It's summer and it's Monday. Today was my last day running on the Black Sea shore, Samsun-side. It was my most quiet run since I've been here (at least three weeks?). The water, like glass. Not even the tiniest beginning of a wave. The high tide pushed me further up onto the sand, which was stained with seaweed and milky blobs of jellyfish.
The kids are out of school and many people are out of work, so enjoying the beach before the high sun at noon seems to be the best plan. Blond girls sunbathe. Grandparents watch their grandkids play in the sand. Dads teach their sons how to swim. Hardly anybody is in the water, because it's Monday and the beach isn't near as packed as it is on the weekends. In the sea are some young boys playing with beach toys, toddlers with neon-colored arm floaties, old men with hair backs, and a little futher out, the dads teaching their sons swim. No matter what part of the beach I run on, there is a dad out there with his crying child. Trying to get that kid to swim. The kids yell for their mothers and say they don't like it. Every scene is the same: the dad laughing slightly, saying come on, come on, just try it one more time.
A side note on languages. When I was thinking about the absurdly waveless see, I thought, "Nothing to wave hola to." And then I thought how in English the word for the ocean's waves and the act of waving hello or goodbye is the same. In Spanish, ocean waves are olas. And hello is hola. Our languages seem to point to wanting some sort of interaction with our environment. An ebb and flow kinda thing. End side note.
The kids are out of school and many people are out of work, so enjoying the beach before the high sun at noon seems to be the best plan. Blond girls sunbathe. Grandparents watch their grandkids play in the sand. Dads teach their sons how to swim. Hardly anybody is in the water, because it's Monday and the beach isn't near as packed as it is on the weekends. In the sea are some young boys playing with beach toys, toddlers with neon-colored arm floaties, old men with hair backs, and a little futher out, the dads teaching their sons swim. No matter what part of the beach I run on, there is a dad out there with his crying child. Trying to get that kid to swim. The kids yell for their mothers and say they don't like it. Every scene is the same: the dad laughing slightly, saying come on, come on, just try it one more time.
A side note on languages. When I was thinking about the absurdly waveless see, I thought, "Nothing to wave hola to." And then I thought how in English the word for the ocean's waves and the act of waving hello or goodbye is the same. In Spanish, ocean waves are olas. And hello is hola. Our languages seem to point to wanting some sort of interaction with our environment. An ebb and flow kinda thing. End side note.
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