Sandcastles.

I was at the beach today, in the salty air under the burning sun, halfway submerged in the sea fighting off fish from the fresh oyster I took from the rocks.

It was too hot and I wondered momentarily, why I was there - then I saw the reason kayaking out to sea. Yes. My boyfriend - fiance, now. He brought me here, an entire tectonic plate away from the tropical island I am so used to, to meet his old celebrated friends, to fish and now, to oyster.

I keep forgetting how big the world can be outside of the cloistered and clustered class-and-steel peaks of Singapore and our troubles, our selves, are so very tiny. There is always a way in, a way out, of situations. Everything seemed possible under this sky.

Fish were actively jumping out of the water in waves, disappearing into nothing again, camouflaged in the shimmer-shimmer of sunlight and water... it seemed like I could live here forever. With enough sunscreen, of course.

And his friends - my friends too now! - lively personalities that seemed to live on sunshine and the act of fishing, showed me what it means to go out and get some sun: these people had life beaming out of their skins and the sun shining out of their asses. It suddenly seemed ridiculous that Asia could be entranced by the idea of fair-skinned beauty, when a rosy pinch to the nose and cheeks is so much less breakably porcelain.

Gently reminded to re-apply sunscreen, something I quickly did, I was left again to my own thoughts. It seemed criminal that I should be out here, in this wonderful sea with its astonishing iridescence. Do people see this? This sea, not captured in tanks or aquariums but one you immerse in, in its full salty glory.

I paddled out of the water and decided to make my first sandcastle. I pinched sand off the beach and let it dollop into a circle. First ring of sand, fourth, seventh, eighth - and I had an epiphany: the beauty of sandcastles was that it gets washed away.

That's how its beauty is appreciated and remembered: because it gets washed away - it becomes beautiful when it is immortalised.

To appreciate the exercise in futility while baking in the sun was part of the charm. It's a little like Little Prince's rose if you think about it.

So here it is.

I think we all need sandcastles - in the air, on the ground, real rock ones and small sandy ones. We need castles because it is magic our parents gave us and it is what we will give our children. Memories live in castles, be it sand or rock or sofa.

...I made a short barricade before my sandcastle, wanting to preserve this little monument. Both barricade and castle collapsed very shortly after, with me watching, immortalised. I knew it wasn't going to last, but while it did it was beautiful. Far from perfect but beautiful.

And I think I should make some more. Not anytime during this trip, no, but I will make more, because I had waited too long to make my first. Although, I will build my next castles on rock.