#147.21 - Day 150

I got up at 5 am. The sun had already risen. The birds were singing but not as loudly. I could not longer sleep. I had gone to bed after a half bottle of prosecco shared. I was already very silly by the half glass. I am no longer interested in drinking. It is good to know I am not alcoholic.

I lay in bed for a little longer and then got up to tidy the house. Put away all the things. After that I tried to watch some Lucifer and then thought of my run. So I went for that instead - at 6.45 am. It was the first time I ran along the seashore in Holywood. It was empty. The sun laid down its warm rays and I ran in them for an hour. An hour of seeing the sun and the waters and there being barely a breeze. Nothing. Oystercatchers. Swan. Herring gulls. Possibly some kind of goose. Canada probably. All those birds which helped me through the winter as I drew now manifest in the light. As if they were woven from the light.

The tide stretched out, exposing the green slippery hairy rocks and sand. Algal, a sign of nutrient pollution. Gutweed I was told. Never forage where gutweed grows. It means the waters are dirty. This is how you look for clean water. The ruffled fronds of sugar weed. These are nice to eat. But we cannot - on account on the nutrient content. Another word for sewage, if you must know. It makes sense - the sewage works are so far inland that they probably wash up on the Holywood shoreline. 

By the time it all ends, I would have run for an hour. An hour. An hour spent running along the shoreline of Belfast Lough, perhaps not the most deserted beach in the world, but for now, it is a kind of paradise, doused in nytrosunlight. Everything feels like it is on fire, as if I could put a thin blade, or the business end of a screwdriver in between the layers and prise one off. One layer after another layer and reveal what? The past, the future. That is all everyone ever speaks of.

An hour along the shoreline, flat and strangely comforting. Deserted on account of the too earliness. I barely notice the houses. When houses become too large they lose their humanity. I stopped noticing things of an inhumane scale a long time ago - I was brought up in Singapore. Everything there is bigger. Size really does matter - when something is too big it becomes incomprehensible. That is the point isn't it? To blind someone into subjugation with power. With light.

Later on I return home.

I have run all the way - up the punishing hills of Croft Road. I realise that I am now inured against hills too. It makes me feel I have achieved something. Like a sharpened knife against the stone.

I am now 103 days without alcohol. I didn't count yesterday. Alcohol bores me now. I cannot think of anything more boring than drinking - certainly on my own. That sigh of relief when you close a front  door and open a fridge, that is now gone. I stretch my legs. Do my sit ups. 

It is simple. I have always wanted simple. Simple is best.

I finally watch Lucifer. I marvel at the strange wigs. The weirdest one is Eve's hair. It is so huge that it looks like some of the seaweed I saw during the run. Strange seaweed hair. We live in very odd times. Not seaweed. More like untreated wool. Yes black wool. So strange.

I have an entire day of loveliness lined up. I am going to be drawing and then digging dandelions out of the front lawn. The entire backyard has been dandelioned. And buttercuped. A day of loveliness. A perfect May Day. One more, one more for the memories. As everyone goes faster, I go slower. I deliberately slow down.