small sights

Last night I walked my brief walk home more slowly, without my usual stream of music. I noticed the waxy glow of streetlights against ochre-colored leaves. The empty park, looking forlorn with its absence of dogs and children. The row of red and white headlights, flanking the river, now more visible in the early gloom. And the uneven array of lit windows, offering me a quick glimpse of others' lives—a shopping bag tossed on a table, a man's back as he walks across the room, a television set flickering in the distance.

And as I took pleasure in noticing these small things, I felt wistful too. The flashes of warmth and light against the darkening night made me lonely, made me sad to walk into my own quiet box. I wished I were walking into a bright home, full of movement and bustle and brightness and chatter. I'm usually scared by these things, but I miss them too.

A ramble

Saturday started off with me feeling underslept, overanxious, and a touch ill-kempt. So I bundled my hair into a knob at the back of my head, guzzled some coffee, and went for a stroll around Fresh Pond. It wasn’t entirely attitude changing, since I still spent parts of the weekend not daring to look at things too closely, but it is remarkable what sunlight will do. And blue sky, and bluer water, and colors right out of the paint palette--alizarin crimson, viridian, cadmium yellow.

The sea, the sea

For a good chunk of my adolescent years I wanted to be a marine biologist. I went to summer camp and everything. I wish I had a good story for why I wanted to be a marine biologist, but in fact the idea just popped into my head and took up residence there. As an eleven-year-old I decided zoologists were passé, so marine biology it was. Not the most inspired start and perhaps one of the reasons I wandered down a different path of study. But for many years I spent hours reading and dreaming about the what lies beneath the surface. I could tell you the intricacies of gourami bubble nests and argue that the emerald-eyed chain catshark is one of the sea’s most beautiful fish and describe how limpets return to their home scar with each tide. I had a book on coral reefs and would gaze at the photos, mesmerized by the jeweled dapples of wrasses and nudibrach and haunted by the of a lone diver suspended in inky depths, so eerie and yet familiar.

And then, in common fashion, I grew up and away.

The ocean became the beach, a place where the sun is too hot and the sand rubs your heels and you’re never quite comfortable with how your bathing suit fits. A place of crowds and noise and garbage. A place that held little sway over me.

But this year I felt the sea pull me back. The ocean in the fall is a wondrous thing. It feels new and bare and fresh again once vacationers have left. I only had time for a brief stroll and I regret that I didn't let the waves film over my ankles. But I'm thinking about it still. The way the small rocks and weeds cast tiny shadows in the clear early morning light. The trailing arms of seaweed, so simple and so intricate, remnants of a hidden forest.

I will return again.