Galle

Shaded streets are spiced in silence – scented with fanning palms of afternoon leaves, casting down cool pools of green off canopied shadows across the stretching heat of day.  Merchants and mosques sing out through the quarters of Galle: an old fort town, musked in its own past of myths, dreams and legend, coloured by the moonstone shore of its beloved Indian Ocean.  Serendipity yields its rich rewards and impossible is nothing.  Small pearls of cloud shine high in pure blue, and Sade sings into my ear, ‘…I’d give you the world if it was mine…’

I watch the sun off the shore, and wander slowly, twisting and turning at please, stopping and talking whenever the mood takes hold.  No plans, no deadlines, no outcomes, no deadlines, no idea – free-wheeling and waiting to watch the sun set from the Triton Bastion (one of the many vantage points inside this fortified town named after the Sun, Moon or Stars).  An open book rests on a sunlit table, in a room with rose-coloured walls.  Cricket is played in an open square.  And small pearls of cloud shine high in an endless blue, as Sade sings into my ear, ‘…I’d give you the world if it was mine…’

A storyteller called Faisal faces the old lighthouse from his frangipani balcony near Rampart Street.  He drinks sweet tea and distributes gemstones.  ‘Do you ever wonder from where your dreams are born? Look around you – this is where they all begin.’



 

 I watch the sun off the shore, and wander slowly, touching and tasting at please, stopping to savour whenever the mood takes hold.  Time has managed to yawn.  Echoes carry.  Shadows move in minutes. Old quarters beckon and now new dreams bring to arise from within.  We can make this up as we go along; creating our lives as we wander – leaving behind attachment to outcomes, the plans, the deadlines.  Only ideas from within, free-wheeling self-belief and the rich rewards serendipity yields. 


Never, never let me forget this day… as the small pearls of cloud shine high in unfolding blue, and Sade sings into my ear, ‘…I’d give you the world if it was mine…’