lives and Times

 

Two o'clock in the morning, 2:43 a.m., soon three o'clock, way predawn dark out here on 7H porch, the lights of a single craft out on St Andrews Bay, a shrimp boat trawling. They're night workers, but we watched them go out early last evening, let their net down well before sunset. People working to make a living. 

In the dark, the faint sound of voices back and forth may be coming across the water from people on the shrimp boat, IDK. Or it may be people camping overnight on the beach below or in the park next door. 

Not necessarily the best, but If one is lazy, then eighty-something and retired is the good better part of life. Except perhaps to reclaim some memories and moments, I have no desire whatsoever to be younger, nor would I swap places with any young, younger person under the sun. 

Okay, I ramble by nature. What do I remember about shrimp boats? Forty to forty-five years ago, waking up this hour at The Old Place, all windows open as there was no air conditioning, having been jolted awake by the loud, noxious - - obnoxious would be a more apt word except that the noise was detrimental to the sleep of people in houses along the bayshore - - pop-pop-pop-pop-popping of a boat engine out on the Bay. New, the fishermen were Vietnamese folks who'd immigrated to America as the result of our involvement in their war there. Lots of them came, and were welcomed, taken in, assimilated. I think many were Christian, mostly Catholic. Our parish in Pennsylvania sponsored a Vietnamese family or two those years in the early 1980s, and when we arrived here in 1984 we found the our home parish, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church had as well, in fact, a Vietnamese family were engaged, the husband, father as chef for Holy Nativity Episcopal School. 

Wandering off again, dammit. Where was I? Oh, awakened in the wee hours to the sound of the boat engine coming into my upstairs bedroom from way out on the Bay. Memories: it stirred a memory. As I graduated and we left the University of Michigan spring summer 1963, the Navy transferred us to Japan, where I was stationed in Yokosuka and we lived in Yokohama our three-year tour there. 

A popular shopping area, and our favorite, was Motomachi. My Japanese is pretty well gone, but it was Motomachi Cho, "cho" meaning "street". (cool it! I know the American custom and the different British custom, and it's my blog: I put the quote/period or period/quote wherever I damn well please and I try to avoid being consistent). Motomachi, the shopping area was a few blocks long, traditional, old fashioned Japanese, Old Japan where shopkeeper families lived upstairs. The street was wide enough to parallel-park your car, and we usually had no trouble finding a parking place. 

A block or so off Motomachi was a waterway that opened to Tokyo Bay. I'd have to look at a map to see if it was a river, a narrow bayou, or what exactly, but one bank of the waterway, the side adjacent to Motomachi, was lined with long barges, barge-like vessels that were both the residence and the means of living for fisherfolk families who lived on them. Over the waterway was a low, arched bridge for cars, pedestrians to cross.

Okay, I googled, the waterway was a canal, there's Motomachi shopping street and the canal and bridge just as I remember. It appears that the street on the north side of the canal has given way to K3, a major motorway. 

A treat was to be there, driving across the bridge or along the street on the north side (where the Yokohama Chevrolet dealer was), and see the barges leaving to go out fishing for the day, or arriving back at their berth in the evening. Each barge was driven by a single-cylinder engine that sounded a loud, obnoxious pop--pop-pop-pop as the barge moved along. It was the same sound as, fifteen and twenty years later, I heard from the Vietnamese shrimp boats trawling St Andrews Bay overnight.

With the door and all windows open in the upstairs Bayfront bedroom, you wanted to get to sleep early, before the boat noise started. The memory wasn't disturbed until a few years later when we put in a window unit to cool that bedroom at night and closed the door and windows.

The Vietnamese fishermen, Japanese barge pop pop pop pop memory flits through my mind unfailingly these quiet nights on 7H porch when there's a shrimp boat out on the Bay.

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Stirring memories wasn't what I had in mind when I came out here with my coffee two hours ago. I was thinking, as often comes to mind for contemplation, how much I have enjoyed my life and Time as a human being, appreciating being human instead of a different kind of animal. I wonder what life might have been like as the mosquito who just lit on my arm (we almost Never have insects up this high). Or the fly Linda saw inside the other day when we opened all the doors while we cooked steak. Or one of the crickets that I hear chirping, what's its life and awareness like, is it glad it's a cricket instead of human? Is it wary of birds looking for breakfast? A fish-hawk, the osprey that flew close by 7H window, the osprey who hovered peering at me while I sat out here on 7H porch the other day - - what was he thinking? The osprey that flew by, out over the Bay, hovered, then dove, splashed, surfaced with a long silver mullet, and flew away to tear at it. 

The mullet: how does the mullet feel about life? Swims in the Bay shallows just beyond 7H, scoops up whatever mullet eat (they don't have teeth and chew, they swallow their food, and the gizzard does the grinding, is the way I understand it from my father), leaps, as mullet jump, splashes back in the Bay only to be seized in the grappling claws of an osprey, flown the the birds' nest, and lies there jumping and flapping while being torn apart and eaten bit by bit: I'm glad I'm not a mullet, eh? But I could just as well have been. 

What's it like to be my Kristen's cat Pacey, standing at the doorway as Kris opens the door, and meowing for attention and supper but mostly for attention? Does Pacey ever wonder why he's not a human? On my visit to the dermatologist yesterday, we talked about the doctor's English bulldogs, what would my life be like if I were one of them? Or the flea jumping around looking for a juicy spot to sink in my teeth and sip?

[These parasitic insects have mouths can pierce the skin and find the blood vessels, making sure that blood flows so they can feed. A flea's mouth is made from three parts that act like tiny needles. Two of the needles pierce the skin and cut all the way down to the blood vessel. (web)]

What if I'd not been a human? What if I'd been a different animal, how would life be as some other kind of animal, they are as alive as I am, what's a flea's point of view? Or, again, how would it be if I were an ant going out to forage and coming across an ant from a neighboring anthill? Or a sparrow? Does God really care more for me than for a sparrow, the sparrow is a live creature with a life, just as I am. Or a mite, what if instead of life as a white male human American here on Earth in this Time, I'd been a mite on a sparrow? What would my world and life be like, would I have any worries, and would God love me? Does God love living creatures, human, raccoon, bird or insect, who have no awareness of God? Talk to me about salvation, being "saved". Do all dogs go to heaven? Does who goes to heaven, whatever heaven is, depend on who You believe goes to heaven?

Thinking about life and others who have life, and about my life and Time and about another living creature's life and Time seems like a particular privilege of being human. What do you think?

I'm contemplating from a human male's point of view, what's the mite's point of view? What's God's point of view?

In the photo below, two pelicans are sitting on the pilings at the end of the hurricane- and Time-ravaged pier next door: what are they thinking about? Is one thinking, "She's cute and sexy, I sure hope she notices me."?

RSF&PTL for life, love, & Time

T