Walking. Blue on Bone.

Posted on by Live & Learn

High Tide. 100% overcast. Winds spitting rain. 45° F — wet, wet to the bone. DeLillo’s dusk, silence, iron chill.

It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone. – Don DeLillo, White Noise.

I stare at the photo. A sad looking street light slouches heavily downward, destroying the symmetry of the view. One sweep of the trackpad and Photoshop clears the way, leaving the foreground awash in its light. There, all better. Gone. No irony in that. No sirree. Street light straining to stand, its light straining to illuminate our way. Blue Blue Blue horizon.

I walk. 1,797 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

It’s early in the season. Plastics. Bags. Cups. Straws. Bottles. Food containers. I can’t walk 5 yards without encountering more plastics. Leap forward 20 years and I’m walking on this same shoreline. No birds, or birdsong. Sea foam laps the shoreline, plastics, needles, human refuse, all swimming in a red chemical bath. McCann’s perpetually falling man.

Jesus, you are in a dark place.

I walk.

Green head mallards foraging.

Canadian Geese overhead, the whoosh of their wing flaps.

Wild Turkey calls from the Bird Sanctuary.

Osprey circling high overhead.

Then a flock of Atlantic Brants with their guttural crrrrrrrronks.

“This is the world as it is,” he said. “Impossible. And f*$&king beautiful.” — Colum McCann, Twist

I bend down to pick up a water bottle lodged between rocks, and walk it to the trash can. Hopeless!

“What can any one person do?’ he said.
‘Each person does a little something,’ I said, ‘and there you are.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night (Delacorte Press, Feb 1962)

26 thoughts on “Walking. Blue on Bone.”

  1. It’s not all bad DK. I have the same picture. Crooked light post and all. Good reminder that we all have our flaws. We’re all trying our best. We’re all “just walking each other home”. Ram Dass.

  3. I’ve had those feelings so many times. How I feel about it depends on the day and how it’s going. A lot of wishful thinking. Wish it could be how it was, but then in the next breath I’m already thinking ” but then I’d have to live in the world the way it was back then.” You can’t cherry pick. You have to take the whole package. So I resolve to make the best of what we have now, and do my bit, one piece of garbage at a time.

  4. Hard not to get down in the dumps these days, pal. I am right there with you. And then this morning, in the quiet pre-dawn hours, I step out the door and a giant, majestic owl soars overhead on silent wings and for a moment, my spirit soars, too.

  5. “Impossible, and f$&%ing beautiful!”
    Yes!
    I’m reading a book right now that is a good reminder we have been close to doom before, this close, maybe even closer. And we as human race have recovered over and over.
    What do we do now, we sit tight. We take care of our own. Keep at it. The little bit we can.
    Over and over again, something or someone keeps shaking this big pot to remind us, we are all each other’s own. Until we learn.

    Thanks again and again, for providing this safe place.

  7. It isn’t hopeless as long as a few of us carry the light and concern for the earth. So many don’t even notice.
    That is what you bring. Noticing and caring. 💖

  10. We’re caught in the human paradox – we want clean air if someone else makes it so. We want pristine access to the water – as long as someone else clears the path. Frustrating?? You betcha? Predictably wrong headed? No doubt. Louise Penny writes that ‘we are all blighted and blessed. The question is ‘which do you count?’ That too is variable – but which do you count?

  11. When we go for long walks, we always take a contractor bag to fill with refuse. Tho there is little here compared to New Mexico, that bag gets more full than it should every time. But what a sublime feeling to relieve mother nature of that ugliness.

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