Thoughts from Kijkduin
Kiara Amartya Mohamad
13rd October 2022
Kijkduin, 6 Oct 2022
I remember the times when I was the river.
On October 6th, 2022, I semi-impulsively decided to bike to the dunes. It had been what
seemed like a long week, where the entire observable universe shrunk and became
contained within the thin walls of my rented room in The Hague.
-
The previous weeks felt like the longest dialogue (or a monologue?) between my laptop
screen, my phone and myself. After the nth day, it felt like my brain had been eating itself
from the inside out.
But today it was just me and the vast land of Kijkduin. Here, I become closer to nothingness.
-
I am picturing myself alone at Strandslag 6, basking in today’s sun whilst nude.
For now, this image only exists in my imagination.
-
The sun is shining generously today. I can feel how warm the sand must be. Why do we
wear shoes anyway?
-
Today’s accompaniment is David Abram’s The Spell of The Sensuous and Braiding Sweetgrass
by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
-
There is a slope across from the bench where I am sitting. I wish to run towards it, and to
press my nude breasts and body against the warm sand and the shifting topographies.
-
I decided to continue sitting for the next hour, failing at reading, but perceiving passerbys—
mostly old people biking and the wind (or I would rather think of it as being in/with the wind).
As time went by on that bench, I imagined myself as the river, lying flat on the ground, conforming my shape to the piles of sand next to asphalt and rocks. I like to look at the contrast between my brown skin and the washed -out colors of the sand as it encapsulates the form of my body.
~~~~~
In Kijkduin, I am comforted in becoming closer to nothingness, and everything that surrounds me.