Changi nights

On the way home from a night out at the flats, I taste the salt at the back of my hand. I don’t know if the brine comes from my own pores or the precipitated breath of the South China Sea, but it feels sickly sweet, like faint memories of a distant pleasure in deep time.

 

In the dark, there is little to distract save the pounding drone of descending jets. The grass gives away to tight, compacted sand. There are holes bored on the beach by burrowers unknown. Lining the shore are the discards of day trippers and sailor goons – death cloaks of supermarket polypropylene, long lost lures, a wine bottle and countless receptacles of convenient foods.

The trash of men is built to last, a curious anomaly in markets where planned obsolescence propels innovation in marketing and never-ending cravings of credit-fuelled aspirations. Nature's inferior offerings to the high water mark are in contrast fleeting. An upturned jellyfish on the shallow sand pulsates with fearsome hope. The cool air of the night may sustain its suffering til the waters return, but should the polyp perish, there is little mourn in the feast that its disintegrating cnida provide to the inter-tidal denizens.

We dismiss the stars above, ablaze in distant fury, for the asteroids that lurk with uncanny abundance amidst the litter of algae and bed of seagrass. Astropecten sand stars bulldoze their way through the fronds with unseemly haste; the tips of their spine-rimmed arms are raised with a hint of indomitable intent. Their cousins the biscuit stars (Goniodiscaster scaber) are much less flighty, with stubby limbs and a tubercled surface that might have come from a child's cookie cutter. In the confines of a pool built around a wall of weed, a brittlestar scurries at a lanky pace, scattering tiny shrimp and amphipods who burst off with fleaspeed.

Just discernible in the torchlit grey, a beche-de-mer (Holothuria scabra) bares its body, sifting through the grains in its night shift of clean-up duty. Gaudier cousins bedecked with thorns and spines lie sullenly on exposed mounds of green. I scooped up a languishing Colochirus quadrangularis and deposited it in a clear depression. The business end revealed a bloom of vermillion tentacles with bushy frills that strain savoury particles from the gentle current.

My blind eyes missed a horde of other holothuria as well as the peculiar pink pencil urchin. There was no chance, however, of escaping the marauding gangs of white Salmacis urchins that dotted the flats. Every echinoid brandished a soft bling of seagarb, from brown strands of Halophila to motley headgear of in-your-face Ulva. But it's all posture and pose as these pale practitioners of self decor mow the surface in shy modulations.

Gong gong conches (Laevistrombus canarium) were fairly plentiful, gliding on sticky feet guided by stalked eyes. More voracious prowlers with smoother hides are the predatory snails that seek living nourishment. Sea pencils with thin stems are common here, and their narrow colonies sustain inch-long Armina nudibranchs. In convict gown and powder blue hoods, these slugs are in season on this shore of surprises. Another unexpected find was a lined moon snail (Natica lineata) with racing stripes. Empty button shells on the sand lie as evidence of lunaric hunger.

The crabs of Changi come in many shapes and shades, from flat flowers to spidery pears. I have little taste for brachyurans, unless they be unspiced and sour in mood at being cornered for a mugshot. This week also marks the end of one crabby chapter many moons in the making. Few may comprehend the meaning of such lonely endeavours, but  may the closure of this weary opus be drowned by a celebration of tangy hops and malted barley. I need a respite too, from days wrecked by swells of bittersweet that surpass the waves of a blistering sea. Beyond that, there is no horizon in sight, and I see nothing but a sky clouded with care and yearn for a bliss long-gone.