seemed to accept me completely, followed me unafraid, trusting me. In turn I knew I was with a friend, having taken an instant liking to him, and not only because he happened to be short like me. I had nothing to give him but this wordless friendship that bloomed between us like the tiny pink and orange lantana flowers, little globes of clustered petals that lined part of the path through the forest to the beach. But the gift was for me, too, one of serenity as well as fun, calm strength along with joyful appreciation of nature and my brother. A gift greater than words can give.

The communication that happens on the internet, where I am limited to just words, can only ever be half at most of the experience that we would have face to face, where we would know from the smile in my eyes and the ease of your motion that all was well, even though we might be deep in discussion about a fine point of philosophy or music or the creative process. The conversation is not really the goal, the sharing is. I want you to know as you read this that there is a unity and connectedness like the one I experienced this afternoon available to us, here and now, even though the carrier wave is not my body language but mere words, and virtual ones at that, since when you turn your computer off they are as gone as if they had never been. We, however, will still be one.

I got the hell out of this place. I know you can do the same.