It is amazing that living things found on land resemble those living under the sea. And lest I forget, the mushrooms in the pic below, which resemble the blue bottles of the sea, also have a close resemblance to a non-organic human accessory, the umbrella – used on land – by people.
The tops of the mushrooms appear too heavy for their thin stems, looking ready to topple over at any time. Their milky whiteness invite a bold hand to touch them just to make sure that they are real. Their texture, soft and pliable to the eye may just belie hidden deception.
Nature is resilient and has had millennia of experience in protecting itself. It is not by chance then that uncanny resemblances that radiate across species has evolved over time ensuring the survival of even the most simple organisms.
A forest of anchors the iron hot to the touch, sit like silent sentinels against incursions from the sea. Half buried in the soft white sand of the dunes they are a stark reminder of long ago battles, the thin shadows offering no reprieve from the baking sun.
Wreck shore, they called it, the wood long ago rotted away, the row of anchors the only reminder of battering storms, of life boats hurriedly lowered and of prayers uttered aloud to an unseen god, asking for a reprieve.
The harsh sun beat down upon the thin strip of beach, its sand white against the starkness of the yellow desert beyond. Sand against sand, separated by a black line of anchors. A broken sign lies half buried in the sand, the bits of paint barely holding on to the wood showing a picture of the skull to those who cared to look – the sign offering no reprieve to those who had made it that far.
Mozambican-born Portuguese South African; reflecting on travel, writing, editing, life, family and change that has social impact; chief wide eyed in wanderer, wonderer and bottlewasher
