When infinity calls

[MaiLuk]

And so, you great and noble bird,

We, this assembly, beg you grant us

Your esteemed instruction

----- from a buddhist scripture

 

Another day of living. A good day for me to be jogging down the beach. The sky was dark gray and a light rain was falling but not enough to cancel my morning run. Besides, a little rain is good for a jogger.

 

I avoid the debris strewn everywhere on the sand. The hurricane that ripped through here just days ago had taken a section of the beach with it, leaving the remaining strip of sand narrower than before. The ocean appears to have permanently moved one step closer to the endless line of high rise condos that impassively stand their ground against the inevitable. But I know it is the condos that have been pulled closer by the ocean. I felt the ocean?s pull all of my life, like it was calling, until one day I moved into one of those condos.

 

Up ahead I see an elliptical object, something I am sure that I?ll need to avoid. As I get closer I see that it?s a huge pelican standing on the beach near the water, looking like its asleep. A pelican is an impossibly ugly animal when its on land. It looks like something from the age of the dinosaurs, persisting in carrying its genetic line through the epochs for reasons known only to itself. I can see its large body that supports a head laden with a heavy fourteen inch bill. The bill folds down against its long S shaped neck. It looks like the defective offspring of a coupling between a duck and a swan, but several times bigger than either one, and without any of the swan?s beauty to take the edge off its hideous affect.

 

Dreary gray feathers do not help its cause. The red eyes are too small for its huge body. This freak of nature jolts to attention as I approach. Any sound of alarm that it makes is drowned out by the waves of the ocean just a meter away.

 

I expected it to take to the sky. When in the air a pelican, misshapen on the ground, magically transforms into an aerial master-piece, its three meter wing span impressing even the most jaded residents on the beach.

 

Everyday from my balcony I see the pelicans fish in the gulf of mexico for kilo sized snapper and spanish mackerel. They catch their victims by dive bombing not far from the beach. Their long bills split the ocean, their huge bodies not far behind with wings pinned back to increase the speed of the dive. Somehow they swallow whole fish that would be three times too big for any other bird on the planet.

 

When pelicans are not fishing and just sailing along on the wind, they fly low enough for people rooted to the ground to see their winged symmetry, as if they need to prove to the onlookers they are not just a cruel joke perpetrated by some anarchist god.

 

But no onlookers are here to see today, and there is not much to see. This pelican is not going to fly away. As I pass by I see the fishing line wrapped around its wing. Its efforts to extend its wings forces the hook lodged in its side to dig deeper. Some of the gray feathers have turned red, defying the usual color scheme. This is a risk of making one?s living from the surf, and a certain death sentence.

 

I continue my run, thinking that I should be at work. Files unopened for months sit in my office, waiting for my interest to wax again. Relentless burnout has allowed a pileup to degrade my ability to manage my business. If I did not realize this on my own, the looks from my staff when I arrive in the afternoons would be a certain giveaway. The continued business and referrals that come my way are all based on the strength of past achievements, when I was motivated by desires now dead.

 

More than one client wants to see me today, and they pay enough money to make them believe that a visit with me is a matter of right. They are correct of course, clients always are.

 

This jog will cost me an extra ninety minutes. Ninety minutes is a large piece of time in my business. But the clients can wait. I give them no choice.

 

My thinking in terms of minutes strikes me as craven. I step over a pylon protruding through the sand, a long buried remnant of a pier taken by the ocean many years ago. The broken pylon now has been exposed by the latest violence perpetrated by the ocean.

 

A pier is a pathway out into the ocean. Paths not taken long ago have unburied themselves and invaded my thoughts today. The thoughts are like a droning noise in my head. Paths bypassed in the name of all consuming business ambitions. Bypassed for the minutes that had to be counted.

 

My mind ranges back to an asian girl who had used money saved while working in the US to build a house in the phillipines. I remember the day she told me she was returning to her homeland, and me telling her I would not go with her to live out our days in her new home. I counted the minutes as she begged me to change my mind, my feet angled toward the door.

 

I run a half circle around an eyeless sea bass covered with sand. I think of the missed fishing trips with my son. Fishing is a high minute venture. Minutes used fishing do not advance higher goals.

 

This constant noise in my head is what drives me out here. The ocean gives me relief.

 

Nobody else is on the beach today. The weather keeps the tourists holed up in their hotel rooms. For me it?s the best time to be near the ocean. Its not that I love the ocean. I am entranced by it, even though its colossal mindless presence is sometimes intolerable. It is a balm and abominable at once, an incomprehensible infinity.

 

Pushing my heart and lungs and legs to the limit, I run parallel to infinity. I run for more than just heart attack prevention. This is my preferred method of escape... of meditation. Thoughts of work fall away as I run.

 

And those ideas of what might have been, well the ocean can be relied on to always swallow up useless and wasteful conceits.

 

I finish out my jog. For the moment I feel good about how I used my time, and the short respite from the noise. Back in my condo, the sweat and rain still clinging to my skin, I phone up the sea bird sanctuary. They know how to capture and help pelicans without getting stabbed by a heavy fourteen inch beak.

 

The lady on the phone says she can rendevous with the pelican in an hour. I say OK goodbye.

Before I can put the phone down she quickly says, ?Hang on. I need you to go out there.?

?What??

?I need you to go out there and stay with the pelican and make sure it doesn?t go anywhere.?

I say, ?Look, you need to trust me on this, that Pelican is not going anywhere. Its like a suicidal mental patient wrapped in a straight jacket.?

She fires back, ?I have no volunteers in that area, you are the only one.?

 

What the hell is this lady thinking? I did not call her so that I could get rooked into a major project for a fucking bird.

 

I say, ?I want to help the pelican but I have to go to work. I?m already late...?

She replies with the helpless woman effect: ?Please will you help me, I am only one person. No one else is here today. You must go right now before its too late and I?ll see you there.?

 

So now its about helping her. I tell her that I have clients who pay me a lot of money and they have been complaining lately that I treat them like second class citizens and one of them is in my office right now and I?m late and I?m not going to miss work....

 

She interrupts me and says, ?I know how this will end up. Its strange how they all do it the same way. After a while the pelican will go in the ocean and float away. Then it will sink under the water. That?s what they do. I don?t want to drive an hour to get there for no reason so will you please go out there and make sure it does not go into the water until I get there??

 

After getting no response from me, she adds with a calm level voice: ?I?m driving an hour each way, if you don?t go out there right now the bird may be gone when I arrive. Please make sure that she does not go into the water until I get there you are the only person I have out there.? She hung up.

 

I hit the shower and get dressed in my essential shirt-and-tie gear. Thoughts of the approaching day in the office and the intractable problems of clients and the mountain of work on my desk are beginning to press in on my chest. But I?m glad I jogged on the beach even if I lost an all important 90 minutes.

 

I head down to my car and drive to the 7-11 for a cup of coffee. Its not that I need the caffeine. Mainly my brain finds excuses to delay arriving at work. Consciously intending to go straight to the office from 7-11, the car takes me instead to the spot where I saw the pelican. Then my feet take me out onto the sand and down to the water. I curse my brain for orchestrating more delays designed to undermine the natural progress of what could have been a lucrative career. My brain counters that it?s a tired career and the ocean is calling.

 

The sky is darker than before, but the rain has stopped. Standing beside the ocean with my tie flapping, I look up and down the beach. As far as my eye can see there are no living things, just a wasteland of white sand where weeds do not even take root. The breeze seems to blow through me and thoughts of work begin to dissipate. I don?t feel like leaving, the magnet-like pull of the ocean seeing to that.

 

I stand for awhile and scan the gulf. An enormous swollen cloud extends from a distant place somewhere out in the ocean, over my head and far inland. It threatens to unleash a torrent of rain over a wide area, and it seems strange that it is not raining already.

 

Somehow the rain is being held back just for me, so that I can see clearly the numbingly lifeless surface of the water. By now all thoughts of the office have left me and my mind is quiet.

 

Finally a light rain starts up and my view of the ocean slowly becomes obscured.

 

I experience one of those rare moments when I feel the eternal incendium of life smoldering inside of me. And I know life matters no more than a drop of rain on the surface of the ocean.

 

I wonder about the will to live, and the will to not live, and how the contest is decided.

 

I look out into the horizon for an answer. I imagine the ancient gulf stream running mutely far below the surface. Sojourning in the stream is the beckoning hulk of a once hideous beast that soared above infinity, until infinity called.

 

And there is no way I can go to the fucking office today.

[dddave]

 

Good: very, very good. A nice break from the usual "board" routine.

 

David

[Central Scrutinizer]

Mailuk,

 

:applause: :applause:

 

Thank you for that. Well done.

 

Cent

[MrX]

if it were in my power I would command you write more!