Tag Archives: ocean

Upon Finding The Dragon’s Egg

24 Thursday May 2018

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I awoke abruptly, squintingly, because the sun peered in my bedroom window, an alarm my body cannot refuse. Strange sun, Jim Morrison said in his notebook poem, and I opened my door after I put clothes on (but not shoes because no one needs shoes to walk from the balcony to the cool beach sand that was not far away.)  Strange sun well-riz on my right also known as East, the train of cool blue dawn retreated into the distance, laughing gulls squeaked overhead and moved on instead of making their usual mocking laughter from the breakwater that sounds like children a mile away calling out for help because they are drowning.

I walk barefoot on a beach where I found seashells in all stages of their lives tossed on the shingle by an uncaring sea, but all those shells and emerald mermaid’s hair wafting in the tidal pools are gone.  The Army Corps of Engineers came and did one heck of a job building up this little spit of land that had been slowly reclaimed by the ocean one winter storm, one summer hurricane at a time and now my feet trod sand the size of peppercorns instead of soft, creamy quartsy silt I fell in love with, all those tidal pools gone.  I am grateful yet disoriented. Strange.

So this morning I woke and walked and found the dragon’s egg. Should come as no surprise to anyone because the system that came from the west moved in and brought us a week of rain and a night of high wind, fearsome wind too early for hurricane but made us reach for our batteries and bottled water anyway.  I plucked the egg from the sand poor thing blown from her nest, abandoned, knowing that’s the worst thing I could possibly do but when did I ever abide by the rules, and I held it in my hand wondering what could I possibly do?  And then the shell broke, the creamy satin shell broke open and spilled out venom all over my hand and it hurt like the sting of a bee that begins slowly and takes over your interstitial fluids and spreads out and swells because it really, really, does not want you to be offending it yet you have by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are paying for your transgression. I held the dragon’s egg, seeping fluids hurting so much, but my pride kept me from screaming so I ran down and into the cold, cold water and submerged me and the egg hoping the pain would ebb.  The silken shell stuck to my hand. The venom came forth like a ginger lady’s tresses, Rapunzel-like, then dissipated in the brine. The shell dissolved and my pain dissolved too as I panted hopping foot to foot hoping not to step on a skate just going about his business.

September 30, Morning

30 Saturday Sep 2017

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It’s always a gift waking an hour before sunrise.  Some mornings are rote and uninteresting, while others are a conscious running away from my bed because I cannot take another minute lying there in a void or in the presence of terrible dreams.  Waking at 2 in the morning is rarely a good thing.

I pulled on my leggings made of penguin skin, or so it seems, for it can keep out the hardest wind, the coldest morning. I pulled on flannel and a hoodie and made way for damp sand and a sun I knew wouldn’t be right where I left it.

The Corgi boys were tussling, cute piles of black and blonde fur, their dad sitting still nearby.   Crone was walking her three: Great Dane and two Vizsla.  One is pregnant and tired (or stubborn) so she leaves her Crone to come sit with me and scratch her back and her butt for a little while.  I offered to hold her leash while she walks the other two, but… she’s determined to keep her three-pack walking.  Otherwise, all eyes are on the east. We are waiting.

Well, maybe not the lobster boat (near) or the small cruise ship (far), and Mister Dante who sits on the patio, pale legs propped on a chair now because his heart surgery changed everything.  Crabs cleaned their burrows, no precipitation forecast for quite a while. There are no fishermen dancing with their nets this morning.

The sun rose not in an orb, gracefully clothed in magenta.  He was orange and fiery and misshapen through the clouds like mashed potatoes squeezed through toddler fingers. Why did I feel I needed to take my sweatshirt off, hot already? A trick of the mind.

Mister Determined has his luggage packed, and he canes his way slowly down the patio. His wife (nurse?) will be far behind, carrying the rest of their bags and they won’t be back for weeks.  I wonder, where do they go?  Meanwhile, I wonder if (or when) the cat across the way will forgive his person for letting her guest dump his orange hood on his windowsill.  Oh… she’ll pay all right.

September 29 morning

29 Friday Sep 2017

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Well, it happened again.  I stumbled into the kitchen to slurp down lukewarm water from a coffee mug on my sink, eyes half-glued shut. I pulled on whatever clothes I could find and headed down to the beach, sunglasses and a flannel shirt in place because the sun is bright and the breeze is stiff.  Interesting that the breeze is not chilling, it’s “warm” according to some.  It’s the same beach where I got pounded by three guys who don’t see anything the way I do last night, and yet we all agreed the giant, orange sun taking refuge behind that house at the end of the spit was really fucking cool.

This morning I stood on the empty beach watching the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship, heading down to Puerto Rico, post Maria, escorted by a destroyer whose name I do not know.  This morning I had cauldrons full of bullshit still boiling over from yesterday, or hell, last year. I had empty pots clanging from my belt loops making empty noise, but that one particular seagull really didn’t mind. He was busy scoping me out for danger or for food.

This morning I inspected the character of the beach, her new hill, post-Maria. I lament that I do not see many of my neighbors anymore, because. That’s all anyone needs to say is “because.” You don’t need to know why he stays home or she stays home now.

And it happened again, as I walked barefoot with brimming cauldron and empty pots clanging. I stopped moving. I became still and dumb and silent in body and mind because the waves mesmerize me.  Everything drops off,  the scales from my eyes, last night’s venting in person and to the silent four walls where I rehearse my protest speeches. It all drops off and blows away and I can’t do anything but stand there and listen and stare at the waves coming in and breathe the scent of clean ocean. Okay, and side-eye the gull because I know what he wants and I think he knows we’re at an impasse. Energy comes from somewhere out there and pushes the water in and it lifts up, foamy white heads that maintain, maintain, up, ope, starting to break down, down, break, a gentle crash and a retraction. Begin again. Again. I lose time because I get lost, and I cannot begin to speak my gratitude for it.

I like being held captive and silent by the waves, and all the things she does to me.

Amen.

Committing The Rare Feel-Good To The World

10 Sunday Sep 2017

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Writing, committing thought and wonder, questions and desire, hope, longing, confession and manifesto leaves one naked. You are naked when you write, and if you’re afraid to let the world see every lovely ugly, then the “enter” key should not be allowed. Hold fast your pen, keep your files hidden. Wait until you’re ready to slam it all down, unlock your door, let the stranger in to see you emerge from your bath, wet, bloody, home, and real.

I’m not writing so the stranger can rate me on some fixed scale like exhausted figure skaters or boxers who throw their fights walking away with millions.  I’m not writing for your approval or to raise eyebrows or cause trouble or to make history.  I am writing because, as a wise man said what seems so long ago, I can’t not write. It’s a driven and it’s a given that I will have pen juice on my fingers, that I stare long and lovingly at journals in the bookstore and have a hard time not buying binders and loose-leaf like some kind of kid going back to school. I love the smell of pen and ink and this laptop hardly creates the same kind of vibe, but that’s all right.

September has come and somebody turned the cicada’s song switch off: their voices are gone. The north wind brings a scent of flowers which I cannot explain. A hurricane comes and I am tired of figuring out which way to run. I colored my hair and bathed late, very late last night, and I wonder if my neighbors heard the water running.  My hair is clean and smooth and fragrant. I woke smelling its scent on my pillow feeling more content, happy, and pleased than I have in a long time. The moon is full and bright in my bedroom window again, which tells me what season we are in. I slept with the windows open beneath piles of covers so I can be warm and still hear the wind in the trees. I think your name and I can smile and write it in the sand, I can even allow you in my bed as I coax sleep once more, instead of fighting, fighting, fighting you, waking feeling like every little thing’s gonna be all right.

This morning’s beach is scoured clean by north/northeast winds, maybe 10 knots. Small, round rocks perfect for skimming peek out from the sand and I see no crab burrows.  A large, dead fish. It looks like something began to devour him and spat him back out, leaving his body on shore. Why?  A dead turtle, a kind I do not recognize, his small clawed limbs point southwest. I am sorry he died and hope it wasn’t because of plastic.  A black dog running wild on the beach that for some reason, no reason, for lack of anything I can explain, I do not trust him. Sea glass seems extinct since the beach restoration, but I found a little bit of blue and white ceramic that I put in my pocket.  On the final few feet back to my trail, I found a piece of shell the size of two fingers. She is deep blush-colored on the outside, and mother-of-pearl within, and she looks like how I feel when I hear his name.

I feel alive and well and ready to write. I feel grateful for everything that brought me here, what good, bad, strange, and otherwise. Time to commit the rest to paper and ink.

27 August Morning

27 Sunday Aug 2017

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4:30. The sun is coming. Crickets are loud. I lean on my balcony in a t-shirt, listening.

5:30. The sun is coming. Crickets are loud. My neighbor breaks open a soda can. Her cat inspects the windowsill. Time to make tracks.

5:45  The sun is present, though its magenta globe has not broken the horizon. Crickets do fade. Bladders and udders need care, reptilian sleep begins to break, active glands send erotic messages to fingertips.  The world is astir.

The wind is 12 knots. Gulls work hard to wing into northeast wind. The wind drives the sand across itself. If I turn out of the wind, my dull ears barely perceive the sound of sand upon sand and it sounds like sleet on a windshield, so very faint and magical.

Middling clouds make canvas for a star we have not seen yet to become rose, magenta, blue and slate. Some believe this is an unremarkable sunrise because we could not see the chariot’s wheel rise behind the CBBT.

No crab boats motoring. Crab two-packs are rare at the deli the year, and we have the ignorant fishers to thank, oh but plenty of shrimp.

No dolphins. Or secret dolphins. Only they know.

Mr. Corgi man hasn’t come out yet. Cell-phone sunrise takers are here, gooseflesh hinders their portraiting. Will they return tomorrow in layers?

Tiny whelk blows onto my finger. She never made it to teenager, mother, or crone. She sits in a place of honor, a shield of mother-of-pearl, stunted, benign, but not without a story.

Things I Won’t Get Used To

06 Sunday Aug 2017

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Yesterday was a perfect beach day, well for me, anyway. I’m the Goldilocks of being outdoors unlike some of my neighbors who are beach pros. For me, I like it not too hot, not too cold, and no wasps in sight makes it all just right.  The wind was high yesterday coming out of the north, northeast, kicking up high waves and blowing the heat far off the sand. The high, curling rollers kept the lifeguard’s skilled eyes busy.

It was a good day to sit on Samantha’s towel beneath the umbrella her husband held firmly down in the sand mound to keep it from blowing away, watching their son, a new beach pro, fling the world’s best toy with a simple yellow shovel.  She unfolded what was going on in their lives and what the future holds for them. Big changes for everyone, everywhere, it seems.

Change. Water, mirror, child, grass, sand. All subjects I study for a piece that I’m working on that touches on proof of time, but the subject of me still can’t get over some of the things she sees. She slowly adapts to change.  Change means I’ve had to get used to seeing guns worn on belts in public, and dealing with how I feel about that.  I’ve always believed that once you come to the beach and sit down, listen and watch in silence, you will never want to check your watch or social media. Something about the sand, the waves and the breeze, where we come to sit together or miles apart, makes us one somehow. You cannot be the same once the ocean puts her finger on you, but here was a man who wandered the shingle with a revolver on his waist. I cannot understand why.

The first gun I saw in public other than law enforcement was at the laundromat. Just a dude doing his laundry, Glock on hip. Ho hum? It’s not like we live in the elder wild west where anything goes, no sheriff in sight to lay down the law. Norfolk has its hands full, but our neighborhood is kind and stable, and the beach is certainly well patrolled.  The dude washing his laundry was exercising his 2nd amendment right, and I’ve slowly gotten used to it.  But the dude on the beach left me speechless. I wondered if the lifeguards are trained to deal with gun things? I mean, who could feel so insecure and afraid they need to carry a revolver on their hip on the beach? You hate seagulls that much? Or hate people who tease you for wearing white socks and Adidas flops with shorts and a cut off t-shirt, or maybe it was your bandanna you needed to defend? Why in the world, in all the places of the world, did you hang a revolver off your brown leather belt that belonged around a pair of Lee jeans instead of board shorts? What was going through your mind as you prowled the wet sand, staring off into the water like you were looking for some shark we needed to be defended from? I dunno. Maybe it was a drug thing, and I dislike typing that more than you know.

With some conversation and reflection, it appears that many people here on my beach are carrying where I hadn’t had a clue. They’re good, gotta give them credit. But my question remains: Why are you carrying a weapon to the beach? A place where we are all here for the same reason, feeling that same feeling?  There are children on this beach, and I’m not worried about you but I am worried about what seeing a revolver on a hip might mean to them as they grow up. Well, I guess since you’re permitted to carry concealed it won’t bother anyone. Maybe you believe you need to be prepared 24/7 for a personal affront, or you need to be prepared 24/7 in case a neighbor or fellow beach-goer is in dire need of protection before the cops can come?  Is this the world I live in? No. No. And no.

I watched a little guy pushing teeth through his gums laugh while mom held him as the ocean waves pushed and lifted him from behind. I watched a little girl lie on the sand in her floral print dress waiting for the waves to lick her ankles and tickle her feet.  I watched seagulls swoop down on a camp in search of food while the humans were away laughing in pummeling, frothy water. I think of my neighbors who live a quarter mile up the way where there are no lifeguards, and we tend to know each other’s dogs names better than our own.  I don’t want to get used to knowing that we are carrying guns openly or concealed because it makes me feel like we are all too afraid. Afraid of each other, afraid of the unknown. Don’t tell me it’s all about being prepared. There are no cougars or lions or packs of wild dogs coming for us down here on the beach.  What y ou call preparedness is what I call fear.

I believed there could be no fear here on the beach, before our mistresses of water and wind. I am not ready to relinquish that belief, and I believe I will never need to.

Finning, Press Secretary-style

22 Saturday Jul 2017

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I am awake and aware, moving steadily through my world. I was resting a little while ago. I do not need much rest. Now I saunter my body through seas in search of small, struggling things that fit in my mouth to satisfy the low ache inside. When it is satisfied, I glide and glide and glide, aimless. I have seen four turnings and the whales tell me all I need to do is glide and eat and sleep. They will tell me what to do when it is time. I believe them.

Something touches me, and I can no longer glide. I am rising though I did not choose to. I feel up though I feel it is too high, I should not be here for any reason.  I tumble into a place where I cannot breathe, a strange new world.  I’ve never felt this before, where is my water that pours into my gills that makes me everything?  I struggle, but not too much because I want to conserve my breathing.  And now I feel tugging things on my body here and there and there, and it feels like nothing I have ever felt, and I need a word for this feeling, and the whales tell me this is what it means to hurt.  I am hurt, falling, it seems. I am hurting.  I am. I want to breathe. And soon I do when I am reunited with my world. Water crosses my gills limply as I drift down.  I know my swimming tools are gone. I breathe in a stultifying way, but it is not my living way.

I am drifting down because my swimming tools are gone, and I ache. My back and my flanks and my far end hurt, dear, sweet parts of me I can no longer touch and will not reply no matter how much I reach out to them.  I am drifting down.  I suppose this is okay because we can’t all survive as the whales tell me.

As I drift down into the cold, dark water, colder and darker than where I should be, I recall everything the whales said to me. I paid them little mind, believing their antics were pretentious and showboating, but I heard some of what they needed to say. Once our world was near silent. All anyone could hear was the turnings of fisheries, the struggles of female sharks trying to get away from the males, happy breachings, puffers making nests to entice a mate, anarchist octopus thinking a little too loud. The whales told me the new noises came and they learned their ways, suffered slaughters of generations, but they also told me that they met gentle hands whose hearts beat true, hearts that held no lies.

As I drift down into the cold, dark water unable to swim because my swim tools are gone, I feel tired.  I am ready to rest because it’s been a long day, and that’s all right. I am glad I lived a little life, sultry and honest, loving the deepest blue, as I drift wondering who would hurt me so, but I’d still rather berth in the unknown than come before my people and lie and lie and lie to them. I hope the whales will remember me to you.

Awake

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Sleepless means I slept in your bed, eventually, studying the cottage paint pale in the moonlight until I could finally rest. I listened to trucks and cars and motorcycles traveling a dark road at a strange hour of the night.  They know who they are and where they’re going, but it’s all just invisible sounds to a woman trying to stop her mind from thinking and find her way into anesthetic sleep after a long, good day. I touched your arm.

I started writing something in my head that night, something about my other bed where blunt leaves nod and toss not so far from my window in the wind, a bed that squeaks horrendously if I move my head or blink or think. I began writing a little thing comparing nights and beds and trees and leaves but I didn’t get up to write it down, naturally.  I forgot everything.

Sleepless means I’m up at all hours, I sleep at strange hours, I write and walk and eat and drive at strange hours, not avoiding people necessarily, but it happens and I like it.

I’m awake when you’re getting home from a long night out. I see you in uniform heading out for the day. I see you come home to greet your cat on the windowsill, or sliding in and putting on the tube, a movie that emanates from your window, some kind of drama with raised voices that calls me to come and make sure everything’s all right.  Sleepless means I heard your fireworks at 10:30 but didn’t look out the window to see; I was reading, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

Sleepless means I can tell the time and weather by the sky as I lay prone looking out my bedroom window, heartburn burning, and this morning the birds were full up and at ’em.  I pulled on leggings and went outside, felt the air and realized I’d need a warmer shirt so I pulled on the flannel I keep hanging on my chair and took a walk, barefoot, braving the woodshavings and other ridiculous stuff that accumulates on the balcony.  The sand was comfortably cool.  I picked up plastic bags and threw them away, wondering how anyone could still be using these things.  The sun was still below the rim of the teacup but you can tell where he will rise by the intensity of the light.  Dogs on leashes because they are naughty, dogs running free because they obey.  Neighbors avoid neighbors because it’s a hallowed time, this silent, molten rising.

Sleepless means I pulled on clothes and dragged my phone down to the ocean in case I saw something. I tried to capture the waves breaking behind the breakwaters, for the wind is north, northwest again.  The water and air seem to be the same temperature in my lungs and on my feet, but the wave breaks in my eyes are not the same as what my camera sees. That’s all right. I will wander back to my cave and think about things.

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May 22

22 Monday May 2017

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Yesterday’s morning bed looked a hot mess, all but the mattress pulled down onto the floor. Could’ve been hot sex or could’ve been another sleepless night, too hot in a t-shirt and a stuffy room.  I’ll leave it to you to decide which one was more likely.

This morning’s bed I left early, 4:30, awakened by voices outside, young men either headed to the gym or early call to work.   I knew there was no going back to any kind of rest or sleep, so I pulled on yesterday’s clothes and ventured outside.  The finches are strenuous early, morning doves and gulls silent. It’s a farther walk to where I can hear the water but it never quite drowns out the sound of birds singing in the dark.

I sat in the damp sand, water black but for little white wave crests that break just before the shore, that moment when they’re good and ready.  Sunrise in 48 minutes. I doubt I will be able to sit still that long.  A small container ship creeps across the bay, barely silhouetted by the town lights. Hampton bridge is busy, as always. I will not see the lights go out this morning.  Town lights behind me make the night sky glow pink and blue in the clouds.

Two buoys appear in the bay, inky things in the dark, but they are orange in daylight. My eyes say they weren’t there a minute ago, but of course they were.  When will the dolphins return?  I can see bird silhouettes flying now.  They weren’t there a minute ago, but of course they were.  Sunrise in 20 minutes.  I doubt I will be able to sit still that long.

Mostly I just breathe. I focus on the scent that arrives in me. There is a faint chemical smell in the air with a tint of the seaweed clumps that arrived during those hours I could not sleep.   I smooth the sand down that lies before my crossed knees but no words come. It’s just damp, cool sand with a side order of things I should not be thinking.  But why shouldn’t I? What better place to let the words come and then go in a place where there are no dogs yipping, the rain has not yet begun to fall?

I leave before the sun rises in a sky ready for rain. I need no proof the hours moved by seeing a glowing orb.  I take with me a different kind of beauty, when the eyes adjust to dim light and can see what wasn’t there but a moment ago.

 

Man v Wave

20 Saturday May 2017

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Virginia got a federal grant to renew some of its beaches that have eroded over the years.  Funny thing, that ocean, how it hurricanes and nor’easters now and then, changing the landscape at will.  Some of my neighbors grumbled that the money could have been better spent, while most of us believe this project is important to protect our homes from worse-than-usual flooding.  I had no idea the huge change we were in for.

I took pictures of the process, and it’s not much to see but a lot of earth moving equipment, large pipes, and a “cage” that strained the water and sand-from-elsewhere for large debris before it was tamped down.  The Army Corps of Engineers worked 24/7 for weeks to complete the project.  They were a nice bunch of people, very forthcoming with information, always said hello or waved as we went by.  (Perhaps they knew that not everyone was happy that the excavator was shaking peoples homes in the middle of the night.)  20170513_040738.jpg

A few days ago I wandered out and the beach had a strange smell, a chemical smell, very faint, one that I could not identify but it sure wasn’t the scent of organic matter drying in the sun as we are used to.  This is a rock I found in situ. Not very exciting, but I thought it looked cool as hell in the newborn (and strange-smelling) mud of this beach.20170518_093212

I found this guy and tossed him back out into the ocean.20170518_093330

This morning I got up after sunrise and walked down to the beach. All the pipes and equipment is gone. All that remains are a few excavator tracks, and the youngsters footsteps as they partied late into the night.   It looks nothing like the way I found it on my first afternoon as the new kid on the Spit.  I’m so glad I took pictures and video to record those gentle dunes carved by time.

The sandbars are gone. Those were happy havens for mothers who wanted to share a beach day with their toddlers:  The sand was a perfect toy in just the right depth of water.  Seagulls and flounder hunted and left their delicate tracks. Sea skates got stranded there.  I wrote precious words on those damp lands at low tide. My feet tracked in stubborn bits of clam shell the size of a pencil point that stuck to my toes.  The water made music as it trickled in and converged between the breakwaters, rock “hedges” that were meant to keep out the most fearsome waves.  The beach is wet cappuccino now.  The weathered ivory sand grains and tiny pebbles destined to become grains are covered in a damp silt now. The neighbors seem to love that it feels smoother to walk on.  I hear that it will bleach under the sun and we’ll like it even more.  That remains to be seen.  The waterline is 100 extra feet away but that’s not what I’m thinking about today.

Capture the details. Memorize the curves, the scent, the grit between your toes because tomorrow it will look like cappuccino mud.   Yeah, the birds will eat and the dolphins will come back eventually. The incoming tide will make a new kind of music.   The sandbars might return with the next hurricane, who knows?  It’s all just proof that few things will be right there where you left it, and to treasure the time that is given.