River Mouth

Amsterdam

Writing for Uni 1

A solitary neighbor walks her dog along the calm shoreline; the seaweed and driftwood litter the sand. The sun’s rays stretch beyond the clouds. This is the beach where I learnt to swim, surf and play cricket. I remember my mother’s arms lunging into the cool water pulling me from the ocean’s grip. I was two years old, and too young to heed the undertow. Even though I was inches from being pulled out to sea, I felt like this beach was the safest place in the world. Its salty air, calming sound, and cool blue waters would offer solace from the summer’s heat. Its green shoreline and orange sand dunes were untouched and looked as if they had been that way for hundreds of years. The beach seemed to be older than time itself; the worn and weather-beaten cliffs, storytellers from an age before print.From the beach you would walk to town along the warm bitumen, past weatherboard homes, corrugated fences and letterboxes with seashells stuck on them. The town itself was just a street with shops on either side. Although I would spend more than half a year away from it at a time, upon every return I was always relieved to find it hadn’t changed. The surf storeowner would recall tales of the winter swell, and the epic waves he and his friends had caught. The bakery’s shelves were full of berliners, and I would sit on a park bench and save the jam filled part for last.

The wheels are in motion with the builders set to build and the buyers set to buy. A man-made catastrophe is moving its way into this small town, smothering it with smog, city lights, sunscreen, beach balls, and towels. The development advances, like turpentine eating its way through an otherwise flawless masterpiece. I sit here on a park bench, it is a mixture of greens and browns etched with love notes to people I’ve never met. I trace my fingers over the haphazard engravings, who is DZ? And is he still with KA? Will they be forever? As I think about these people a RV drives by, its exhaust casts a shadow on the sun-drenched pavement. The taste of acrid fumes in my mouth is momentarily overwhelming. It is a taste I will associate with the demise of a town once so beautiful and so perfect. I walk through the builder’s plot, I feel cold. It’s like I’m standing in the shadows that a number of two-story villas will soon cast. I continue to walk past a meadow, where the grass is turning brown, to the cliff side where the two of us used to sit watching the ocean crash. It’s a distant memory now, but it was at this cliffside that we realized how small we really were. We had left our shack that day where the party was starting, drove down the quiet, still road, and sat on the rocks looking out at the ocean. There was an eerie calm cast over the cliffside. Above the green southern ocean was a midnight blue storm cloud moving its way toward the land. Its rain skimmed the ocean’s edge, the cloud’s body filled with electricity, displaying a power beyond our understanding. We were spectators, as this huge angry mass moved towards us. The storm moved closer the wind began to stir, and the hairs on our arms rose. We wanted to watch the light show from our safe spot, but it was no longer safe; the impending storm would soon approach and devour this town. We realized we had to make it back to the shack or we would soon be in the storm’s grasp… The sun was now warming the same rocks where we once sat watching the storm, the same that were soaked by the relentless rain. Just as one is powerless to halt an impending winter, and to stop the day’s light fading to night, I too feel a sense of powerlessness. As perfect as this town is I cannot stop it from changing. Even though I can still buy my jam Berliner, I can’t help but notice the curtains drawn in the shop front windows, and the ‘opening soon’ signs. I stand on the cliff’s edge and gaze across the peninsula at the smog of the bustling metropolis. The people are inching forward in their metal coffins, bringing with them the smog that has killed their air. The smog will soon come and choke this town, changing it forever. The city people will leave just as quickly as they came, and others will replace them. With these thoughts in mind I savor the air’s freshness, its purity. I can still see the ambient light as the town settles in after another beautiful day. The warmth begins to leave the sky and this sentimental man will leave with it, for the warmth this town has provided me will never be the same. It is on borrowed time, the money will move down the highway, the natural ambient light will be replaced with a fluorescent and artificial haze.

Videos made for Uni.

Hello,

Here's some of the digital stories I've made at Uni so far.





This one had to be a remake of an old poem or something. It's Robert Frost's 'Road not taken'. The painting near the beginning is by Anne Wallace.