A Solitary Landmass

Despite the damp, pallid horizon lying deflated in its expanse, it was barren. Not a shingle of texture broke the faint curve of the earth that marked the only detail of the skyline. There was only the blue below it, and the grey above it. Blue and grey. Grey and blue. Bland and bland. The cliff line was a bit more interesting, not that it was much of a contest. The sun-bleached cliffs were low (only about 20 meters – more of a hill really, one that forgot where the island ended and coast began) with shoes of thick, darkened sand and, capping it, dense matted locks of greenery.

Atop this cliff-hill, there was a bench, and on that bench a man named Jim. He was in his late forties, with grainy blond hair that matched the shore below. On his perch of half-varnished wood, he waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he knew he’d realise when it got here. Time ticked on as he just sat and waited, waited, waited, staring out at the view stained bland and blander. He could have turned around, but Jim chose not to. If he had good eyesight, he could probably have seen all the way across the island to the coast on the other side, then beyond that to an even greater view of a bland and blander sky. He was fine with the perspective he had. It was a good view. Well, it was a good view if you enjoyed blue and grey a whole bunch. Jim liked neither colour, but decided that this was a good view simply because it was the only view he had. Any view, he concluded, was better than no view.

Below, there was the faint echo, the crash of waves against the hill-cliff. The tide had come in, as it does every evening. Jim was slightly surprised; he knew he had been sitting there for a while, but not this long. The sky gave no indication of the time of day, and he had left his watch at home. It distracted from the waiting, he thought. Jim didn’t really see the tide in typical sense. Most just saw it as something that came in, and came out. A push and pull. He disagreed. The tide was more like a woodpecker always coming to the same tree. Every time it would chip away another bit, so small an amount that it wouldn’t ever be noticed gone. Then it left. The next day, it would return, and peck away another piece.

Of course; trees grow on, recover, and become massive sprawls of browns and greens. This island didn’t grow. It shrank, ever so slowly, bit by bit every day. Jim had been born here; back when the island was a holiday paradise. People flocked to visit the clear sky and fine sandy beaches. Now the coast was thick, damp and shrivelled. The sky was grey and dull, and so the tourists never came anymore. He mused that the tide wasn’t a woodpecker; but a termite. It only does small bits of damage, and it moves gradually, but with enough time and patience, it can collapse lives. Jim remembered the children of the tourists who would show up. They would cry and laugh and run up and down the beaches, build sandcastles and have fun. They would visit his humble shop and buy water pistols and plastic shovels and balloons. Oh, the balloons, he would make them himself, every colour of the rainbow and more. But that was then and this was now. Jim didn’t need to man his shop anymore, and so he sat on this bench and waited. He didn’t know why.