Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I got up early to see the sun change the sky different colors. The sun was rising behind the bay we are staying in and all night I slept restlessly a little nervous for being sure that I would wake early enough to see anything the world might do.
Annie Dillard's writing is all about finding the beauty, mystery, and intricacy of nature in an otherwise small dull thing like a muskrat, a tadpole, a creek called Tinker. And in the tropics I seriously wonder what she would say. Every piece of life here is loud, begging to be noticed, almost a shirtless lady during Carnival.
Is there mystery in blatant beauty? Is there grace in it? Or is it too flamboyant to be just that? What if my noticing it isn't ironic enough for a world of hipsters, freaks, and geeks? Would Annie Dillard implode at the sight of some of the plants I've seen here?
I sat on the dock and watched as each minute seeped across the sky like a brushstroke; this cloud here, that one there. The waves kept time to the breeze; the breeze keeping time to my ever-resistant breath.
Below my feet was a veritable mall of activity. Fish with broad and bold black and white stripes, thick around the belly, floated back and forth, self-aware, or so it seemed. Around them, a chorus of David-Bowie-electric-blue fish strutted by; so blue, that you could have sworn they were painted. And then a joke of a fish, with a rainbow for a body, and a straw for a snout, sauntered on by. The water is so clear the prickle of sea urchins feels almost palpable from above it.
Birds of long, short, broad, and narrow surrounded me. A pelican cannonballed heavily into the water plumbing the shallow waters for food. Once he has got what he is searching for he keeps his beak under the water, allowing some poor being the time to contemplate its Jonah-like fate, and then clumsily raises its neck to finish the poor bugger off. This, against a lush backdrop, a window display of the kind Anthropologie would pay oodles for.
How do you live in the loud? What happens when all of life is big, boisterous, and beautiful? Does it mute the small stuff? Is that a bad thing? Are we missing something important when all the colors are turned on?
As I am here I am reading a book about Ernest Shackleton's incredible journey through Antarctica, which began on a ship called the Endurance, and ended, well I don't 100% know yet, but I know it ended "alive to tell the tale". The juxtaposition of all of this loud beauty with stories of stark darkness, whiteness, blankness, and rugged survival is one I'm enjoying. I read it on the beach in the sticky comfort of my sunblock and toweled chair.
I think I enjoy it because it is simple. It's the very opposite of all this beauty, lushness, and brio in the Tropics. The men of the Endurance left for adventure, for the enticing challenge of doing something no one in all time has been able to do, not even 100 years after they were able to do it. They left for the spirit of the thing. They knew the goal: stay alive.
The sugar cane mills and plantations around here tell different tales. All this beauty has a back-story, like a sad tale of corruption, a played out movie star with bloody hands to hide. The sugar mill is lit up at night like an old movie set. It crumbles and groans under the garish night light. That's the thing about beauty - it can get complicated to have, to want, to hold. You feel a need to own it and as soon as you do, a part of seems to bristle. It is not as beautiful if it is not free.
We took a sunset cruise a few days ago and it was like something out of a Flannery O'Connor story. The couple that ran the sailboat had left their business in Oregon after coming down here for their first vacation in seven years to "have no more employees" and to take advantage of the fact that "life is just too short". They had been engaged 9 years before being married. Another couple was from Boston and had brought their two and a half month old with them to the island. They were kind, eager to be relieved of her for a moment, but also clearly tender parents, and generally happy people. They knew a psychiatrist who had been an engaged for 21 years before being married. A third couple was dressed in lace and polos and spent their time smiling and drinking further up the starboard side of the boat.
The woman who was sailing the boat was asked what the farthest she had ever sailed was. She had sailed to Bora Bora over the Pacific in a 38 foot sailboat over the course of about 30 days with one man ("an asshole") and a cat ("helpful"). But this trip was tarnished by the memory of the man, who was violent, and a force she eventually had to leave. Can you imagine not ever speaking again to the person you sailed through the brightest stars, deepest nights, darkest fears, and bluest oceans with? That's saying something.
Our sunset was not big or bold, it was amethyst, peaceful, and felt like rum punch with a side of Gouda, which is also what we had to snack on. There was a moment when we passed by a series of small islands, and a small sailboat between them perfectly balanced itself in a photo I would never take. But that was it. No drama - just another brush stroke.
I can't put my finger on what I am trying to say, aside from describing the fact that these juxtapositions are happening in front of me constantly and I really do feel like they're going to lead me to some conclusion that I need to come to. I'm not sure what they are leading up to but they allow me to know this:
1. Beauty, and love, need freedom.
2. What is loud, is also hiding something.
3. Pelicans are total klutzes.
