With the feet tucked below a hot curtain of sand, and the head protected under a shallow shade – cast by the nearby rocks, I’m waiting for Andra to come out of the water.The Olympos village (Turkey) is not exactly what we expected, but it’s still a good place to relax – especially now when we’re getting closer to the end of our Middle Eastern pilgrimage.
The village itself is placed in a small valley surrounded by mountains, while the sea washes the shores approximately 1 kilometer away from our hotel: a tree house hotel that packs a lot of Turkish and international tourists. So many that there’s a long line advancing slowly towards the people serving us dinner in the evenings.
There is one small inconvenience to this place: the showers with fluctuating water temperature; they seem to be a problem in all huts, not just ours.
However, in my case, 6 years in a university campus have thought me to anticipate the change of temperature and avoid being frozen or burned by the moody water jet. Also, I’ve learned to make rapid changes, so that the water stays constant for longer periods of time.
I’ve tried to come up with some instructions for Andra, only to discover that it’s just instinct and reflex, no universal formula. There are some guidelines though:
– don’t open the water flow to maximum – it gets more vulnerable to pressure drops caused by other people using the showers or toilets; it also limits your control options.
– millimeter rotations can induce the desired effect, so refrain yourself from making major adjustments (the slowly growing anger can easily influence the hand).
hmm, my mind is playing with words again: “the most minute changes induced in a system, can cause an imbalance or the desired effect. We rarely need drastic decisions in our quest for achieving a certain purpose. Just aim for the snowball effect, instead of a system that needs constant tweaking”.
I have no idea if I read something like this somewhere, or it’s an ad hoc personal creation.
Back to using the showers, it’s a small sadistic pleasure hearing Andra fighting with the hidden enemy that plays with the water pressure. And the sounds she makes… we joked about that she’s feeding the imagination of our neighbors from the other side of the thin wooden wall.
…
The shade is my enemy and my friend..here on the beach, while I fight a sore throat and a bit of a cold that threatens to morph into something worse.
I’m trying to find that “happy place”, but it’s not always working …writing keeps me busy for a while.
When everything will fail, I’ll put my hopes in the can of beer that is slowly getting warmer in the sand; the alcohol will numb the senses for a while and help me enjoy the scenery.
I move forward with the towel, to catch up the advancing shade. I plan to tuck the feet again under the hot sand, close the notebook’s lid and deeply inhale the sea breeze ..through an insensitive nose.. maybe I’ll feel something in the end.
