TO FETCH A PAIL

Here’s a little piece I wrote a little while back, when I arrived up north, and never got around to posting.  Very short summer reading.

TO FETCH A PAIL

Time, sunshine, opportunity – and life, really.  It all seems wasted on me.  I’m here on a beautiful beach, facing the western sun as it splashes itself over the lake and the sand and the other people here on this mid-July day.  Four in the water, six on the small beige stretch – including me.  Other folks may be just finishing their workday here, or in the city.  I shouldn’t have a care in the world, but I’m alternately pissed off or weepy.  Even the toddler running back and forth shouting “I’m gonna getcha” as he chases his parents, doesn’t cheer me up; or the cheer is fleeting.

What is it with me?  Come on, wind.  Blow the smell offa me. Blow me back, back, and back some more to a place in my soul that can breathe.  The sun is hot when the wind dies; the lapping water calls me then.  Come in. come in. Forget your miserable life and feel something real.  I just stare into space.

And then, suddenly, I’m aware they’re all packing up to leave, and it’s just empty beach; quiet; soothing; waves rocking.  I sit, like the abandoned metal pail a few feet from me.  It waits; I wait.  For someone to fill me; to carry me; to carry for them; I wait to be lifted; I wait to swing with movement; to shape a castle; to inspire play.

I finally get up and go to my car. I know from life that waiting for anything or anyone is a waste of time, that i must be my own activator.  I get my bottle of water, my fifty-cent samosa from the city, and my bathing suit.  As usual, I’m motivated by food.  On the way back, I pick up the metal pail, and place it on the sand beside my chair.  I put the water bottle in.  Champagne and hors d’oeuvres lakeside.

the knots of life

Looking inward is dangerous sometimes

Some people are walking on the road behind me, clapping, hooting.  If they’re trying to get my attention, they’re failing – other than having themselves immortalized in words.   I won’t look at them.  They pass, as all things must.  And meanwhile, in front of me, the waves pass.  I watch, and wonder where the thoughts that I brought here are.  I imagine their floating out from my head when I first arrived, and then being carried off by the water far away – perhaps to the next town by this time.  It gives me satisfaction to think that people by some other shore have my problems now.

Around the world they go.  And myself, like an ancient ancestor, wishing them godspeed.

There was a huge dark cloud a few minutes ago, blocking the sun.  That too has passed, and now – hot samosa inside, hot sun out – I’m feelin’ hot, and pressured by my brain urging me to go on! Be spontaneous! (spontaneously contrary to my own lethargy, at least).  Do something today.  Change the channel.

Here comes a speeding boat – silver dart; black silhouette; fading buzz of the motor carried away on the wind and overtaken by the sound of a car stopping on the road.  Voices get closer to me, and then the two of them come into sight as they walk, mother and daughter, circling a small area, searching.  My hand drops over the side of my chair, protectively hovering over the metal pail.  “Did you lose something?” I ask, standing up.  I play with my bathing suit, as if I was going to put it on.  “Her shoes.  Pink crocs,” said the mother.  “Haven’t seen them,” I say, “and I’ve been here for over an hour.”  They leave.  “Maybe some of your friends took them for you,” mom says to her dejected child.  A metal pail wouldn’t make her happy, I think.

 And then, honestly, I can’t explain.  One minute I’m watching them walk away, and the next, my nose is skimming stones and I’m watching the waves’ shadows on the lake’s bottom.  And I’m pushing my way to the surface, and backstroking along the shoreline, watching the tall pines of “Tall Pines Road” against the white clouds and blue sky.  The universal solvent dissolves; resolves.

I lie face down on my towel, and let the sun dry me, panting a little and letting my shoulders sink into the sand.  Those problems must be well on into the southern lakes by now.

Go on, fly, little birds