Purple Waves

The Road Not Taken Is Laid With Concrete And Cement

Both ways start out the same, down a flight of stairs, around the corner of a rented house, through an alley alongside a vacant green house, to a driveway that backs out onto a frontage road, which intersects a wide boulevard that passes through three sets of traffic lights, before coming to an end at a gate house where beach sand spills out onto a parking lot only to be swept back with a wide push broom.

Now that the mornings are cold and dark, I appear at a crossroads wearing a knitted scarf for warmth and canvas on my feet. The smell of home, a climbing rose, still lingers at this point.

If I go the way of the dog, pulling on his leash because he sniffs an opportunity to run unclipped, there's a chance he or I may not hear the whistle calling us back and we may become lost and suddenly hungry and stray without our people.

It might be better to sip a coffee and stroll the elevated walking pier, a claustrophobic corridor under lofty, electric lamps where fish heads are cut clean off and left bleeding out in a sink. Although the rails are strong and tiered for leaning, I suspect the good morning glances have not seen the suffering underneath. Slow water torture wears on a dark march of mussel encrusted pilings. Sandbags become night pillows for those less fortunate.

And then there is the gaper, filling out a folding chair, swapping surf reports with his hat on backwards.

Am I him? Is he me?

I consider the things I would miss, should I retire here, letting my beard grow out with my belly in the shade of this umbrella.

....a bubbling seaweed smile, instructions on how to wander, the towers children make, plastic wrap for preserving the freshness of light, a look inside a shell, a lost sole, a heart torn out, a death mask, snowflakes from somewhere else, the end...plucked and cracked.

A dog named Ollie drops a half digested tennis ball in my hand. His warm breath moves me. Aurora casts my shadow on the sand. The shoreline becomes a mirror for the day's new form.

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Swag

What are we looking at here? I found this arrangement in a secluded area of the beach near a rock jetty.

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Henry Lawson, The Romance of the Swag, 1907

"The swag is usually composed of a tent “fly” or strip of calico (a cover for the swag and a shelter in bad weather—in New Zealand it is oilcloth or waterproof twill), a couple of blankets, blue by custom and preference, as that colour shows the dirt less than any other (hence the name “bluey” for swag), and the core is composed of spare clothing and small personal effects. To make or “roll up” your swag: lay the fly or strip of calico on the ground, blueys on top of it; across one end, with eighteen inches or so to spare, lay your spare trousers and shirt, folded, light boots tied together by the laces toe to heel, books, bundle of old letters, portraits, or whatever little knick-knacks you have or care to carry, bag of needles, thread, pen and ink, spare patches for your pants, and bootlaces. Lay or arrange the pile so that it will roll evenly with the swag (some pack the lot in an old pillowslip or canvas bag), take a fold over of blanket and calico the whole length on each side, so as to reduce the width of the swag to, say, three feet, throw the spare end, with an inward fold, over the little pile of belongings, and then roll the whole to the other end, using your knees and judgment to make the swag tight, compact and artistic; when within eighteen inches of the loose end take an inward fold in that, and bring it up against the body of the swag. There is a strong suggestion of a roley-poley in a rag about the business, only the ends of the swag are folded in, in rings, and not tied. Fasten the swag with three or four straps, according to judgment and the supply of straps. To the top strap, for the swag is carried (and eased down in shanty bars and against walls or veranda-posts when not on the track) in a more or less vertical position—to the top strap, and lowest, or lowest but one, fasten the ends of the shoulder strap (usually a towel is preferred as being softer to the shoulder), your coat being carried outside the swag at the back, under the straps. To the top strap fasten the string of the nose-bag, a calico bag about the size of a pillowslip, containing the tea, sugar and flour bags, bread, meat, baking-powder and salt, and brought, when the swag is carried from the left shoulder, over the right on to the chest, and so balancing the swag behind. But a swagman can throw a heavy swag in a nearly vertical position against his spine, slung from one shoulder only and without any balance, and carry it as easily as you might wear your overcoat. Some bushmen arrange their belongings so neatly and conveniently, with swag straps in a sort of harness, that they can roll up the swag in about a minute, and unbuckle it and throw it out as easily as a roll of wall-paper, and there’s the bed ready on the ground with the wardrobe for a pillow. The swag is always used for a seat on the track; it is a soft seat, so trousers last a long time. And, the dust being mostly soft and silky on the long tracks out back, boots last marvelously. Fifteen miles a day is the average with the swag, but you must travel according to the water: if the next bore or tank is five miles on, and the next twenty beyond, you camp at the five-mile water to-night and do the twenty next day. But if it’s thirty miles you have to do it. Travelling with the swag in Australia is variously and picturesquely described as “humping bluey,” “walking Matilda,” “humping Matilda,” “humping your drum,” “being on the wallaby,” “jabbing trotters,” and “tea and sugar burglaring,” but most travelling shearers now call themselves trav’lers, and say simply “on the track,” or "carrying swag".”

Max

In his mind, Max lived on a boat. Experience had taught him to be judicious about what he brought aboard. The day Max found the amber colored Giant Rock Scallop with an upper valve shaped like the carapace of a crab, he lamented he did not own a shell collection.

Hours earlier, after being issued a small bottle of sun screen, an iron rake and a heavy duty trash bag, Samuel was roughly in the same spot cleaning up dead kelp and pocketing pieces of broken glass. Samuel encountered the magnificent bivalve, perched on the edge of a glistening ledge with its orange lips open. He paused to run his fingers over its half-century surface of scaly riblets. Then, hearing a plea from the scallop's inner sanctum, he hurled the innocent creature into the electric sea.

What Max could "see" was different than the average person. Born with eyes set too close together, he experienced a significant loss of peripheral vision at his outset, much like the lens of a camera. Max constructed his view of the world in frames that were difficult to match up.

A blue truck pulled up alongside Samuel, wheels silenced by the sand. In the back bed, a growing pile of rootless matter attracted flies. The summer storms were turning violent. An ecosystem was having trouble holding on. A rubber insole, a Gucci case and a giant Christmas ball added to the wreckage. Samuel set down his rake to tie off his bags. He counted fifteen, three more than yesterday - no satisfaction in that.

A moment later, Max sailed past, filling his socks and shoes with sand as he ran along the perimeter. If he lacked space in his hatch for something important he would share its coordinates with the sailer of a larger vessel.

With mountains to his right and airplanes ascending to his left, Max chose to focus on the water and sky in his head.

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