I Find Myself at the Beach Again
Why the Beach Is a Bummer
It is summertime, and so, we are repeatedly reminded, it is time for the beach — beach bodies, embankment reads, fruity embankment drinks in tall glasses festooned with tiny paper umbrellas and fruits skewered on tiny plastic swords. This is an ideal beach of hot sun, warm sand, crystal-clear water that leaves your pare salted. But it is all besides often a delusion.
I take known beaches.
When I was a child, my parents took my brothers and me to Port-au-Prince during the summer so we could get to know the country of our ancestors. Considering Haiti is an isle, the beach is everywhere. Haitians are item, even snobby about beaches. We belittle at the beaches of other Caribbean islands or Hawaii (let the states non speak of continental American "beaches") because nowhere in the world, we know with certainty, is the water warmer and clearer. Nowhere is the sand whiter or more willing to encompass our warm flesh.
In Haiti, embankment bodies are simply bodies, and beach reads are but books, considering the beach is all around you. Hither in the United States, it is similar for those who alive on the coasts. The embankment is five miles away from my parents' Florida home. They have lived there for more than than 15 years. They have been to the beach once, to accept guests who were visiting.
Simply for the residual of u.s.a., the beach exerts a dissimilar kind of gravitational pull. Sixty-one percent of Americans don't alive anywhere well-nigh a beach. We spend a surprising amount of fourth dimension hearing about this place we volition hardly always run across. We watch commercials, TV shows and movies in which nubile young women and their strapping male counterparts frolic on sand, their hair golden and dominicus-streaked. Long walks on the embankment are the supposed holy grail of a romantic evening. The beach becomes a kind of utopia — the place where all our dreams come up true.
I have known beaches, just I have no detail fondness for them. I don't like sand in my crevices. I don't like sand at all. I don't savour all that sunshine and heat without the benefit of climate control. I don't enjoy other people at the beach — sticky children, young people with firm bodies and scanty bathing suits, those of less firm body staring forlornly at this spectacle. People bring pets, and I am not an beast person. No, I do non desire to pet your dog.
After x minutes, I find myself bored. What are nosotros supposed to do at the beach? I'1000 black, and so I sympathise sunbathing equally a concept but less so as an activity. How long am I supposed to lie in the sun? When do I plough myself over like roasting meat on a spit? How often do I use this sunscreen you speak of?
I don't like bathing suits. In that location is so little material involved and they ride up in places where there should exist no riding. They are not flattering for many body types considering a beach body is a very specific, slender, toned and tan trunk. The rest of us, if we cartel bear witness up at the embankment, should probably don caftans, neck to toe. Wearing a bathing adjust on a beach would get out me exposed in ways that terrify me: no habiliment to hibernate backside, and so much of my flesh spilling, available for mockery or, as this modern age demands, amateur photography in which I end up as the punch line on some website that masks cruelty with so-called humor. I'm not that dauntless.
In that location is the h2o, lapping gently on the shore, but, honestly, it's not that much fun to get into it. Sometimes there are creatures and slimy lengths of seaweed and sharp things at the lesser. Unlike the swimming pool, there is no chlorine at the beach, and I am quite sure that people are using the body of water equally their vast personal toilet. It is an unfathomable stretch of water that holds too much potential for treachery. And sharks.
It'southward no better upwardly on the sand. Embankment seating is uncomfortable, particularly when yous're alpine. There my feet are, hanging over the edge of the chaise. Or I'k in some kind of lawn chair, my parts sticking to polyester in ways that will leave firmly indented patterns. Reading at the beach is an ordeal — trying to find a comfy position, keeping sand out of the book and sunday out of my eyes, managing the pages if in that location is a potent breeze. Soon enough, my sunglasses start sliding downward my face.
ONCE, I drove down to Key West, which is, basically, New Orleans at the embankment: loud, grimy, abundant in alcohol. I saw the southernmost city in the continental Us and waited in a line of tourists to hug the marker and have my picture taken. I stepped advisedly onto those strange undulations of sand. I thought, "This is pretty and all, merely I could die without e'er having this experience again." The beach is a place lovelier in theory than practice.
Summer itself is as well lovelier in theory than practice, despite the best efforts of splashy magazines trying to hype usa up. "Get ready for summertime," they say, when they should be saying, "Fix for inconsistent weather condition, humidity, disappointment and dreams deferred."
I always have grand plans for myself each summer. I teach, and throughout the academic year, my colleagues and I wax wistful about all the things we're going to do when the spring semester ends. We volition read, and information technology will be luxurious, because we will be reading for ourselves. We will travel, and non to nourish a conference. And, of course, we volition diligently prepare for our autumn courses. I take, thus far, spent my summertime watching an inordinate amount of "Barefoot Contessa" on the Nutrient Network.
It will never be what nosotros want it to be, and still we cannot help but hold on to this vision of summer, of the embankment, of contentment. Despite my better judgment, I am also vulnerable to this fantasy, to then much trembling desire. It is an unattainable idyll that we never quite accomplish, but somehow, it remains enough.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/why-the-beach-is-a-bummer.html
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