Two Days at the Coast

We went to West Beach on Saturday. The sea was the colour of prune juice. An ancient sea. A Mediterranean wine dark sea. The waves lifted and stretched before crashing. That was the moment you could see the prune juice and oxidized apple, with brownish white foam on the top.

The foam cascaded from the wavetops in bubbles that fetched up in pink scummy heaps mixed with seaweed and shivered in the wind.

That was Saturday.

On Sunday we went to Seacliff. We didn't go down on the sand. I had my camera and thought I'd take photos of flowers in the sandhills, and call them Flowers of the Coast. Some of the flowers were conventional flowers. Gazanias, portulacas, and stocks.

Then there were the unconventional flowers. The cat's head, the talking fish, the rusty solar pole and the little girl in the pink skirt. I shall elaborate tomorrow.

No, I have space here. I shall do the cat.

The Cat's Head Flower. This was......

No. I won't. It's getting bitty. It will be better if I do it tomorrow.

Ending Up With Six

Because it is now only warm in the middle of the day we went out in the middle of the day.

We took a picnic.

The picnic was egg and cucumber sandwiches. A seagull came to watch us eat the sandwiches. Yes, we were at the beach. We were the only people who didn't have a dog.

I had brought my camera. Everywhere there were beautiful scenes. Yachts with coloured sails crowded the horizon, and painted clouds reflected tranquilly in the water pools. Stacks of seaweed mouldered in the sun. A razor shell stood up of its own accord.

Outside the kiosk a redhaired cherub ran away from her brother and hid. An old woman and an old man with a walking stick walked slowly off the jetty arm in arm. A fat lady carried a loaded tray inside. The sun glared lowly.

I took sixteen photographs.

When I got home I was unhappy twice. First because I somehow lost the photographs. Then Allan found them. But second because the beautiful scenes had retreated and diminished, and I ended up with six.

Sponge Crab and Decorator Crab

I was telling Pliny the Elder about my visit to the new Biodiversity Gallery in the SA Museum.

It was good, I said.

What did you learn? he asked.

That put me on the spot.

Umm, I learned ......

I tried to remember what I had learned. I had seen a great deal. A number of stuffed birds and snakes that I seemed to have seen before in earlier galleries. Drawers full of spiders and beetles and butterflies on pins. Numerous excited children and their parents. But what had I learned?

Suddenly I remembered the brightly coloured models of the Sponge Crab and the Decorator Crab.

There is a crab called the Sponge Crab, I said knowledgeably. It carries a sponge about on its back as a shelter. The sponge grows with the crab. If the sponge gets stolen, the crab will try very hard to get it back. If it can't, it will find itself another sponge.

Fascinating, said Pliny the Elder. What else?

There is another crab, called the Decorator Crab, that is equally strange, I told him. This crab uses snippers to snip off bits of seaweed that it finds, and sticks them to its back with glue that it secretes from a gland. It does this as a means of camouflage.

Snippers? said Pliny sharply. Where does it get the snippers?

Oops! I said. I can't remember that.

Amo marem

I'm trying out the motto, I love the sea, or Amo marem.

I love the sea. I must be near it. If I'm not within half an hour of it, I feel trapped. Travelling inland, I am uneasy, and long to escape to the coast.

That is not strictly true.

This is true: When I am inland in a foreign country, I feel uneasy and long to escape to the coast.

I used to think this was because I am descended from a tribe of coastal dwellers. But perhaps I just want to go home.

My grandmother loved the sea. She liked to live close to it. She would stride along the shore, taking in deep breaths of salty air, and say "Smell the ozone!" As a child I thought that ozone smelt like seaweed.

My mother loves the sea. She lives near it. She deviates to look at it, gazing through the windscreen of her car on a windy day. In fine weather she sits on a wooden seat and dreams of sailing.

I do not dream of sailing. I do not smell the ozone as a conscious act. I am the sea.

The light gleaming dimly like eels through the shallows on a summer's evening gleams through me. I am as thick as turkish delight. I lick the apple peel seaweed and the threaded brown polyps. I fizz around a discarded corn cob, and shift a shell. I hold dolphins and lift green inflatable dinghies with boys inside. My waves run on golden rails. I outstay the orange sun, and the sand which is violet and grey. I fluoresce momentarily. Electric blue, then black.

Tiger Lily Swallows the Sea

Tiger Lily loves Port Noarlunga,
she especially loves it today.
She walks up Clare Street under blue trees and sky
till it's laid out as if on a tray.
She swallows the air, which is draftful and cool
And eats up the lifesavers' tent.
She devours the reef and the jetty
and the steps that are made of cement.

Tiger Lily loves Port Noarlunga
She especially loves it today.
She swallows the sea which is wine green and blue
She swallows the sand and the seaweed too.
She wishes to swallow it all down inside her
if only her tummy were bigger and wider.

Tiger Lily loves Port Noarlunga
She especially loves it today.
She swallows the children
She swallows a ball,
She swallows the cliffs that are crunchy and tall,
She wishes that she could just swallow it all
and keep it forever this way.

Tiger Lily loves Port Noarlunga
She especially loves it today.
She thinks if she could
drink the tide in full flood
and take in the sky
through the gap in her eye,
if she could just bite
at the dog on the right
which is tied to a board
and is being ignored

then this will have been a good day