The drive up was uneventful, for the most part. Your typical Kentucky drivers, interspersed with the occasional larger-than-average roadkill, rolled into little more than a bloody hide and some legs. A coyote? A deer? One could only hazard a guess by the size of the smear.
When I die (although, of course, I hope it is a long ways off), I want my ashes returned to the ocean. Not the beach-- the beach is some soft, weak little thing that gently laps against the sand, while you sit twenty feet away, sipping your third margarita.
No.
I want to be given to the ocean. Those powerful, ivory-capped waves, riding atop a gunmetal gray berth that itself hides more than man can fear.
I say "returned," as it has already tried to claim me once. When I was 9, a sneaker wave crept the shore, and for all the world a mini tsunami tried to well up and take me home.
Although it elicited fear for years afterwards, I now see the strange, natural complement it had given me. I was a part of it, and will be again someday-- once my contributions to this land are done. We will rejoin, and, one day, the sea will have the tribute it tried to claim so many years ago.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
A Snail's Pace
When I was a child, we lived in an apartment complex in northern California that was inundated with snails. I was only three or four, but I still remember not even being able to walk down the sidewalk without accidentally crunching a few.
Eventually, my dad was able to get rid of them all (milk jugs + beer = snail death), but not before they showed me a little game. A game with snails.
The game was simple, easily-learned by someone with my (arguably limited) cognitive ability. You find a snail, lay down next to it, and poke it's eye stalks over and over again, watching them extend and retreat, over and over again. Eventually, even a snail is capable of catching on, and they no longer ventured their eyes out into the world of 4-year olds. That's when the end of the game began.
Carefully, you grabbed the snail on each side of his shell, and proceeded to pull him from the sidewalk. Oozing slowly, he hung there between my thumb and forefinger, dreading...waiting.
THWACK!
With all the force a small child fueled by curiosity and slightly rabid excitement could muster, the snail was hurled across the yard and into the fence.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
Snail, after snail, after desperate snail followed his brethren, unwilling and yet completely incapable of resisting their fate of peeling through the air at what must have been (to them) unthinkable speeds, before finally shattering their homes and bodies across a steadily-growing, vertical graveyard of crushed shells and dismembered bodies.
Hours, I would spend doing this, and for hours my parents would hear the tiny, echoing deaths of hundreds of unlucky participants. Finally, my mother or father would pull back the sliding glass door, and (now possibly a bit concerned with my newfound fervor) urge me to come inside, wash my hands, and go watch Cinderella.
An obedient child, I would reluctantly oblige, but quietly, with the patience of a monk, I would await the next day, when the backyard would be full of new victims, blithely living their lives, mere feet below their eventual, eternal damnation.
Eventually, my dad was able to get rid of them all (milk jugs + beer = snail death), but not before they showed me a little game. A game with snails.
The game was simple, easily-learned by someone with my (arguably limited) cognitive ability. You find a snail, lay down next to it, and poke it's eye stalks over and over again, watching them extend and retreat, over and over again. Eventually, even a snail is capable of catching on, and they no longer ventured their eyes out into the world of 4-year olds. That's when the end of the game began.
Carefully, you grabbed the snail on each side of his shell, and proceeded to pull him from the sidewalk. Oozing slowly, he hung there between my thumb and forefinger, dreading...waiting.
THWACK!
With all the force a small child fueled by curiosity and slightly rabid excitement could muster, the snail was hurled across the yard and into the fence.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
Snail, after snail, after desperate snail followed his brethren, unwilling and yet completely incapable of resisting their fate of peeling through the air at what must have been (to them) unthinkable speeds, before finally shattering their homes and bodies across a steadily-growing, vertical graveyard of crushed shells and dismembered bodies.
Hours, I would spend doing this, and for hours my parents would hear the tiny, echoing deaths of hundreds of unlucky participants. Finally, my mother or father would pull back the sliding glass door, and (now possibly a bit concerned with my newfound fervor) urge me to come inside, wash my hands, and go watch Cinderella.
An obedient child, I would reluctantly oblige, but quietly, with the patience of a monk, I would await the next day, when the backyard would be full of new victims, blithely living their lives, mere feet below their eventual, eternal damnation.
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