It’s summertime now, and this is just the end of a summer afternoon at the beach. Kids are playing in the water. On the sand a woman is carrying a baby, another woman is walking her dog. A girl is carrying a chair up the stairs. Off in the distance beyond the water there’s another island. Scattered around the beach are a number of sand carvings left over from a contest. Just an average summer scene in Negros.
Sitting in the middle of all this, between the two ruined banisters that enclose the stairway, a large man sits in a plastic chair. From his position and his posture he seems to have mastered everything he sees. He’s checking out the girl carrying the chair, and she shyly averts her eyes, but still smiles. It’s all very casual.
He appears to be a foreigner, one of the many who settle here. The woman with the baby on the beach might even be his wife and child; but maybe not. Either way, he seems to feel at home. He’s fairly young, compared to many foreigners who settle here; maybe he took early retirement; maybe he started an easy business venture here, to occupy part of his time.
He may have worked hard for many years in a cold country, driving long distances every day through rain and ice to satisfy his employers or his clients, doing the work he remained good at, but no longer enjoyed. Still, it paid well; and he had no ambition left for anything else.
So he saved what money he could, and like many others like him, fixed his mind on future in a tropic island paradise. And now he’s here. And he’s happy enough. He found an easy, satisfied life without winter or spring, without demands that he can’t easily meet.
In his own country, he would hardly be a rich man; but here, he has so much more than those around him that he seems rich to them, and they treat him accordingly. He doesn’t understand them very well, but he doesn’t mind; and they understand him well enough for what they need.
This picture shows his journey’s end. It could easily be worse. He suffered years of time built up in blotches, pieces of a life piled in expectation. These have now resolved themselves into this endless summer afternoon, on a beach in Negros.
