Copyright Maria V. Eyles 2014 July 01, 2014
No Fun Sunday
By
Maria
Vidale-Eyles
The
Pismo Beach Car Show is dismantling its tents and concessions at 6:30 Sunday
evening. The bulging attraction, held yearly near Father’s Day, makes Coney
Island in July seem bare and spacious. But the Pismo tourists and fair-goers,
just two hours ago shoulder-to-shoulder, now trickle out singly, squalling
children in tow.
Back
near the Addie street lot, Raphael and I are the sole bodies to show up for my
SOS Beach Clean-Up. Not a surprise, I sigh lightly. Like a friend quipped over
his Starbucks latte, “Who would want to go do that, when they could stay here with friends, or go home and watch The
Amazing Race, or otherwise have fun?”
Raffy
and I descend the stairs behind the old Pierside, a 5-6 block walk on the
boardwalk from where we parked. Sinking into the sand up to our ankles, our
steps spew chutes of sand up our legs as we walk. The sand’s too talc-like to
leave footprints: no proof of our presence here. No one caring about it either.
But we
do. Some oddball things are fun for us OCD people, like cleaning up messes even
if they get your back sore and your ire up.
If
nothing else, the theater for this event is unsurpassed in beauty, yea even by
whatever they want to show you digitally on an Amazing Race rerun. Here
is living joy in color, light, sound, feel and smell...the lowering sun,
highlighting the magical contours of beach and ocean, as if with a Waterman fountain
pen. The cobalt breakers foaming rapturously ashore. The sea breeze cooling the
skin and playing with one’s hair. The briny, vaguely shell-fishy scent. The
mosaics of seaweed clumps resembling vegetables—carrots, onions, and kale. As
your foot steps on the sea carrots, they explode with a satisfying pop. And, as
a bonus, most of the tourists have left the beach.
Of
course, there is the diabolical side of the heavenly theater: the inevitable
debris from “having fun” the American way: “Drop it on the ground and let
someone else clean it up! After all, they pay someone to do that, don’t they?”
No, my
friends. Ocean and beach clean-up depends not only on volunteers, or members of
great organizations like Surfrider Foundation and Greenpeace, but upon every
single living person who is not seriously disabled. As someone wisely said, no
matter where you are on earth, you are still near an estuary to the ocean,
where all the trash ends up.
Looking
around, I’m feeling like the movie theater cleaning “crew” going down the rows
after the main feature has ended. Plastic trash bags, doggy bags, and
protective gloves flap out of my every pocket (though I am lacking a broom and
dust pan). My hands fumble with dog leash, dog and trash picker. Like the movie
usher, I even carry a flashlight in my pocket for when the light fades and
everyone else has gone home.
As the
breeze buffets my trash bag, I fill up most of it before I reach the strand:
plastic bottles, bottle caps, plastic cups, plastic bags, spoons, and forks;
Styrofoam plates and cups pecked into art by the seagulls, so all the tiny
pieces, too; toys, pails, shovels, and sharp plastic shards of same; baby
diapers (yeeew!); beer bottles, soda cans and straws; kites, netting, string,
balloons, chapsticks, wipes, shoes, socks. Add a zillion cigarette butts which
I have no time to remove while I’m alone.
By the
time I reach the waterline, the tide is rambling in. I take out a second bag
and decide to concentrate right there on the waterline. I’m dismayed at how
many plastic bottles are already floating out to sea; how many plastic bags are
already half buried under wet sand; how many plastic straws and bottle caps are
already intertwined in the wet sea plants as if a part of nature now.
It’s
getting later and I have to concentrate, so I let Raphael off the leash. He’s
been on his best behavior, demonstrating his training by helping me or staying
out of the way. Ecstatic to run free, he chases the gulls making his kangaroo-like
hops. He checks into rest stops formed by abandoned sand castles where he seems
to daydream. Yet he prances gracefully out of the way of the incoming waves
hurtling toward us, ready to drench everything in their path.
Yes,
who would want to come out and do this on a Sunday evening? Some kind of no-fun
nutcase, I guess. What compels me to come out here? It is not anger; I could
never do this in an angry spirit. It is the thought of those one million sea
animals who die annually from ingesting plastic, of which our oceans are
inundated. It’s the thought of a bottle cap going down the throat of an
adorable baby seal, or seagull, or otter, or even some ugly fish, and
strangling him. This thought keeps me awake at night. This thought also makes
my job more painstaking because I try to pick up every tiny straw and bottle
cap, even those half buried or hidden in the seaweed.
As I
do this—concentrate on removing as much plastic as I can—my mind slowly stops
grinding with worry over my own life and problems. I stop mentally berating the
Pismo beachgoers for being slobs with no conscience. All annoyance ceases, and
suddenly I gain a focus of attention, a spiritual awareness. With just myself,
my dog, my picker, and this plastic, a new resonance invades me and I feel
connected to all beings and all things.
And
with that connection comes a flowering sense of gratitude. I fantasize that
maybe, just maybe, I might be helping the beautiful ocean and the mysterious
life it enfolds. Like me, it may live one more day. The feeling of serving and
caring—whether it is true or not— sometimes allows this force field of peace to
descend on me, that rare, loving peace that is not of this world.
Wet,
dirty, sore, and alone but for Raphael, I slog back up the sand—much slower
this time— dragging a heavy trash bag, two pails and the dog leash. The fog is rolling
in with the twilight and the Technicolor beauty of a half hour ago has turned
to black and white.
Unloading
the trash, and re-leashing Raphael, I turn back and look at the Pacific Ocean.
Its vehement beauty is undimmed by nightfall; I am overwhelmed by the gift of
it.
Again,
there are no footprints showing we had been on the beach, but a smile deep in
my heart tells me there would have been three sets of footprints, not two.
And
now: How glad I am to report to you that I had no fun on Sunday night.
The End
Please send comments directly to me at
marinastar805@gmail.com
marinastar805@gmail.com
