I ducked beneath the waves and enjoyed the day, and I even started ogling the beach girls who lay on the private beaches of their daddies' stilt-supported homes, gorgeous places built years ago on sand that had been, at the time, deeper and thicker around the stanchions, the receding sand levels revealed in the fading rings on the wood, year after year after year, dropping lower and lower as I kept walking along the beach.I ducked beneath the waves and enjoyed the day, and I even started ogling the beach girls who lay on the private beaches of their daddies' stilt-supported homes, gorgeous places built years ago on sand that had been, at the time, deeper and thicker around the stanchions, the receding sand levels revealed in the fading rings on the wood, year after year after year, dropping lower and lower as I kept walking along the beach. I wondered how long it would be until nature took the houses altogether, revealing the arrogance of their construction against the most unstoppable force in the world. They would collapse one day, in a storm, perhaps, under a gale of wind and a slam of prehistoric ocean; or possibly they would die gradually, finally giving way on the calmest of days, as daughters bared their rumps to the summer sun just yards away, and giggled as they gossiped. But the defeat and humiliation of the lovely and expensive old homes was coming, and anyone who looked closely could see it, too...The luxury and splendor and architectural ingenuity would be dashed to the ground for all world to see, an unstoppable and inevitable force reclaiming the fickle sand that the whole structure was based upon. Brute force always won out, even when it fought an architect's computer schematic that claimed the battle would be different this time..... My thoughts returned to the more immediate matters at hand, and as I walked closer to this next house, the last one for more than a mile, I saw several women in the distance, laying in the sun. |