On Saturday, my husband and I went to the ocean, walked a stretch along the Pacific that was recently closed off permanently to cars, and allowed ourselves to be buffeted by the salt air and the constant crunch of water against sand. Runners passed in knots of two and threes, sometimes pushing strollers with wide-eyed babies hammocked above the wheels. Cyclists wove through the scene. Children not yet ready for bicycles scooted on balance bikes as their parents observed with varying levels of enthusiasm. There was the usual San Francisco hodgepodge of dogs (goldens, goldendoodles, labradoodles, cockapoos, poodles, whippets, Boston terriers, Bedlington terriers, black labs, yellow labs, French bulldogs, chihuahuas, Australian cattledogs, Australian shepherds, German shepherds, and, of course, mutts). It felt good to be amongst people doing people things while the ocean, which will outlast us all, thank G-d, churned and boiled, and ravens and seagulls surfed the wind.
(In my recent reading of Pat Barker’s Women of Troy trilogy, I was reminded of the British word “shingle” to describe oceanside beach. It brings up an image of asphalt shingles in shades of grey, black, and green, ripped, torn, melted, dissolving along an untidy shoreline, the waves eating at the edges, a woman bundled up against the wind as she navigates the shoreline. Must look up shingle when I am done.)
The weather had an end-of-the-storm feel–and as I write, water is coming down sideways outside and the wind is banging on our metal chimney, something similar to what the Bay Area experienced before our Saturday walk.
There is no message here except a desire to escape in the small things when everything feels so oversized.
An old friend, one of my oldest, sends me bits and pieces of joy, music performances, photos of the places he passes in his Philadelphia neighborhood, balanced, composed shots of his balanced, composed living space. Small, good things, that I take in. I try to reciprocate, but everything I see is so large-scale, so existential, so inhuman. These things provide comfort, too, in the way that imagining the earth devoid of us, recovering from the scourge, sometimes helps me sleep at night. But it isn’t enough to get me through the week.
I present this small moment, a body wrung out by exercise, a greyhound taking up three quarters of the couch, a galgo curled up in a dog bed near the bay window, his ears alert as he sleeps. The wind has picked up again. I am considering dinner. A shower. My socks. The burn of carbonated water when I take a gulp. The rain will return, the oceans will rise, the vines will encroach. All of this will pass.
For more on shingle beaches (which are made of pebbles, not sand), check out this Scottish website.
