Jim Hare classic posts Archives

on the road again

Retirement is a great healer, Walt, at least for monkish sorts like me
who value serenity and the time to fit exercise and contemplation
into slow peaceful days. The nagging symptoms of stress have
disappeared.

A little travel is healing too, as long as it is not carried out in a
frenzy. I like the road, and journaling.

Being on the road means having to take on new routines, but some
habits transfer easily to new places, like having breakfast out. It is a
solitary activity I indulge in from time to time. So it is that I find
myself at the Fat Cat Cafe this morning, the first day of our road trip.
I left Sharon slumbering and slipped out at dawn.

From my booth I can see gulls flying through the morning fog among
the masts of trawlers moored in the dark water.   In the colorless
dawn, the dock looks like a scene from an old black and white
suspense movie.  I can imagine Bogart and Bacall in a setting like
this, collars turned up furtively.  

The shrill cries of the gulls cannot be heard inside because Faith HIll
is singing her pop-rock song Breathe from the overhead speakers in
the warm confines of this steamy pier-side cafe, and it blocks not
only the sounds of the birds, but of the barking seals as well.  

You might ask how I know it is Faith Hill.   Fiction writers always
know who is singing the piped-in songs, after all they write the
stories, but made-up facts do not belong in nonfiction such as this,
so how is it I know the entertainer and song, given that I know
nothing of popular music?  My wife and daughter will be amused to
know that I barely even heard of Faith Hill, that is, I didn’t until I
used the iPhone and the program Shazam to “tag” the music.

How you tag the music is, you point the phone toward the speaker,
and the touch-screen window tells you more than you ever wanted
to know about the song, writer, performer and all the rest.   Because
of that, I am able include a little tidbit of information about the
music right here.  Technology is such a great aid to writers suffering
from shortage of fact.

Even without its animal sounds, the visual panorama of Avila Beach
and the pier draws my attention to the outside.  The nostalgia is
palpable here.  California Central Coast holds so many memories and
feelings from the days my parents lived in the area.  If nostalgia
could take material form, to me it would look like a chill fog
enclosing the pier and fishing fleet in a diorama of mist, the same
way it would have looked to my father in the days he used to launch
his big power boat, Thunder Buns, for ocean fishing trips, and much
the same as it looks today. 

If the scene today was a photo of the setting as Father saw it back
then, it would include a small aluminum boat slicing the smooth
water, with a lone figure hunched in the back of it, with hand behind,
gripping the outboard motor steering arm.  There would be gulls
wheeling in all angles of silhouette against the mist, and in the
parking lot, a fisherman would be arriving in stride with poles and
tackle box in hand and with an angler’s determination on his face.
 Such an image might also contain a chartered whale-watching boat
pulling away from the pier, its decks lined with tourists leaning out
looking into the water, hoping to spot a seal before they leave the
bay. All this I am seeing this morning.  

This view is a live production, a masterpiece of nostalgic maritime
performance art, but it will soon fade before the insistence of the
growing day and the subsequent coming of the gaudy sparkling
blues of sea and sky.  A sunny day can be such a showoff, and a
spell breaker.