Last summer I did not go to the beach that often, but one really hot day in August I went to the beach over by the lighthouse. When I got there the parking lot was packed, and I had to circle to find a spot.
The beach was full of people sitting on towels reading, sleeping, and getting sun. A couple of kids were playing catch with a football, and someone was flying a red kite. I always remember colorful kites, I guess because you have to look so hard to see them, squinting into the sun to catching a glimpse of color against the bleached blue sky. Someone had a radio on, and I remember the disc jockey talking about the temperature, and playing the Aerosmith song about summertime and it is hot in the city, and then something about sweaty and gritty.
I am not much for crowds, and I do not really swim when I go to the ocean, I get wet, but I do not swim around. So I went for a walk, right at the edge of the water, and after a while it was less crowded, there were less people, and the people that were out there were either walking like me, or had found a secluded spot to read. I came into a sheltered area where there was not any waves, and the ground felt more like dirt than sand. I was feeling into the sandy dirt with my feet, and I felt something sort of sharp and hard, and so I reached in with my hand and fished around and found an oyster. I thought, wow, I did not know that there even were oysters here! I thought it was only clams, so I became interested, and started to examine this peculiar oyster.
The strangest think happened then, the oyster opened up, and out came a solid gold ancient solidus, a Roman coin I had seen recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I thought, holy smokes, this oyster must be sixteen hundred years old! I wonder how it kept that coin in such neat condition all those years, and then the oyster opened up its calcified little lips again, and out popped another gold Roman solidus coin!
I thought to myself this oyster is very special, and I need to find a good home for it, but I do not know how I can take it away from here and let it live. So, I will put it down, and then come back and retrieve it when I have an aquarium for it to live in. So I gently placed the golden oyster back in the water and down into the gritty soil. Looked around for any landmarks so I could be sure of where I was so I could find the golden oyster again.
I went home, and then to the pet store where I bought a salt water aquarium, and I filled it and placed soil and sand in the bottom of the tank, and then walked back to the same spot where I had found the oyster before. I started to look, and I looked, and I looked, everywhere for some Gulf oysters but there was no oyster to be found. I found a few ordinary clams, and saw a few small fish, and the seagulls were playing with a ripped bag of potato chips, but I could not find my oyster again.
1 comments:
i once saw an oyster carrying a woman to the beach. she had attendants on the shore waiting for her. there was also a dude blowing at her from the left hand side and all of the waves looked like little "v" shapes. so, i named her "venus" (after the razor that they sell to women who need to shave). i faintly heard the sound of (now country star?) jewel singing a song about intuitions. i quickly realized i was embedded in a series of commercials for womens' razors. oh my!
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