The Naked Eye

I wore my pink and white paisley one piece swimsuit into the ocean. The tide was out and in the shallows at the edge of the shore small humps of sandbars made pools. Little dark fish zigzagged, the late morning sun doubling them with quick shadows that seemed as substantial---or insubstantial----as the fish themselves.

The water was cold at first, but the farther out I went, the more I got used to it and soon it felt warm. I dove under water a couple of times and bubbled. My glasses were back at the beach chair, so although my vision's not too bad, everything I saw when I surfaced was slightly softened. Once I was sure no one was near me in the water, and I was more or less up to my neck, I wiggled out of my suit. I am a middle-aged, middle class, non-smoking, compulsive seat belt wearing, white bread and Velveeta person. I don't make waves and I don't get nekkid and skinny dip. Taking off my swimsuit in the ocean was my equivalent of a felony, or at least a misdemeanor. I drifted happily in a serene sense of secret liberation. Suddenly right next to me a silver mackerel leapt up, flipped like a Russian gymnast, and disappeared again beneath the swells and foam.

Then I remembered sitting on a bench at the Jolly Roger Pier the night before and seeing two shooting stars over the dark ocean. And both nights staying with my friends at Topsail Beach, I was startled to discover so many stars in the sky. There was so little light spill at Topsail, the stars seemed to have mated and multiplied. The sky was clear, the reds, yellow, blues, and whites of the stars were visible to the naked eye. At the Jolly Roger, man had hauled up a stingray the size of a kite. Grey and black with a tail like a rudder, and wings that fluttered on the splintery boards.

You can eat stingrays. They taste like scallops, I hear. But the man was afraid of the ray's stinger and black eyes. It was powerful even out of the water. He removed the steel hook and his friend pushed the ray off the edge of the pier with a pole. I thought of the grace of stingrays in their element. Evolution can be beautiful. It would not have surprised me to see the stingray catch the night breeze off the ocean as she fell, and to use her wings to stay aloft like a glider. Just for a moment or two, as the pain from the barbed hook turned from fear into flight.

I don't know how long I was blissfully naked daydreaming beyond the breakers; my watch was back on the blue canvas chair with my glasses, and hat. Finally, I began to attempt getting back in my swimsuit which I had been holding lightly in my hand like a seine net. The currents pulled and twisted it. I stood on tiptoe on my right foot, trying to poke my other foot through a leg hole. The waves grabbed me so I lost contact with the earth. Then, they receded so I had to crouch to keep from flashing families and dogs and fishermen on the beach. I thought I might pretend the undertow had yanked my suit off (Poseidon, that dirty old man) or hope if I turned my back to the sand, my butt would look like a couple of porpoises breaching the water. I pogo-ed vigorously as the wavelets lifted me, dropped me, and tried to play catch and release with my pink paisley scrap. Putting my suit on to walk 20 yards from the shoreline to my chair started to seem ridiculous as well as difficult.

After a lot of finagling, I jabbed my left leg through the proper opening. And the whole process began again with the right leg. I must have looked to other swimmers as if I was having some kind of salt water seizure. I had surely scared away the mackerel and the other members of its school. It hit me suddenly that thrashing wildly was what made people into appetizers in Jaws, I, II, and III ("This time it's personal"). I sent my right leg like a cellulite harpoon through the leg hole and popped my boobs in the paisley triangles as fast as I could.

My swimsuit weighs about 8 ounces. Installed in it again, I felt genuine grief over the barrier between my skin and the sea. We had been so close, so intimate, and so playful together. Nary a dorsal fin to be seen. I felt constricted and confined in a pretty Lycra prison. Like an inmate who has to talk to her lover on a phone through a bulletproof Plexiglas barrier. I missed being a mermaid. I hoped when I returned home to find other ways to get that mermaid sense of freedom and joy. And minor risk. Or maybe not so minor. Perhaps in the woods at night or some fresh water creek.

Back on the beach I sat in the blue chair, put on my shades and hat and began to plan my next misdemeanor.

The Katydid and the Ant

Jump.
---Joseph Campbell



One thing about being a writer is that unless you're typing, your family doesn't think you're working. Reading and research and mulling, pondering, composing ghazals in your head, resembles futzing around and daydreaming the way some insects look like bark and leaves to the untrained eye. Thus, you are constantly interrupted or flicked off your branch. And when are you going to get a real job? Why aren't you an ant?