Sri Lanka: Hikkaduwa Sunsets

As a child I loved to draw palm trees.  They were the thing I used to love drawing the most.  Thin strings of long lines, each ever reaching upwards towards a green parrot thatch of coconut leaves, rustling and weaving in the shine of yellow light from a smiling sun burning high in an empty sky.  There was an image in my mind’s eye that I could see and could copy then create into new images on paper which others could see.  Writing is much the same.

 

 

 

Here on a train ride along the south west coast of Sri Lanka I see that same image again.  This time, however, the image blinks and flashes into life before me.  This train has departed from Galle and heads elsewhere.  My stop of Aluthgama is an hour away and the sun has already begun to set.  To my left the afternoon sky mellows, the sun sags down towards the ocean horizon and peach and pinks begin to dance upon the lower waves of the Indian Ocean.  I look out of my open window, and row upon row of thin strings of long lined palm trees, each with a green parrot thatch of coconut leaves rusting and weaving in the evening winds, stream past my eyes in the clickety-clack of this moving train.

 

 

 

 

 

Amazing to think that this image has been inside me most of my life.  These palm trees have been both here in Hikkaduwa and inside me for almost the same amount of time, almost at the same time.  It would be too easy to grope for a metaphysical interpretation, carefully imposing a tailored meaning onto a wonderful co-incidence. 

There once was a time when I might have indulged in that.  Now, however, I tend to think back about some ancient Polynesian explorers I read about, who used to navigate the Southern Seas using stars as a guide to determine their position, and an image of an island in their mind’s eye as a map for their destination.  They sailed out into the voids of the unknown towards an image they could see and feel and knew was out there waiting to be found. 

 

Perhaps it’s safer to speculate that, sometimes, these images we see are a kind of map for us to follow if we so choose.   Sure, there’s an element of risk and ridicule in sailing out towards those images – and there is no guarantee they exist - but there’s also an element of regret and remorse when we realise that perhaps those images are a part of who we are and might have found our true selves if only we’d trusted in them a little more.

My train pulls out of Hikkaduwa station.  It moves along towards my station of Aluthgama as the sun sets across the Indian Ocean.  The sky slides down behind the ocean horizon, stretching pink clouds across a tangerine twilight.  Between me and the waters are the silhouettes of palm trees.  Thin strings of long lines, each reaching up to a green parrot thatch of coconut leaves.  Same as it’s always been.