Monday, December 29, 2008

Notes from a car by the ocean #1

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
Rabindranath Tagore

...gone cold turkey from the internet...walking in sand for two hours, watching clouds turn a deep blue early then dissipate...never a drop on me...the way back not necessarily shorter or longer, but mostly on pavement, or dirt, or those recycled plastic raised walkways in the wildlife refuge...so much work goes into creating natural environments...moving wetlands around, eliminating invasive species...all performed, of course, by the biggest invasive species of them all...though, as one specimen of it, maybe I shouldn’t complain....once upon a time, goddesses were born of waves like these...nowadays, people surf porn...angels we have heard on high...or we haven’t...too much dissonance...then, as a long time fan of dissonance, I’m not complaining...not exactly...

Forget the past, and just say yes....
Sonic Youth

...maybe I’ll go out in the car late tonight, laptop on the passenger seat, searching for a signal so I can post this....the one-man yoga retreat’s been uneventful...which, in such instances, is the definition of going well...certainly healthier than the dope-smoking, wine-drinking, and depression-wallowing retreats of old...though the body’s older, too...and so’s the mind...and at least part of that’s a good thing...

If I had it to do all over again...I wouldn’t!
Anonymous quote in my high school yearbook

...a couple years ago I hung out in a coffee shop where every afternoon these kids would come in...clearly the artist and outsider crowd at their high school...long haired boys with spiky purple haired girls...a mix of sub-cultural signifiers that once might’ve meant conflict...and their spontaneous absurdist repartee was so clever, so funny...I wondered if I should wander a table or two over and introduce myself...the couple decades between us be damned... hang out with them...hope they wouldn’t ask me to buy them cigarettes...though I might compromise on beer, if they were responsible about it...but then one day, the coolest of the cool kids...the one with the unworldly wise twinkle in his eye beneath the long sandy hair and above the mustache and beard he couldn’t quite grow...was holding court when a woman walked in...middle aged, short sandy hair, apparently out for a run...called him honey and suggested politely that could have dinner around 6:00, if that was okay...and suddenly the tart eloquence was gone...replaced with a guttural okay above the slumping shoulders of one unspeakably humiliated by the public recognition that he has a mother....I left town soon after, and never did go over and hang out with those guys....

9 comments:

Lydia said...

Love the Tagore quote (love him you know).

And this is SO classic:
"so much work goes into creating natural environments...moving wetlands around, eliminating invasive species...all performed, of course, by the biggest invasive species of them all..."

the walking man said...

The coffee shop experiences would fill reams of paper...I am torn between the beach walk and the caffeine.

Anonymous said...

Posting this at the coast? That's hard core.

Enjoy your stay.

Anonymous said...

Dr Jay--

Your writing astounds me. That was a beautifully written and subtle piece--and again, I enjoyed AND related to the integrated quotes (Sonic Youth, in particular).

I also really smiled at the anonymous quote from your high school yearbook. Can you believe I can relate to that? :)

I wanted to stop by and wish you peace and happiness in the New Year--may 2009 be filled with light for you.

Take care,

Melinda

Brunhilda said...

"once upon a time, goddesses were born of waves like these...nowadays, people surf porn...angels we have heard on high...or we haven’t..."

Just beautiful. Retreat away.

Anonymous said...

I hope you are having a good restful time. Change can sometimes be just what we need to refresh us.
And don't we all still just want to be part of the "cool kids" brigade ... until something renders them mundane and dull ... like the rest of us. Sigh!

the walking man said...

Being twice, three times the age of kids in coffee shops is illuminating to say the least. Hearing from them all of the things that they truly want to vest with an older adult is what their parents actually miss out on. I suppose it was the same for my kids.

Enjoy the beach Yoga man

Anonymous said...

Just yesterday I was looking at quotes and this one stood out:

"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them." Mark Twain

Anonymous said...

Kool Kids? At 69 I'm a walking ghost. All the little honeys move their mats across the room when I unroll mine. Of course their creepy old perv radar is beyond reproach.

Getting old gets old, but it's better than youth, when you have it all to "look forward to."