Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Out of the Blue

farm implement
clown fish
brogans
paddling
alabaster




It started out as morning exercise. Isn't that the way it always starts out? It's always some innocuous event that gets you - that out of the blue thing you don't expect - the thing you don't plan for. This morning had begun perfectly. Her Brainwave Python kayak sliced through the morning surf off the point at Fort Barry with ease and once the water formed a thin layer between her chilled skin and the neoprene wetsuit, she had been really quite comfy. The sun was just up and the sky was a beautiful blue streaked with just wisps of cloud. Paddling south across the entrance to the bay she could see San Francisco laid before her like a glistening Oz of some kind - the sun behind it in the east. Follow the yellow plankton road. Whatever.

She paddled on, feeling the rhythm of the sea's gentle roll. She'd read somewhere that the Polynesians navigated by studying wave patterns. They could detect wave patterns that had traveled thousands of miles. Now that was being in tune. That was down to earth. Westerners had never really connected like that with the sea. Or the land for that matter. They were too consumed with material crap. She thought back to her grandfather. He'd been a potato farmer up in Idaho - and that's pretty down to earth - yet even so, he wasn't so in tune with his land that he could sense deep patterns. Were there even deep patterns of which to be aware in the earth? God, Idaho had been beautiful country. There was a rawness about it that felt still quite real, unfucked, untethered. She didn't remember much about her grandfather. He'd been a big mountain of a man with a white woolly chest, red face and tough hands. She remembered a few things - a pair of old brogans he wore, a worn red leather baseball cap, some sort of farm implement he used to dig the potatos - a hoe? She wasn't sure. She remembered more the patina of it than the tool itself. It had been worn and shiny. She'd always been attracted to textures. And there was something comforting about the textures of much-used things. She admired the creamy white hull of the kayak carving through water so deeply gray it felt kinship with black. The creamy hull reminded her of alabaster, of marble, of heavy cream. One day her kayak would have the patina of a much used thing. One day.

She looked east toward the coast. The sun was higher. San Francisco was passing behind her. Today, she figured she'd paddle down as far as Half Moon Bay then back. It would be past lunchtime by then and she'd be worn out. But she needed it. She needed to burn some stress. She had a lot to work out these days and paddling was good therapy. Her thoughts wandered back four days to that fucked up night in Palo Alto. She'd met Brent down at Antonio's - that had been their spot even back in the Stanford days. It was the usual sort of evening - beer, foosball, jukebox. It was comfortable. Comfortable. You see, that was the problem. It was comfortable. It wasn't like the Stanford days when they shared DIScomfort with the world, when they had virtually reveled in discomfort, clutched together in mutual disdain for the fuckedupedness of the whole freakin world. That mutuality had made for seriously rabid lovemaking and intense all-night conversations. But now they were comfortable. It was foosball and beer and jukeboxes, and she had just grown suddenly and irreparably sick of it. Like instant food poisoning. Brent had been hurt. He didn't understand what had happened and she could see why not. It was out of the blue.

She look back east one last time, then, expertly whipped the small sleek craft around pointing it back north up the coast. As she did, she looked west out to sea. What she saw concerned her. There stretching across the entire horizon was a fogbank. This was not good, she thought. She glanced at her watch - 10:45. She looked east again - San Francisco to her front barely in view, still shining in the sun. It was doubtful she would make it back to Fort Barry. If she went to shore now, she would be within spitting distance of Pacifica. And Brent lived in San Bruno. That would be the safe thing to do - the responsible thing. Go on in, call Brent, eat crow, get him to take her home, probably end up screwing. Or... she could try to beat the fogbank. The risk there was that she could end up loster that shit. She flashed for an instant on that little clown fish in the cartoon, then on her clean alabaster skeleton at the bottom of the sea, her beautful kayak washing up in algae-stained pieces on the beach. Safe - ride with Brent, eat crow, back to comfortable (stroke) or race the fog, beat death, live on the edge of possibility and impossibility (stroke) hot tea, a fire in the fireplace and naked Brent (stroke) or bones polished by the waves (stroke) foosball, beer and jukeboxes (stroke) or in tune with wave patterns, following them through the fog all the way to Fort Barry (stroke). She redoubled her stroke heading north.

She thought about turning east.

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