2.04.2010

"Shoreline" or "Why canoes and Water Taxi Beach make me uncomfortable."

 

I love the shore of Brooklyn. Be it Coney Island, Plum Beach, Red hook, Dumbo, or the small inlets of Dockside. The closer I get to the shore, the better I feel, the brighter and clearer the sun shines. I like going in the morning, before the nanny/child pilgrims and the surveyors. I like being alone near the shore.

I was afraid of boats for a long time, but really just deep water. I have always attributed it to a Fourth of July in Michigan, 1993 or 4, I think. We were spending the holiday with an older couple; my mom had been tutoring the wife and they invited us to their cottage on a lake near Holland, Michigan. It was evening and my mom and I were sitting on the top of a double-decker pontoon boat which was docked in the back. We were watching some teenagers two properties down, who were setting off fireworks towards the middle of the lake. One of the rockets went sideways and landed in the water a few feet in front of us. The neighbors yelled their apologies, but I was terrified that it was still blazing and was going to pierce one of the floats, like a torpedo, and sink us. I asked my mom if we should go inside, and she said it was okay. The boat wouldn't sink or and they were going to be more careful. A few minutes later, she slammed my head forward onto the AstroTurf flattening herself over me as another stray bounced on the turf behind us, leaving the smell of melted plastic before hissing into the water on the other side. I wasn't scared in the few minutes as we climbed down, just shocked that it had happened again, that I had forseen what my mom couldn't. I am not afraid of fireworks.

The shore line draws me now because it is a definition. It is an end and limit placed on development. House boats and pier resturants keep it from being an edge, but there is only a minimal blur. Everything here is expanding, trying to claim as much space as possible, but the water is there, steady and moving at once. It has no need for gluttony. Thus far, it remains uncolonized by permanent fixtures.

The closer you get to the water in Brooklyn, the further you get from civilization. Even from those western views that afford the grandest views of King Manhattan, you can feel separate. The trains, concieved of and laid down before ferry boats were obsolete, aren't close enough to be convenient. We are on an island, but you must be so intentional about getting to the edge.

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Sure shore: You are there, like the edge of the world; like when He separated night and day and you became the evening and dawn. I am bound to one side by my human nature, though I long to be enveloped by the mystery of the other side.

I love being alone near the shore.

1 comment:

Papa said...

Can totally relate to the fear and the calming feeling being near the waters edge.