Tar baby

The wind is in from Africa,
Last night I couldn’t sleep.
Oh you know it sure is hard to leave you,
But it’s really not my home…
My finger-nails are filthy,
I’ve got beach tar on my feet,
And you know I miss those clean white linens
And that fancy French cologne…
---Carey (Joni Mitchell)


I discovered the remnants of this afternoon’s walk (not hike:( lacking correct footwear, obviously) on my right foot, from the beach at Coal Oil Point. The sun still warms, it seems, though just inland, under the shade trees of the family village, the air has a damp chill. Isabella wanted to swim and finally convinced me to let her, it should be noted that I made her take off her shirt so as to have something warm for later. She would have taken off the shorts too, but she had dressed herself and had no underwear, so I let her get them wet, opting initially for “propriety” but then, after co-parental clearance, allowed her to parade naked. After all, there was hardly a soul around, and no one from whom to fear lascivious intrusions. The light was marvelous, bathing Isabella’s body in a golden glow as she splashed about, jumping over the lapping waves. We set out alone, as our mission was nothing more than accompanying the docent on his two hour Sunday stint, telescope behind, she and I lazily walked along the water’s edge. Today it didn’t feel tragic, but rather full of breath-taking life. In addition to the spectacularly gallant seagull perched on a mussel-covered rock, there were sea-anemone, barnacles and a strange long-beaked bird whose identity was a mystery to me. The water was warm enough to allow myself the pleasure of a barefoot, up to the ankle cleansing, and every five meters Isabella stopped to make sand-pies or to exfoliate her belly. And as I drifted back and forth, my mind wandering to secret pleasures, and the inner smile outwardly manifesting itself, I looked up, past Isabella and was floored. There, just ten meters out were a colony of dolphins, arching playfully, the glistening skin, reflecting the light. Isabella, Isabella, Isabella look! I am unable to express my excitement, she comes bounding towards me, never once looking where I want her to. What mommy? No, look! Dolphins!!!

Where, where? As her eyes comb the sand behind me and not the sea behind her. I turn her little muscularly naked body back to the ocean and she can’t see them because they have submerged themselves. I lift her to see above her limited horizon, and they re-emerge, the curvature of their fins one of nature’s most perfect shapes, and then one lifts its tail and splashes as if in salutation. I feel complete. Mommy, remember when we did “dolphin dives” (our special game during swimming time when I was teaching her two years ago). We wander a bit more, and I get a phone call asking if I can speak to the nice family about their dog not being on a leash. I feel the light fabric of my skirt blow up, baring my thighs, as I approach them. I am very sorry to bother you, I say. If you could keep your dog on a leash while you are in the reserve area, that would be wonderful… I truly detest bothering other people or telling them what to do, especially when the beautiful Golden looked so pleased… and too worn-out and panting to chase birds, but probably still enough of a nuisance to disturb their breeding patterns. Dogs are good at disturbing breeding habits of all kinds... still I felt bad, having enjoyed my own freedom so much that chasing away others made me feel, well, a bit police-like, which is the opposite of free.

I shrugged off the negativity - after all the family was very pleasant; a younger mother, two small children a grand-mother and a man who could have been either the father of the small children or of their mother, but who emanated a kindly possession over the smaller ones, which made me think that he was indeed their father and not grandfather. I watched them pack up, leash the lovely dog, pack one child into a large stroller and the smaller one into a backpack that the mother carried… hmm. Maybe it was the grandfather after all, because all he did was push the stroller. Well, I’ll never know, but sometimes these are the moments from which I would like to steal the characters for my stories.

Isabella and I drifted back towards our commencing point, she wanted to see her daddy, she said, but then stopped to make a sand banquet. We returned, and rolled around in the warm sand, the sky a strangely electric blue, and the sun a piercing white ball through my sunglasses. Then she decided that it would be fun to climb the “mountain” and raced across the sand to scale the hill. Her daddy kept calling her back, not wanting her to get tar all over her bum, but I was the one who ended up with the unknowing and tenacious souvenir.

Then it was all over as quickly as it had begun, or maybe not quite. The earlier visit to the museum to see Casasolas’ work left me wishing that I had more hours in the day and more lifetimes to live in reverse. So many eras places that I wish I had existed and that I am amazed to find that the range of human feeling was in essence the same. There was a photograph of a group of "homosexuals" being paraded into the police station, their heads lifted in defiance and finding the spark of attraction in the lense of the camera, an electric impulse transported through time and place. I wonder if we are all just seeking immortality. The life that springs forth from our bodies, the work we produce, the images we trap and isolate and record, are they just a way to shroud ourselves in immortality, to defy the solitude that circles?

But the sun shining on her glossy chestnut head and her teeth, white, smiling, mouth saying mommy I love you, reminds me that in solitude there is always company, and in company there is always solitude, we just spend our lives trying to strike the appropriate balance.