Apology to the Bay

Written 4/26, but not posted until 4/27:

The bay water has eluded me for two weeks. It continues the chase on this my last morning here, having defied my stick of graphite at every attempt to portray it. No two observations of the water found it the same in intensity, reflection, ebb, flow, surface, depth, light, color, hue, tone, clarity, temperature, sound, movement, speed, breath, rhythm, force, or spirit. Even the things it transported were different from one day to the next, whether sea life or leaf or stick or moss or signs of human detritus, including one blue yoga mat and strap (mine).

I prided myself in the small carbon footprint of my time here. I rose and slept with the sun. I played no radio or music or television. I tried to be silent. I buried my vegetable scraps in the earth. I fed the meat scraps to the crabs. I collected my recyclables to carry back to Atlanta. I regret that my efforts were negated tenfold by that yoga mat that floated up and out of my reach on the wind and into the water. It was a stormy day, and by the time I ran for a pole to fish out the blue mat, the white capped waves had carried it several fishing docks down the sea wall.

As a vehicle for sun and wind and inspiration, the water of the bay has been a formidable companion for these fourteen days and nights. Thank you, baywater.

I'm sorry about the yoga mat . . . but the wind did it. (a reference to the great line in Denys Cazet's picture book, You Make the Angels Cry, in which young Albert tells his mother, "I told the angels I'm sorry I made them cry, but the wind did it.")

And I am sorry, Bay, that I can not describe you. dkm

Pinpoints of Light

On a solitary writing retreat far from home: It's shocking what little I know about all things ocean or bay, born and reared, as I was, in the middle of Kansas. I had few childhood experiences of watching or noticing the natural phenomena of large bodies of water. When a child sees new things she accepts them as they are, each one another thing to learn about the world of new things to learn---one more memory to add to her growing cache. To attend the same phenomena as an adult, without the backdrop of childhood exposure, is to be visited with an edge of exhilaration that may not have happened in childhood. With gratitude for this, I sit on "the dock of the bay" and pay close attention.

This morning the water of the bay, just two feet deep, and crystal clear under the fishing dock where I sit, ripples and laps around the dock and against the rocks, bending the sun's rays, causing them to show up on the sandy bottom as an undulating net of lines and strings. The effect is to make the bottom appear covered with large flat rocks edged with thin bright-orange rings of light. Where the strings intersect, an intense sparkle reflects back up through the water, each one a spot of hot white light among a million such spots, burning into my aging memory cache. I hope these spots translate into writing inspiration later today. dkm