Fighting the Tide - a reading (on YouTube)
There are forces in this life we cannot resist, though we feel compelled to try. Some days, it’s as though an ancient, unseen god wants to show me things I don’t want to see, take me places I don’t want to go. Events turn unexpected and unpredictable. Lightning, tornadoes, threatened furloughs, benefit cuts, utility breakdowns, oak pollen, borderline migraines. Entropy in a word. A tide of distractions rises, threatening to sweep me out to sea.
When I was young, somewhere under ten, I went to the beach one weekend with my parents and their friends. I don’t remember much about how the day started out, only how it ended. It could have been spring or fall. I honestly don’t remember. Rafts of seaweed and sargasso were strewn along the tideline. Storms churning somewhere offshore had whipped up the gray Atlantic. The waves were four to six feet and choppy, breaking full force right upon the shore. The wind was stiff and steady, the water chill and white with foam. Everyone opted for the shelter of the pavilions in the lee behind the Australian pines. Everyone but me.
I started the day building sandcastles, as I was often wont to do. One by one, half completed, they fell to the advancing tide. Annoyed, I started building a longer, sturdier line to defend against the sea. I scavenged seaweed as filler instead of dredging deeper into the sand. I found the sargasso added strength to the barrier I was constructing. With each course of damp sand, I layered in more seaweed until the barricade was high enough for me to fully crouch behind. Finally, a rampart with a shallow moat and refused edges stood before Poseidon like a provocation.
The wind whipped the surf into a reenactment of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice." Dark clouds loomed over the ocean. Lightning sliced across the sky. As the rain slanted sideways, I huddled behind my open-sided shelter, which kept the spray out of my face and eyes. The tide advanced steadily, driven higher by the storm. Soon, waves were crashing into the moat, then onto the front facing of my wall. The sargasso lent the structure the integrity to take the pounding, which meant I could enact hasty repairs before my battlement melted back into the sea. Its flanks resisted being undermined even as the waves began to wrap around the refused edges. My wall seemed indestructible. Behind it, I felt invincible. I was so emboldened that I began to taunt the storm and sea.
By the time my parents came looking for me, the storm had slackened. It was time to abandon the beach for the safety of our home. The lightning had passed inland and the rain had abated to a steady shower, though with the threat of more to come. The tide had retreated leaving my wall standing and intact, only slightly weathered for its encounter. My parents thought I’d sheltered in another pavilion. Had I spent the entire storm out here exposed on the beach? Didn’t I know to come in from of the rain?
These days, I have no taunts left in me. My life feels like the flotsam and jetsam tossed up from Poseidon’s angry sea. When each crisis ends, I am reminded of my mortality. I can sense the time that’s been washed away, the sand that’s slipped through the hourglass and drained beyond the shore. I wish I could reclaim the days I’ve lost in some sort of time renourishment project. But know that I can’t.
If I’m not careful, my feet get mired in a sandy past as the water swirls around them, each wave sinking them deeper until it takes the strength of a colossus just to break them free. Once I get unstuck, I backfill as much enjoyment as possible into my life by doing the things I long to do, and seeing the people I love to see. Games, puzzles, movies, books, art shows and explorations, coffees, wines and dinners. I purposefully layer the positive memories with everyday sand to reinforce the bulwark behind which I’ll shelter when I turn to fight the rising tide again one day all too soon.
When I was young, somewhere under ten, I went to the beach one weekend with my parents and their friends. I don’t remember much about how the day started out, only how it ended. It could have been spring or fall. I honestly don’t remember. Rafts of seaweed and sargasso were strewn along the tideline. Storms churning somewhere offshore had whipped up the gray Atlantic. The waves were four to six feet and choppy, breaking full force right upon the shore. The wind was stiff and steady, the water chill and white with foam. Everyone opted for the shelter of the pavilions in the lee behind the Australian pines. Everyone but me.
I started the day building sandcastles, as I was often wont to do. One by one, half completed, they fell to the advancing tide. Annoyed, I started building a longer, sturdier line to defend against the sea. I scavenged seaweed as filler instead of dredging deeper into the sand. I found the sargasso added strength to the barrier I was constructing. With each course of damp sand, I layered in more seaweed until the barricade was high enough for me to fully crouch behind. Finally, a rampart with a shallow moat and refused edges stood before Poseidon like a provocation.
The wind whipped the surf into a reenactment of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice." Dark clouds loomed over the ocean. Lightning sliced across the sky. As the rain slanted sideways, I huddled behind my open-sided shelter, which kept the spray out of my face and eyes. The tide advanced steadily, driven higher by the storm. Soon, waves were crashing into the moat, then onto the front facing of my wall. The sargasso lent the structure the integrity to take the pounding, which meant I could enact hasty repairs before my battlement melted back into the sea. Its flanks resisted being undermined even as the waves began to wrap around the refused edges. My wall seemed indestructible. Behind it, I felt invincible. I was so emboldened that I began to taunt the storm and sea.
By the time my parents came looking for me, the storm had slackened. It was time to abandon the beach for the safety of our home. The lightning had passed inland and the rain had abated to a steady shower, though with the threat of more to come. The tide had retreated leaving my wall standing and intact, only slightly weathered for its encounter. My parents thought I’d sheltered in another pavilion. Had I spent the entire storm out here exposed on the beach? Didn’t I know to come in from of the rain?
These days, I have no taunts left in me. My life feels like the flotsam and jetsam tossed up from Poseidon’s angry sea. When each crisis ends, I am reminded of my mortality. I can sense the time that’s been washed away, the sand that’s slipped through the hourglass and drained beyond the shore. I wish I could reclaim the days I’ve lost in some sort of time renourishment project. But know that I can’t.
If I’m not careful, my feet get mired in a sandy past as the water swirls around them, each wave sinking them deeper until it takes the strength of a colossus just to break them free. Once I get unstuck, I backfill as much enjoyment as possible into my life by doing the things I long to do, and seeing the people I love to see. Games, puzzles, movies, books, art shows and explorations, coffees, wines and dinners. I purposefully layer the positive memories with everyday sand to reinforce the bulwark behind which I’ll shelter when I turn to fight the rising tide again one day all too soon.
© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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To paraphrase something my sister said recently: If you want to hear the gods laugh, tell them your plans. There is an ancient truth in that statement.
This was my first lesson in materials engineering. "Refused" in this sense is a military term that means "to bend or curve back (the flank units of a military force) so that they face generally to the flank rather than the front."
Until recently, I still didn’t have the sense to come in from the rain. In 1992, I listened from the doorway as a tornado rolled through the park right behind the house. I could tell from the sound that we were safe. Unlike during the latest round of storms in Pinellas. The rain slanting at 60 degrees from the south, then the north, then the west all within less than a minute almost had me scrambling for the cats and a closet. Perhaps I’ve learned something over the intervening time.
Or perhaps just I’ve started to disregard my father’s favorite piece of advice from when I was young. "Kid, why don’t you go out and play in traffic."
Picture notes:
ReplyDeleteKaren took a picture of a storm over the Atlantic last April when she was working at Kennedy Space Center, just a few miles north of where this essay was set on Cocoa Beach. Karen just darkened it up a bit and added the lightning. PhotoShop is a wonderful tool.