“I’ll have the Iced Caffe Latte with an extra shot of espresso, please.”
“Sure, anything else for you today?” Yes, happiness.
“No, that’s all.”
“That’ll be $4.73, please.”
I hand over my loyalty card and it’s all taken care of. I observe the -4.73 on the screen of the register. I’m working out the difference between Café, Caffe, and coffee in my head while shuffling around, trying to remain in the key position that is closest to the drinks maker and the self serve sections and yet is neither in the way of the people ordering their drinks, nor those getting them. My Latte is ready shortly and I decide on a rough measurement of pure cane syrup, I usually end up making it on the sweet side. I try to make it less so this time around. They should really have a pump on that bottle. Oh well, the rugged granite blocks that make up the breakers will make short work of any extra sugar in my drink. Not that I need to worry about my sugar, at 155lbs I can afford to indulge… I decide that that was a stupid thought and leave the coffee shop. I ignore the men sitting on the benches outside; I ignore their stares. I have my poker face on. It’s not that I really want to ignore them, I don’t actually, I want to be looked at, and I want to look back, too. I just don’t.
The rocks couldn’t come sooner, my eager feet craving the rough surface. I want to feel the stone against my skin, the warmth generated by the sun’s rays, the thin film of sand coating the unevenness of the base, the unevenness itself. But I don’t want to risk getting injured. So I keep my cheap flip flops, made in China, on. Good to have that extra grip. Not that there is much of it really, just a patch of rubber. How did we evolve to be such tenderfeet? I’ll walk barefoot! I’ll do it once I reach the beach… I’ll do it on the soft sand. That spot with the extra soft sand.
The tide is low now and the smell of the bay is strong. A smell that is truly an over-glorified stench, the stench of the seaweed getting roasted in the sun, the stench of the dead crabs decaying after being crushed by the seagulls that feast on them, the stench of the bird droppings. All of this mixed up with an undertone of wet salty dirt. And yet this stench, this smell, is somehow appealing, it’s triggering. Is it memories of childhood growing up on the warm coast of the Black Sea? Or is it something far deeper, far older, a memory of a time when our ancestors crawled out of the primordial sea mush and onto the sands, onto the rocks of beaches long gone? A place remotely similar to this, perhaps, the breakwater in Provincetown? It smells differently when the tide is high- crispier, cleaner. A smell I call Oxylium Marine which is the patented name the French cosmetic company Phytomer has given to an algae extract used in their products. It sounds sort of befitting, sort of exhilarating, oxygenating, and unmistakably marine. I focus on negotiating the rocks.
It’s easy at first, manageable, but soon it becomes more challenging. I suspect the builders simply got fed up with neatly arranging the rocks at some point. This part here spelling out: “Oh, fuck it!” That lasts for awhile and then again the rocks turn orderly, as if the builders felt guilty at their previous erratic behavior but did not care enough to go back and fix it and instead chose to show with their future endeavors that they do, indeed, mean well. This pattern repeats itself several times. The rocks, it seems, an embodiment of human patience.
The breakwater was, in fact, built in 1911 by the Army Corp of Engineers to prevent sand from washing into the Provincetown harbor. It used to be a dyke but then that became inappropriate at some point, kind of how Santa’s “Ho Ho Ho!” fell out of grace and was replaced by a “Ha Ha Ha!” The former resulting from the tight grip of gay culture on Provincetown, the latter- that of hip hop culture on America. My friends and I prefer to say “the Breakers.” It seems a bit more casual, a bit more personable. It’s really just a jetty that cuts through the marshlands thus connecting P-town with the very tip of Cape Cod and the two lighthouses perched there- the Wood End and Long Point. Regardless, the breakwater quickly became a favorite pass time for the locals. I can kind of see the recreational value in it. It fits perfectly into America’s insatiable appetite for physical extortion. I can see how back in the day, in those gymless days people could’ve used these rocks as a form of work out. Great cardio really. But in truth, what else was there to do back in those days, those touristless days, when Provincetown had just made the transformation from a small fishermen village to a bourgeoning art colony. It’s quite beautiful, too. There is of course that to it. Very picturesque. But beauty loses its luster once it becomes so omnipresent.
“Hello,” someone says to me. Ah yes…
“Hello, how are you?”
“Very good and you?”
I’m in quite the mood actually but I still go for the customary “Well, thanks!” as if denying the truth will make it go away and something else, something prettier, will manifest itself instead. Tipping is customary, too.
“Gorgeous day, isn’t it?” Gee, I hadn’t noticed… The sun is out, the clouds look happily scattered about the bright blue sky, the breeze, the breeze is keeping us all cool. Seriously, it doesn’t get any better than this.
“It truly is!” The guy seems satisfied with my response, his face saying: “Thank you for verifying that, I thought I was hallucinating.”
And I wonder- are we done yet? We are it seems. We both continue in our respective directions, feeling validated. People on the breakers and their “Hello”-s… and their “Hello”-s, and their “Good Morning!”-s, and their “How are you?”-s… I’m good and yourself? I’m fine and you? I’m fine. Just fine. I’ll be alright.
I pass a woman that is walking slowly and absentmindedly. Before her a three-legged dog. Must be hers. The dog walks pretty fast but then as soon as it gets far ahead, it stops, turns back catches up with me, and then, again, proceeds in the same manner- a two steps forward one step backwards kind of thing. I slow down and allow for the woman to catch up.
“Beautiful dog,” I say. Is it really?
“Thank you, it’s my son’s, he is ahead.” Ah, yes, further out, boring looking guy, at least from behind. So it’s her son’s. “Well, she isn’t his.” No, it’s not, and it’s a she, a she dog, not a bitch. “He is just dog sitting for a friend.”
“Ah!” As if that explains everything, everything there is to be explained. Ever. “She was doing this thing where she was racing me.” I realize how silly that probably sounds.
“Yea, she seems to like doing that.”
I offer a smile and leave the woman to her saunter. I race some more with the three-legged she-dog, she has that “See, I still got it going on” attitude. And I appreciate that. The will, the will to keep going. I will to keep going.
“Beautiful dog,” I say to the son on passing him. He offers an irritated sounding “Thanks.” Stuck up. Boring and stuck up. I drink some of my Latte, in a very “I got this on you!” kind of way. What do I care anyway? What does it matter?
That dog reminded me of another time I was out here, another one of my daily walks. It was really foggy then. Turned out to be a beautiful day later but that morning, the rocks seemed to disappear in the fog creating a very eerie feel. And there was a mastiff playing in the exposed grass very close to the end of the breakers, very close to where I am right now actually, the scene with the dog, the swamp-like land, and the fog inevitably evoking the hound of the Baskervilles. Which isn’t fair, as that dog was having a ball in the grass, nothing particularly vicious about it. But hey, I still think clowns are creepy and I have Stephen King to blame for that. Every time I see one I think of his “It” and I expect that behind that ridiculous smile is an even more ridiculous array of sharp crooked teeth.
I reach the end of the breakers thinking about demon clowns. This place doesn’t look like a place water gets to. Or at least it hasn’t gotten to in a long while. Makes you wonder what are the rocks breaking out here? Perhaps some day the rising seas will wash upon them once more before swallowing them in and turning them into a feature of the seafloor. The Army Corp of Engineers clearly didn’t intend to make this last part of their endeavor walkable. The way the rocks are dangled around spells out a big “Are we done yet?” I walk them, nonetheless, or perhaps in spite and a little accusatory. It’s one of those “Really now I would’ve done this better” attitudes, when, in fact, I probably wouldn’t have a clue what to do, let alone a desire to partake in anything that involves the lifting of granite slobs. That’s what we got cranes for.
I choose a spot where I can sort of prop myself, really no better way to call the uncomfortable but yet again in spite of way of sitting down that I settle for. It’s a nice spot, this. I’m sure the spot would like being thought of as a nice spot. The dunes of the Provincelands open up directly upfront. The outer side of the Cape is visible. To the left the Long Point Lighthouse makes a shy appearance above a much closer sand dune and to the right the Wood End lighthouse stands looking bare as if to advertise what goes in those dunes. It’s a crossroads really, a place where the opportunities are many and begging. This is where I stand, this is my spot. On those rocks, staring out into the Provincelands, all that has transpired transpiring.
I can hear the distant loudspeaker of a whale watching boat. We watch the whales these days. We no longer hunt them. Whale watching, really, being the natural evolution of whale pestering. Less harmful. I wonder if the whales really just want to be left alone. I relate to them on that level. I think of a future where everything is left to its own workings. Will such a future really be so dire? Or will it simply restore a pristine state, or a post-intrusive one anyhow, no longer meddled with. The way the ocean looks from the fast ferry to Boston I’ve taken so many times- endless and sort of smooth and rough at the same time, textured, a bit like skin viewed under a magnifier. A state like that.
I think I’ll cross the dunes over to the other side and then head to the Long Point Lighthouse and come back on this side. I carefully stand up. I have the urge to click Undo. That annoys me a little. The fact that I’ve spent so much time in front of a computer that my brain’s logical solution to a situation such as this is: Press Undo. If I had the power to… if I had the power to Undo, I’d be tempted to just Shift + Delete the whole thing.
I step off the rocks at last and, again, have the urge to take my flip flops off. I obey this time, despite knowing that the sand over here is way too hot to walk on barefoot. I tolerate the burning for a short bit and then, after the success of my little rebellion, I put the flip flops back on. I don’t like walking on sand with flip flops, they do this thing where they shoot up sand and, since I have my pants rolled up to the knees, that sand gets stuck in there. There’ve been times when I’ve had so much sand stuck in there that my pants have felt noticeably heavier. Although there is some sort of satisfaction in unrolling the pants and watching the sand fall off. It’s the same kind of satisfaction you get from popping bubble wrap. It’s a quirky kind of fun.
The path through the dunes is winding and often branches or gets lost in the sand, so I’m more following footprints than an actual path, a bit like a tracker, like one of those manhunt shows on TV. My thoughts are interrupted by a scene to the right that resembles a junkyard. Plastic, aluminum, rubber, all the usual suspects, scattered everywhere. I’m angered, but something else, too, something that’s actually stronger than my anger. I’m insulted. Insulted. This always happens to me when I pass this spot, so it’s become a habitual feeling. It’s sort of proprietary in nature. What is this doing on my land? I know all too well that this scene is but a preview, a foreword of what the beach looks like. The litter over there gets weathered so much that even though you immediately recognize it as something foreign, often times the shapes are quite organic, quite natural. They sure have become.
Finally, after marching through a narrow passage that seems to be loosing a fight with the grass, I reach the beach. The high tide has left a very clear, very well pronounced boundary on the sand. It’s made out of a mixture of dry seaweed, broken shells, and junk. I spot a few nice pieces of driftwood. I like driftwood, it’s sort of smooth and sad and beautiful. I vigorously shake off my flip flops as if a couple of insects had just landed on my feet. The sand feels warm and coarse and alternates between smoother and gravelly patches. I hurry towards the water, the pull of the ocean, almost gravitational now, I simply must touch it. I walk absentmindedly, faster on the smoother sand, slower on the gravelly. I feel like the salt water that makes up my body is trickling down towards the salt water of the ocean. It, too, wishes to join the tide. My feet touch the water at last and it’s a reunion of sorts, the velvety embrace of the waves- welcoming, nurturing. I imagine that this is what it would feel like when I see my family again, it’s been six years.
I wade parallel to the beach in the warm, or not so warm water. It seems indiscriminative- there goes a warm layer, and then there goes a cold one. It’s a bit confused, disoriented, as if the ocean upon reaching the shore is trying to make up its mind. The wading is quite enjoyable, and after awhile- a bit demanding physically, but that, I think, augments the experience by adding to it the joy of exhausting, the joy of burning out. And so I wade, I wade for awhile, not sure or not caring about the passing of time. I do at some point in my wading register that the tide is coming, the water creeping further and further into the sand, inconspicuously. Relax, it’s not gonna hurt.
I eventually leave the alternatingly warm and cold water and begin walking on the sand. I put my sandals on when the beach becomes too rough and I take them off as soon as the sand is softer. I love the scraping of the sand grains against my feet. Further down, nestled in the bird nesting area (piping plovers and least terns nest here, or at least so the numerous signs inform me), lies the place with the softest sand on the entire beach. It's a small strip of land that is only accessible during low tide (the water covers it completely during high tide) that feels very much like and may have very well been the entrance of a tidal pool that has since vanished. I am headed there now and my eagerness is showing or perhaps I’m feeling the combination of the caffeine and the endorphins in my brain released by the physical effort.
Again the litter, the plastic bottles, the aluminum cans, the rubber, the glass. Something in the sand catches my attention. It's brownish and spade-shaped. It blends in with the litter and yet it stands out. Something that seems neither a product of man, nor a product of nature. Or at least not a nature that I'm familiar with. Perhaps an alien kind of nature? I move closer. Ah, I see, why a horseshoe crab! It’s flipped over and covered in a mixture of sand and seaweed. I push it with my foot to examine it better and as if summoned back from another realm, it moves. I find something incredibly bizarre about horseshoe crabs- the feeling that I’m staring at a picture from a time long long gone, a glimpse into the past, the past of the world. The incredible force that is evolution has decided, for once, to forgo it’s quest to better, to perfect, and this simple looking organism is the It, the Eureka, a creature made some half a billion years ago that still is. Helpless in the sand, flipped upside down by whichever of the numerous forces of man or nature capable of doing so, lies a creature that was around at the dawn of the age of animals. It crawled along the first land vertebrates, then the dinosaurs, then the megabeasts, it survived countless cataclysms of apocalyptic proportions, it endured relatively unchanged, and for the past 2 or so million years it has observed the age of man, unimpressed. Living in its own universe of tides where vast changes go unnoticed, where the world is the same in all of its transformations, in all of its incarnations. The same. And when the age of man comes to a close and the plastic, and the aluminum, and the glass have been crushed to sand, when we are no longer, this creature will endure, will remain, out of habit, out of spite, thanks to whatever constant in the ever so complex mathematical equation of life has warranted its existence, has ordained that this creature shall be while vast numbers of others shall perish. It’s amusing to know that there is, indeed, a sense of justice, a sense of humor, a real love in it all. I pick the crab up, gently. Its shell feels soft and hard at the same time, smooth. I hurry to the water and place it on the wet sand, the advancing water caressing it. I leave it to the tide, which will revive it, and I feel like I’ve left the audience of something before us, before history, before God.
I reach the place with the softest sand, the water creeping noticeably faster now, no longer conspicuous, but instead determined, as if it remembers now what its original intention was, a recall of sorts, and it's finally focusing its full attention to fulfilling this intention. And as the pool begins to fill, my mind contracts, relaxes, and begins to empty. At last that moment of profoundness, at last the gusto, the reason I come here so often. There in the sand, the soothing grinding of the grains; the sun, intense, magnified, made omnipresent by its reflection on the flat surface; the terns with their high pitch calls, white darts overhead, paper planes; and the ocean, churning, brooding, brooding. No one here. This is it. This moment. This mercy…
I saunter in a haze, a state I imagine to be the privilege of those lost in the desert. Surreal, half into this world, and half into another. As I start circling the Long Point Lighthouse I begin to see people again, although, at first, I don't really see them. I want my bliss to linger but at the same time I feel that I'm through with it, the way things only make sense if they're finite. The people, the people who took out a boat to come here and lounge, sunbathe, splash in the water. Families with their kids, and their beach gear, the boats anchored but a few feet away, sprawled around. Conquerors and explorers, victorious, standing at the tip of the Cape, the peculiar curve it makes before finally the land yields to the water. A good spot really, as the Provincetown harbor opens up, the water becomes warmer. I remain impartial for the next a hundred or so yards the people last before, again, the beach returns to fairly empty.
I see a boat approaching in the near distance, late arrivals. It’s a gay couple, or a couple of gay guys anyway, tanned, worked out, barely clothed in skimpy bathing suits. They disembark and anchor the boat in the sand. I don’t know if I’m ready yet to interact but I’m headed straight for them and there is no one else around to bear the social burden. One of the guys offers me a smirk when he sees me and a “Where is the Dunkin Donuts out here?” I’m startled, not so much by the line but the fact I’m being summoned to a conversation.
“Dunkin Donuts? There isn’t one here.” His smirk freezes and for a second a confusion passes his face. He quickly returns to the smirk, motions towards my now empty cup of Iced Caffe Latte with an extra shot of espresso, please, and tries:
“Did you get that out here?”
“Across.” I motion towards the harbor. “I got it from Joe’s.”
He gives up, the smirk goes, and he offers a smile instead. “Yes, I know Joe’s, good coffee…” and then in a defeated and muffled manner, as if he didn’t really want to say it: “I was just joking you know.” He was just joking, you know.
I give him a smile, I can manage quite a charming one, and that seems to please him. I leave them, without closing the conversation with niceties. I can’t save that one, I don’t feel like trying. In the days to come others will make the same joke, and I will laugh, I will say things like “The coffee shop is right at the lighthouse, you should try their muffins, they’re delicious.” But not today, not this time.
A shipwreck comes in sight, there are many between the lighthouse and the breakwater. They are sometimes hard to spot at first as the tides have them buried in the sand in such a way that they blend with the rest of the junk on the beach. There goes an angled piece of rusted iron, or a peculiar chunk of wood, you can tell it was painted, although the paint is worn off. And then another, and another. A murder mystery unfolds, a film noir, the ocean- the femme fatale. Was this a…? And this, perhaps this was…? And then you see it, the haggard hull, the torn mast. The one I’m staring at right now evokes a megalodon jaw, the woodwork sticking out, serrated, looking sharp and hungry and yet lying here helpless, defeated, like the horseshoe crab, flipped over on its back. The winds, the waves eating away at it in a casual and uninterested manner, quite different from their savage and unmerciful ways when the vessel was hammered into the beach and torn apart. Toying with it now, the way a cat toys with a mouse it has killed simply for the joy of the hunt but has no real interested in eating. And so the forces at work here grind away at the wreck like sandpaper. The tide now covering most of it, soon to submerge it completely. The ocean saying, in that Mary McDonnell voice, “I’m coming for you, I’m coming for all of you.”
I walk away from the water, as if the threat is imminent. And I almost end up stepping on a bird skeleton. I’ve seen them out here. This is where the birds come to feed and nest, but also this is where they come to die. It could’ve been snatched by a coyote or worse by a domestic dog, its owners having disrespected the “No pets!” signs. Or it could’ve been far more benign, old age. Its wings and tail feathers are still attached but the rest of the body is cleaved clean. I have the urge to bite it. Chew on those perfect bones and swallow. It’s a peculiar urge, the kind that tells you to jump from a bridge, to smash your car against a pole. This bird, so real. A starkness about it but none of the grotesque, none of the odd beauty, a simple matter of fact, made vivid, like a black and white movie in Technicolor. No burial for the bird, no cremation. It simply lied here, until the flesh dropped off its bones, until it looked like a miniature shipwreck- there goes the hull, there goes the mast. I feel for it. Not a sadness, or pity. I simply feel for it. A raw emotion.
As I walk back to the breakwater, I think about the shipwrecks and the bird, the horseshoe crab, the litter. I briefly and hurriedly wade through a tidal pool, now filled with water and I seek out the soft sand on the other side. I follow a path left by people before me who also sought the soft sand. I put my feet in their footprints, I take in the Oxylium, and I feel ready to forgive. I think that one day, when the time comes, I’d like my ashes to be scattered here. What seems like a morbid thought for this gorgeous day feels in fact quite comforting and organic. And I retain this feeling, this sense of belonging as I slowly walk back to town, saying “Hello” to the people on the breakers, asking them about their days. I smile and they smile. I watch their faces light up. And in those “Hello”-s, something special. A shared tenderness. Human kindness.
Written by Ivan Danou © 2009
