On a small piece of deserted land south of Swakopmund, precisely where the crisp, cold, salty Atlantic Ocean provocatively licks at the golden dunes of the Namib Desert and in a gesture of mock chivalry lays a detritus of empty shells, dead kelp and lifeless jellyfish like a sacrifice upon the golden hems of her sandy shores and beaches, standing precisely here, one is forced to acknowledge the enormous power and persistence of Nature, and simultaneously, the insignificance of one's existence in a primeval process that supposedly started at the birth of our universe, and since then, relentlessly, tirelessly, compulsively continues along a predetermined yet unpredictable trajectory.
As the afternoon progresses and the Earth imperceptibly turns on its axis away from the Big Fire Star, temperatures drop along the Namibian coast and quite sharply.
The dunes of the Namib Desert blush an alluring pink, surreal to the eye, contrasting sharply with a perfectly cloudless background of ultramarine sky; it is the type of visual overdose that easily reduces the fine artist to helpless impotency and paralyses the photographer. A body of air, surprisingly cold, rushes across the ocean towards the shores between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, and ruffles the neat ridges of the pink dunes.
To be in awe of Nature is a wonderful feeling; very few man-made contrivances can compete.
To be in awe of Nature is a wonderful feeling; very few man-made contrivances can compete.
Before me stretches a restless and immense body of undrinkable water, unfathomably deep and mysterious, possibly older than Life itself, and behind me, glittering in the setting sun, the world's oldest desert. Amazingly, the mind isn't boggled; it doesn't collapse into a confusing hiss of white noise and static, synapses incinerating one by one, etc. In proper order, the senses are impressed, a visual reality of the surroundings is absorbed, recognised, categorised and internalised; awe pleasantly rises, floods the consciousness and then, as if by a mental switch, human nature awakens to the realisation that (slightly amended for the purposes of this post) vita brevis natura sit aeterna (life is short, nature is eternal).
If modern theorists are to be believed, it was from this same body of water, millions of years ago, a terrestrial habitat arose and the first continent appeared. The ancient desert sands flowing freely between my fingers, hold in their hidden depths the memories of swollen tropical rivers, daily deluges of rain, high humidity, huge green-leafed plants and a largesse of every kind of Life. As if to echo Percy Bysshe Shelley in his iconic poem, Ozymandias, the only appropriate words which readily came to mind were ''nothing beside remains''.
From that point in time, on a small piece of deserted land, millions of years ago, to this day in 2014, south of Swakopmund, much has happened but has anything essentially changed?
If modern theorists are to be believed, it was from this same body of water, millions of years ago, a terrestrial habitat arose and the first continent appeared. The ancient desert sands flowing freely between my fingers, hold in their hidden depths the memories of swollen tropical rivers, daily deluges of rain, high humidity, huge green-leafed plants and a largesse of every kind of Life. As if to echo Percy Bysshe Shelley in his iconic poem, Ozymandias, the only appropriate words which readily came to mind were ''nothing beside remains''.
From that point in time, on a small piece of deserted land, millions of years ago, to this day in 2014, south of Swakopmund, much has happened but has anything essentially changed?
The first massive continent split up and pieces drifted away, borne along by the elliptical revolution of the Earth, taking along flora and fauna to various climates. All that remains today of that super-continent is the narrowed chin that is southern Africa, and the Namib Desert.
The tropical garden on the coast of ancient Namibia shriveled up and disintegrated into a hauntingly beautiful, silent and fascinating desert, whispering its secrets on an ancient wind from the sea in a language no one understands, while the Atlantic Ocean, the incubator of modern terrestrial Life, appears to the eye to stretch to infinity; unchanging and yet changeable, timeless and merciless as eternity itself.
Mine is but a few minutes, an hour at the most, on this small piece of land; literally nothing in the course of Time.
Mine is but a few minutes, an hour at the most, on this small piece of land; literally nothing in the course of Time.
Looking at the pinkish dunes, the ultramarine sky yawning above them and listening to the rhythmic crash of the foamy waves, there exists within me a conviction that both Time and memories are superfluous here. Irrelevant. Nature moves at its own pace, obeys its own Laws, arcing, bending, sagging, pushing and pulling in accordance with elemental forces older than the Earth itself, far beyond the parametres of any imaginary control, while humanity is pathetically incidental; a brief, frenzied, trivial commotion to ensure the survival of its particular DNA.This, truly, is a glimpse at the Bigger Picture; a snapshot, like the twinkle of a distant star in a vault of dense darkness.
I put on my sunglasses against the golden glare of the setting sun, its silver sparks of light dancing on the shallow waves, pour Jaegermeister into a small shot glass, gulp it down and close my eyes to the magnificence of my surroundings.
I put on my sunglasses against the golden glare of the setting sun, its silver sparks of light dancing on the shallow waves, pour Jaegermeister into a small shot glass, gulp it down and close my eyes to the magnificence of my surroundings.
As the liquid settles warmly in my stomach, that ancient wind whistles in my ears, cold at its core, the sun slides slowly behind a rising curtain of fog approaching across the ocean, a long shadow shrouds the dunes and the Atlantic at low-tide roars faintly in the distance...as comforting and persuasive as a mother's call home.
Written by Anya Namaqua Links: anyalinks@gmail.com
i admire your posts.Have a blessed next posts .
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