beach

why are we here?

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

 
In the parking lot at the beach, I mean.
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Because there are never no cars here.

But not everyone gets out, not everyone walks, not even along the pier. Most people don’t, in fact. They choose, instead, to sit in their cars. Most are alone, some eat, some read, others might be listening to music. (Surprisingly few appear to being staring at devices.) I suppose some talk, on the phone, to themselves. There’s a kind of unwritten code that you don’t look at someone in their car, that they’re here not to be seen, but for some other purpose, something private, if only to contemplate the universe in the shape of a seagull.
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I try to follow the code but notice the man to my left smiles as he stares out his window. It’s a grey day, nowhere near sunrise or sunset and I wonder what he’s watching, thinking.
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I wonder why he’s in this parking lot at almost noon on a Sunday. Is he a widower, a bachelor, recently tiffed and needing to get out of the house to cool off or is there a happy partner at home glazing a ham?

An Asian man walks past toward the pier. Grey hair, slightly stooped; something about the way he grimaces against an only slight and not very cold breeze, pleasure mixed with something else, reminds me of my dad who was at no time Asian.

But then our looks are always the least of things, and yet…

Maybe it’s this: maybe we’re simply here to watch each other, to catch a glimpse of something that’s real, to be reminded.

 

gone fishin’

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Please don’t tell me this season of light isn’t filled with magic…

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How else to explain finding a perfect piece of beach glass in the dark?
♦

The very best to all for love, laughter, and time to breathe…

See you in the new year.

this sky at night, my own delight

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

 

There is evidence of activity at the shoreline—

Someone has shuffled about in the sand, skipping stones maybe, or staring at the horizon, cloud formations, a sailboat…
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It’s almost as though someone else has been here.

But no. It feels too private, this place where I walk.

Except for the litter, the footprints, a name drawn with a stick, except for all that, surely I’m the only one ever to have been here.
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Right now, that view, this red sky that delights me (possibly because I was a sailor in another life, a pirate according to a woman claiming to know such things; but I don’t like sailing, I explained. Ah, she said, that’s likely because I went down with my ship.)

—this sky

is mine.
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And no one—not pirates nor stone skippers—has ever seen it exactly like this.

 

sunday worship

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

The beach of course.
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I read somewhere that as little as 20 minutes of morning sunshine (somehow different than afternoon) boosts metabolism into magnificence. I’m not here for metabolism boosting but these little bonuses never hurt.
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There is a lad in an orange worker’s vest with its fluorescent X, he’s picking up litter. On a Sunday morning. This, I think, is noble work and I want to tell him so. I start with Good Morning as I pass and he, without looking up, without making eye contact, mumbles most miserably: morning. He keeps walking and I do too and the whole idea of nobility has gone right out the window. I’m not sure he’d understand my meaning anyhow, might even think it was a negative.

**

The lake today is a cliché.

Cool and perfect and I want to swim out to a pair of resting gulls.
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But I collect glass instead. Only the tiniest bits of green. And then I sit on a picnic table and the picture I snap makes it look as if I have a fox’s tail. I take this as an excellent sign. As well as a compliment.
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An old hippie with toned down Roger Daltry hair, a tan and tie-dyed tee-shirt walking a baby bulldog. The dog stops, rolls onto his back among the lake lap and pebbles, stands and shakes himself off. The old hippie doesn’t rush him.
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And then a dad and a very young child, maybe three or four. The child in navy pants and a grey and blue striped top, possibly meant to advertise that it’s a boy. His dad on the phone, seemingly unsure of how to have childish fun; he eyes a pretty woman in leggings walking past. Now he skips stones with a vengeance and looks to see who’s watching and when the child picks up a stone and throws it, the dad doesn’t watch. Soon the child no longer watches the dad, but walks away instead. I’d like to think this is a lesson in independence, in not caring if anyone’s watching, but I strongly suspect this isn’t what the boy is learning. Eventually the dad realizes the boy is gone and goes after him, shouting, checking his phone, then he spits as if to assert himself in the absence of stones to throw. They walk away from the lake, metres apart. The child is sullen and the dad asks loudly what he wants, accusing, angry—does he want to go home??
The child doesn’t answer, keeps walking.

Remember, he is three, maybe four.

And I want to answer for him:

how about some warmth? some engagement? a sliver of joy in the pleasure of this day, in your kid’s company… how about just holding his tiny hand…DSC01293 - Copy

a day at the beach

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

 
Anne Morrow Lindbergh says the beach is not the place to work or read or even think. I’d gladly argue with her but for the fact that she adds something like ‘initially’, as in first you need to find the rhythm of things, of yourself, the words you take in or mull over or put out.

I notice how right she is when I arrive and set down my bag containing water, lunch, notebook, pen, reading glasses, hat, camera, and before unpacking it all… just sit for a while. I’m hungry. I want to eat and read and make notes, take photos but all that To Do can wait. To reach into that bag too soon defeats the purpose of being here.

Instinct says sit. And just breathe.
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It’s not difficult.

There is the sky.
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And two women, both in red and white striped tee shirts; one is elderly, the other in her forties maybe, a daughter? They’re collecting something as they walk, reaching down every few moments and picking things up. Beach glass? Are they scooping up ALL the beach glass before I can get any?? I panic a little at the thought and consider racing out in front of them. It occurs to me that in all the hundreds and thousands of times I’ve been here I’ve never once noticed anyone else collecting beach glass. People skip stones and there’s the guy who has a metal detector who showed me the old silver Tiffany locket he found. People carve initials into picnic tables and have BBQs and recently I saw a margarine container filled with really beautiful glass that someone left behind in the playground… but I’ve never seen anyone do the actual collecting.

The red and white stripes are so far along by now that to rush ahead of them would be a spectacle, not to mention tiring in the heat. I decide to let it go, that whatever glass they find is meant for them. I’ll find my own. There’s always more…

Just then two more women, up on the boardwalk this time, an elderly one in a wheelchair and another, younger, pushing. The younger smiles, maybe thinking how lovely this choice of venue but the one being pushed looks sad and I wonder if this is, in fact, the worst possible venue because it reminds her of all those days and years when she was able to walk barefoot in the water… and then I think: with some things, there’s not always more.
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Long before I open my bag for lunch company arrives.
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We watch each other a while.
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Then back to people. The guy on the jet-ski demanding attention, thundering about the lake doing doughnuts who zooms close to shore, stops, bobs on the water for fifteen minutes… checking his phone… perhaps firing off a few tweets about the thrills and chills of solitary circles at top speed.

Two boys and a girl named Lily settle down a few feet away and begin digging among the tiny stones at the edge of the water… for beach glass. They shriek when then find some and one of them walks right in front of me and smiles and I smile back but at the same time I send a strongly worded telepathic message that he not even think about digging on my turf. And he doesn’t. Never under-estimate the power of the mind.
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Lily soon gets bored and leaves and the boys follow.

The bird has also moved on.

I consider having lunch but on the pier a teenaged boy in plaid shirt and work boots, picks up a teenaged girl in a brightly coloured muu-muu, and pretends he’s about to throw her into the lake. She laughs and then they walk along the shore not holding hands.

And then another couple follows a few minutes later, like a fast forward of fifty years.
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Only eventually… very very eventually… do I reach for my sandwich and my book…
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a gift from the fog

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

I like fog. Not when I’m driving. But for walking or looking, it’s quite wonderful. Often feels like a bit of a gift, like the day’s wrapped up inside it, to be opened slowly.
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This is how it was at the beach the other morning.
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Not much showing.
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And then I see this.
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An anonymous note left for anyone to find is one of my favourite things.
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It’s an open letter about the power of believing and the importance of tuning out the naysayers, but it’s not preachy or long-winded or written with any kind of guru on the mountain vibe… just a slice of someone’s sweet, but not in any way saccharine, heart.

Yes to fog.

Boo to naysayers.

me and the lake and a dog-like cat or two

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

I grew up on the shores of Lake Ontario.
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Not literally,
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but close enough that when my mum and dad came home from work,
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we might pack a few cold cuts,
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some fresh bread, potato salad,
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a thermos of coffee, another of KoolAid,
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and head to the beach for supper and a swim.
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I remember two things: sometimes we took our cat Peter who thought he was a dog,
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and there was a large shrub where I liked to have my meals.
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I wedged myself into its branches and ate my mother’s potato salad from a Tupperware bowl, pretending I was a castaway on a desert island.
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I’m still drawn to lakes, to desert isles, to pretending and to potato salad,
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though I notice there are fewer shrubs that I fit neatly into.
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♦

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snow henge, big feet and other unexplainables

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

IMG_0971No idea who built this but it’s uncannily aligned to follow the path of clouds in the shape of snow shovels.

IMG_0972Fearsome signs of big foot and/or Bigfoot.

And not that we were speaking of squirrels but I can’t help wondering why their nests don’t fall out of trees in high winds yet I once found our very solid steel patio chair in the pool…

As if that’s not enough to be curious about for one morning, there is also the mystery of the Seemingly Forever Idling Car in the Driveway, which, when I loop the block and pass by again a full ten minutes later, there it sits, still idling and spewing gunk from its exhaust. This kind of thing is Exhibit ‘A’ in my case for increasing oil prices by at least 300 percent (with all those ‘extra’ profits going into cleaning up the mess oil makes in the first place).

But the biggest unexplainable is how, later, I find myself at the beach on this gloriously windy day, all set to snap some wild and wooly waves only to have my camera tell me its batteries need changing. And I haven’t brought any spares.

Nuts.

Because the waves are BIG alright, and beautiful too, but even better than that there’s a madwoman, madder even than me, also with a camera, who walks a few metres out onto the pier against which the lake is slapping and sloshing something fierce, which is what she’s shooting. And probably getting some brilliant shots. But it’s completely crazy to take the chance. The pier’s not wide and the waves not always predictable where they come up over the side. I can’t take my eyes off her and steel myself for action if necessary, locate the bright orange life saver near the “At Your Own Risk” sign. I exhale only when she starts walking back, all annoyingly calm and smug.

By now I’ve convinced myself I don’t want photos of stupid waves anyway. But I’m sorry I’m not able to take a picture of her.

The one picture I take before my camera dies is this.
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Your guess is as good as mine.