And now, some 8 years later when I think, the somewhat odd picture of me standing there - defined many other things which make up my existence - since then, even when we are more than 3500 kilometres apart, I have always felt that now a parallel existence now runs alongside mine, and the song of my life has now a double set to it: richer and more harmonious in its duet.

Looking back, me standing there at the beach with the sun behind me, and you, some 10 feet in front me, welcoming, afraid, shy, curious - cast forever in stark relief my realisation of our relationship, which is much like that between domestic animal and wild animal. Chickens, pigs, sheeps are respectable animals, in the sense that they repay in kind the care and food we offer them, in return recompense us for our love; domestic animals derive their existence in relation to the society and community, and such is the civilised man and he is respectable. But the wild animal is different: the giraffe upon the Serengeti, the swallow flitting in the sky carelessly - they derive their existence from no one but themselves, and are held in direct relation to the Creative force, and are one step closer to the Creator; such is your state my dear friends. One cannot help when seeing a flock of wild geese sweep in undulating flight across the darkening sky, but feel the trace of the Creator's finger across the sky.

As I sit here, at 115am, wondering what you would be doing now - sitting in your darkening coral houses, the light bulbs dimmed by the hum of the overworked and unreliable generator - I hope you keep faith, with that strange freedom in your hearts, on an island in the middle of an unrelenting emerald turning deep purple with the advent night. And even now, I feel a strange closeness to you, as if a wild line is drawn across our intervening distance - burned into my memory that I might, like generations of elephants, find my way back home to you: along the trace of the Immortal finger.

Thinking of you - I lose a bit of my respectability. And take a step closer.

I sleep now. And give myself to the wildness which I hope - will take my dreams.