I visit wharves and gaze out to sea.
It is a pleasure that took hold some ten years ago. I don’t know why, for I certainly had experience with oceans and coast long before that. For some things it seems its time just comes.
I prefer small working ports, gritty and smelling of fish and lobster and ocean. The scurry and comings and goings (though I also like them in the evening when most work is done). I walk the docking between the boats and peer from the end of the wharf. I ponder distant shores or endless sea and screaming gulls with sometimes seals and whales and archaic Blue Herons.
Last night, when I thought the wharf was my own, a man, woman, toddler and dog arrived. They seemed to do much as I was doing, though they knew the owner of one of the fishing boats. The man was gruffly talkative, the dog was rambunctious, the woman apologized for the toddler’s dirty face and the little girl didn’t quite know what to make of me. Friendly and chatty but she wouldn’t take my hand as I offered to walk her up a gangplank.
I left them on the docking between the moored boats and started to walk on the wharf itself. The fishing boats and the docking were parallel to the wharf. I was half way along when I heard a shout. I heard the dog. I looked over and this is where life becomes art becomes life. It was a Kodak moment. It was a Motorola moment. It was a ‘freeze frame/real time/fast forward’ moment. It was a composition/edited moment. It was all these things which came to my visual mind. All this and the knowledge that there was no way I could get there if I was needed.
The little girl was going for the gold. She had God in her feet and Angels in her streaming hair as she raced between the moored boats. Her dirty face was wide with excitement and it is probably the happiest she has been in her life. The man was restraining the dog and the woman was in athletic pursuit. They raced between the boats and the mooring lines and the tools of the fishing trade. The dock swayed in the movement of the waves. I could not believe the swiftness of the child. The woman finally took what seemed to me a runner’s stance and eventually grabbed the exuberant child. I heard, over the water, admonishments of what could happen if she had “gone under a boat.” All – of course – true.
But the dog understood.
Two or three days ago, I heard incessant chanting coming from children two houses down the hill.
Other than it was obvious repetition, I could not figure out that the words were. It took a day and a half for me to decipher the sing-song serenade:: “Get your ice cold lemonade here!” And they beefed up ‘here’ – they said ‘her-are”. Maybe that is what confused me.
This morning, for the first time, I actually saw some folk buying their lemonade. One fellow even crossed the street for it.
But then, in the early afternoon, a God-Awful crash came through my open window. The chanting stopped in mid sentence. And I experienced what I had actually never experienced before.
Dead silence.
It was so silent, it made an impression. There seemed to be neither bird nor wind in the trees nor cars passing. The silence stretched for long seconds. And then, a yell of anguish.
“What happened?
“How did that happen?”
“What happened?”
And I did not know what happened (nor do I) but my guess is that whatever glass bowl or container. (which I assume was reasonably large). ended up on the sidewalk. In many pieces, and awash in lemonade.
Within two minutes, two mothers were out there with brooms and rags. One of them went out into the street and yelled “No, it didn’t reach here.”
For about ten minutes there was sweeping and mopping and children picking up pieces and putting them (I assume) into some garbage container.
The mothers returned to their houses.
There has been no chanting since.
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