Did you make it to the beach?
Hells no, in the middle of December when it's 20 below?!
(anybody remember who said this?)
(or this:)
That's what she planned, but she stood me up, Roxanne Roxanne.
Well I ran past Jersey fisherman hosing off their catch as the sun descended, under a bridge on a cement dense with seagull shit, across the tracks to the good side of town with the big houses, and finally I saw the landscape clear and the great grey sky opened up and the salty air hit my nose and there could be no mistaking what this clearing in the distance was, something beyond human. At last, at last, something beyond the mad human scurry, immense and indifferent, and when I finally sprinted the last two blocks and made it onto the sand it was dark and the beach was deserted and I was singing Johnny Cash (I'm going to get some sand in my shoes) and I had to focus on the crooked old man marching away from the sea, and away from me in fear, because to look at something so great as the sea at night is hardly possible.
I examined a dead stingray and looked for the part that killed the Crocodile Hunter. I stared into the small waves and tried to remember the circumstances that led the heroine of Kate Chopin's The Awakening to walk into the sea, but I drew a blank and dreamed for a minute about being in a place where I could read books like that and talk to people about them, then headed back to the street and passed a Mexican in a huge parka going to fish for his dinner.
In the gym across the street I pretended to be moving to town and was there a free trial membership but the lesbian gently said no. In the 7-11 next door I stared at a Life magazine's 1982 photograph of a father hugging his son dying of AIDS, while a local woman told a man she hadn't seen in awhile that her father had just died. "That's life," she said, "I'm just glad he's not in pain anymore." She did seem glad, and when a cell phone call came in she laughed lightly and said, "I'll see you at the funeral."
I worked my way back home, following the Shark River inland for two miles to my friend's house. It was hard to tell which way the water, coruscant under the dock lights, was heading, but it seemed the tide was bringing it in.
Something like this occurred to me:
The human noises trying so hard,
The soft rumble of the train,
The endless soughing of traffic,
The arch of road over the Shark River,
For a few seconds at least let us see
That what stays is the smell of the salt air,
The squawk of the gulls,
That idiot cars will one day fade,
but never the mystery of shimmering water.
(anybody remember who said this?)
(or this:)
That's what she planned, but she stood me up, Roxanne Roxanne.
Well I ran past Jersey fisherman hosing off their catch as the sun descended, under a bridge on a cement dense with seagull shit, across the tracks to the good side of town with the big houses, and finally I saw the landscape clear and the great grey sky opened up and the salty air hit my nose and there could be no mistaking what this clearing in the distance was, something beyond human. At last, at last, something beyond the mad human scurry, immense and indifferent, and when I finally sprinted the last two blocks and made it onto the sand it was dark and the beach was deserted and I was singing Johnny Cash (I'm going to get some sand in my shoes) and I had to focus on the crooked old man marching away from the sea, and away from me in fear, because to look at something so great as the sea at night is hardly possible.
I examined a dead stingray and looked for the part that killed the Crocodile Hunter. I stared into the small waves and tried to remember the circumstances that led the heroine of Kate Chopin's The Awakening to walk into the sea, but I drew a blank and dreamed for a minute about being in a place where I could read books like that and talk to people about them, then headed back to the street and passed a Mexican in a huge parka going to fish for his dinner.
In the gym across the street I pretended to be moving to town and was there a free trial membership but the lesbian gently said no. In the 7-11 next door I stared at a Life magazine's 1982 photograph of a father hugging his son dying of AIDS, while a local woman told a man she hadn't seen in awhile that her father had just died. "That's life," she said, "I'm just glad he's not in pain anymore." She did seem glad, and when a cell phone call came in she laughed lightly and said, "I'll see you at the funeral."
I worked my way back home, following the Shark River inland for two miles to my friend's house. It was hard to tell which way the water, coruscant under the dock lights, was heading, but it seemed the tide was bringing it in.
Something like this occurred to me:
The human noises trying so hard,
The soft rumble of the train,
The endless soughing of traffic,
The arch of road over the Shark River,
For a few seconds at least let us see
That what stays is the smell of the salt air,
The squawk of the gulls,
That idiot cars will one day fade,
but never the mystery of shimmering water.
posted by Thon at 8:54 PM
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