The Beach Song of Old Mrs. Prufrock
Sep. 14th, 2010 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaHeron Island hasn't changed, but I have. Since we came here last in 2002, I've lost the ability to walk easily across a sandy beach. Each step is now both a pain and a fear - the pain I can deal with but the fear of falling at each uncertain step makes a walk across the beach a daring feat. Swimming I do fine - but getting in and out of the water is a major trial because it involves both walking across the rough sandy bottom and the pull of the waves. Once out and laying on the top of the water looking down at the life below I'm fine. I saw numerous zebra stripped fishes, a whole flock of finger length parakeet blue fishes, a school of arm sized white fish moving slowly, slowly along with the current. In the sand a fat white bottom swimmer, freckled with auburn dots and a big black dot on his tail.
In the late afternoon, I take my towel and walk the 20 steps through the thin line of trees behind our room to the beach. The tide is almost entirely out, so when I sit on the sand at the edge of the trees I look down the beach to the water that lies only a few inches to a few feet deep all the way out to where the edge of the lagoon rises like a miniature dike with the waves of the deep ocean foaming whitely at the edge. It's like sitting on a little mound of sugar at the very center of a saucer, I can look down into the water of the lagoon, and then up slightly at the wall of coral that is the edge of the saucer.
On earlier trips to Heron I mostly came to the beach at high tide. I rushed quickly along the beach and into the water. I couldn't wait to lay myself flat on the surface and watch the wonderland that was going on below. I walked right up to the edge of the water, sat down, and put on my flippers. I walked right in and rinsed and donned my mask. When, reluctantly, it was time to come out I swam practically onto the beach, turned to sit and remove my flippers, then stood right up and walked out of the water,. Today, these seem like fantastic feats of athleticisim, so I just spread my towel and sit and watch the tide.
There are a few people about here on the north beach. A family with two youngsters walks along the spit of sand to my right - sand that will be covered with water in another few hours. I can see two different couples walking along the shore, and one wading in the shallows. The woman keeps making marvelous finds and calling her husband over to look - a blue starfish, maybe, or some of those tiny parakeet blue fish caught in a tidal pool. Farther along to my left a guide has a group of a dozen or so heading out on a reef walk. They carry long walking sticks for balance, and knee high inverted tubes with a glass bottom to hold down over interesting specimens and magnify them. I did that once. I enjoyed it. I know I can't do it now.
As the sun moves lower in the sky the noddies (noddy terns) begin to return across the waves. They nest on the island, but fly out every morning to fish and return in the evening to their nests.. The nests are horrid, nasty things made of leaves held together with white bird droppings, but the birds themselves are lovely, swallow-shaped things - dusty black with a spot of white on their heads. They swoop and dive as they come in from the ocean, picking up small fish in their long bills, but their calls are raucous and angry; no "unpremeditated art" here despite the swallow-tails and graceful flight.
But it's splendid where I sit at the top of the beach. The sun is warm but the gentle, constant breeze is cool. I see waves of tiny shells and bits of coral all about me. Literal waves, where the retreating tide has left them in scalloped edges in lines along the beach. I scoot my towel down a bit until I am in the middle of one of the lines. I smooth a place beside me and place the larger bits in a showy row - branches of white coral half as long as my little finger, while shells from a bivalve, bits of white cuttlefish, and broken pieces of shells, mostly white but some with pink and beige lines. I fill my hand with sand and tinier bits ot the same wrack, winnowing out the sand as I move the treasures from one hand to another. A piece of shell as big as my thumbnail, a piece of pink coral that would barely cover the tip of my pinkie, a minute but perfect spiral shell no bigger than a fingernail clipping. I move these smaller bits into my row of finds, poking though the remains in my hand for more, but all that's left is smaller and yet smaller fragments of white coral and white shell, becoming, at last, the white sand itself.
Standing up is a little awkward, but I manage it just fine. I shake the sand out of my towel and push my sandy feet into my damp Birks. I leave my rows of sea finds lying in the smooth sand like a child's castle, and I walk back up the beach to the trees. I have heard the mermaids calling each to each, I know they call for me.
In the late afternoon, I take my towel and walk the 20 steps through the thin line of trees behind our room to the beach. The tide is almost entirely out, so when I sit on the sand at the edge of the trees I look down the beach to the water that lies only a few inches to a few feet deep all the way out to where the edge of the lagoon rises like a miniature dike with the waves of the deep ocean foaming whitely at the edge. It's like sitting on a little mound of sugar at the very center of a saucer, I can look down into the water of the lagoon, and then up slightly at the wall of coral that is the edge of the saucer.
On earlier trips to Heron I mostly came to the beach at high tide. I rushed quickly along the beach and into the water. I couldn't wait to lay myself flat on the surface and watch the wonderland that was going on below. I walked right up to the edge of the water, sat down, and put on my flippers. I walked right in and rinsed and donned my mask. When, reluctantly, it was time to come out I swam practically onto the beach, turned to sit and remove my flippers, then stood right up and walked out of the water,. Today, these seem like fantastic feats of athleticisim, so I just spread my towel and sit and watch the tide.
There are a few people about here on the north beach. A family with two youngsters walks along the spit of sand to my right - sand that will be covered with water in another few hours. I can see two different couples walking along the shore, and one wading in the shallows. The woman keeps making marvelous finds and calling her husband over to look - a blue starfish, maybe, or some of those tiny parakeet blue fish caught in a tidal pool. Farther along to my left a guide has a group of a dozen or so heading out on a reef walk. They carry long walking sticks for balance, and knee high inverted tubes with a glass bottom to hold down over interesting specimens and magnify them. I did that once. I enjoyed it. I know I can't do it now.
As the sun moves lower in the sky the noddies (noddy terns) begin to return across the waves. They nest on the island, but fly out every morning to fish and return in the evening to their nests.. The nests are horrid, nasty things made of leaves held together with white bird droppings, but the birds themselves are lovely, swallow-shaped things - dusty black with a spot of white on their heads. They swoop and dive as they come in from the ocean, picking up small fish in their long bills, but their calls are raucous and angry; no "unpremeditated art" here despite the swallow-tails and graceful flight.
But it's splendid where I sit at the top of the beach. The sun is warm but the gentle, constant breeze is cool. I see waves of tiny shells and bits of coral all about me. Literal waves, where the retreating tide has left them in scalloped edges in lines along the beach. I scoot my towel down a bit until I am in the middle of one of the lines. I smooth a place beside me and place the larger bits in a showy row - branches of white coral half as long as my little finger, while shells from a bivalve, bits of white cuttlefish, and broken pieces of shells, mostly white but some with pink and beige lines. I fill my hand with sand and tinier bits ot the same wrack, winnowing out the sand as I move the treasures from one hand to another. A piece of shell as big as my thumbnail, a piece of pink coral that would barely cover the tip of my pinkie, a minute but perfect spiral shell no bigger than a fingernail clipping. I move these smaller bits into my row of finds, poking though the remains in my hand for more, but all that's left is smaller and yet smaller fragments of white coral and white shell, becoming, at last, the white sand itself.
Standing up is a little awkward, but I manage it just fine. I shake the sand out of my towel and push my sandy feet into my damp Birks. I leave my rows of sea finds lying in the smooth sand like a child's castle, and I walk back up the beach to the trees. I have heard the mermaids calling each to each, I know they call for me.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 04:36 am (UTC)Srsly, lovely evocative piece.
I find a lot of my past "filed away" and not easily accessible except as dry bits of data, i.e. we stayed on Fitzroy Island after the 1985 Worldcon. A few visuals come to mind, but usually not much else.
Then suddenly, reading about the white branches of dead coral and bits of shell, I was face down in the water near the beach at Fitzroy, listening to the most amazing music the coral made in the gentle waves.
Thanks for posting.