House on the Water

 -- By Tom Phillips 

It was hard to leave at the end of our annual family vacation on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. On the last day, my sister-in-law Linda and I have a tradition of walking down to the shoreline wearing pure white robes.  

This year we got up at dawn, and sat at the high-tide line watching the surf roll in as the sun emerged from clouds on the horizon, lighting a spark and then a fire across the waves, practically into our laps. We chanted OM three times, took some selfies and shots of each other, and then just looked out into the distance, as dawn went down to day. 

On vacation, I don't read much. I prefer to sit and stare at the ocean, watching people in the water, thinking about nothing in particular. Normally my mind is busy, but by the ocean it rests---in the natural trinity of sky, sea, and sand. If I have a mental focus it's the shifting line where the water rolls up on land, then flows back, sometimes rippling sideways, sometimes just slipping back under the next wave.  

On the verge of 80, life's a beach. It's the borderline between life and death, the known and the unknown, being and nothingness, the light of day and the darkness of the deep.  

John Lee Hooker wrote a blues about it, "I'm Going Upstairs."  It's about an old man, unwanted, with no place in the world to go.  

I got a house on the water, I don't need no land.
When I'm dead and gone, bury me in the deep blue sea.  

--  Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips 

 
  

Blow the Man Down

 -- By Tom Phillips 

    Come all you young sailors who follow the sea ..
    Way, hey, blow the man down---
    Please pay attention and listen to me, 
    Give me some time to blow the man down.

Midway through a two-week vacation on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, this sea chantey is stuck in my head, along with the crash of waves on the ocean beach across the road.  The waves are strong and steady -- kicked up by Tropical storm Henri, hundreds of miles out to sea in the Atlantic.  And they are crashing much nearer to our door than just a few years ago, when the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the shoreline and rebuilt the beach, vastly multiplying its height and width. That was the official response to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Sandy, which overwhelmed the island in 2012.    

When we showed up for our annual vacation the following summer, the battered pathways through the dunes were festooned with American flags and signs declaring New Jersey "Stronger than the Storm."  This bore the trademark of then-governor Chris Christie, pumping himself up for a presidential run.  That ended quickly, but the illusion of supernatural powers endured. 

Since the floods of 2012, billions of dollars have been spent on new beachfront homes.  The local mayor -- a real estate developer -- boasts that his customers are now venture capitalists and hedge fund managers.  And indeed, I listened to one high-powered bicyclist out for his morning exercise, yakking on his mobile phone to a conference call of investors.  Apparently they're in it for the short term, comforted by federally-subsidized flood insurance which protects their investments.   

It doesn't protect their houses. Henri won't get us -- it's passing by at a safe distance.  But with rising seas and monster storms already baked into our future, eventually the sea will bury this sliver of sand and everything on it. 

Vacationing in such a place -- even as a renter -- is a peculiar experience.  Do you identify with the foolishness of :"stronger than the storm," or do you prepare to mourn the loss of a fragile barrier island?       

My answer is neither -- I'm with the ocean.  Just "give me some time to blow the man down." 

I welcome the victory of the sea, even though it's the end of my vacationland. In time the waves will be rolling over a drowned island and breaking onto the mainland, driving its inhabitants inland, just as the first European settlers claimed the shoreline and drove indigenous people into the western wilderness.  The Lenape, who camped on this island for thousands of summers, ended their trail of tears on a reservation in Oklahoma.  Where we we English wind up?  

 -- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips                                         

On Turning 80: First, You Cry

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash 

--- By Tom Phillips 

First, you cry. 

Lying in bed, doing nothing, thinking about nothing, I would suddenly start to cry.  Nothing dramatic, just a few deep, soft waves of sadness that came and went, with few or no tears shed.   Still, it felt like a good cry. 

My mind went back to senior year in high school.  I'd been determined to goof off and take a minimal academic load, so I could concentrate on basketball and girls.  But my guidance counselor told me that wouldn't look good on college applications. So I  reluctantly signed up for a fourth year of Latin.  And along with a handful of fellow scholars and goof-offs, we read the Aeneid of Vergil, an ancient epic that mixes Gods and humans, history and mythology to tell the story of the founding of Roman civilization, by wandering refugees from the Trojan War.      

With the very first phrase, you know you are in the presence of a great writer: Arma virumque cano, writes Vergil -- "Arms and the man I sing."  A hero, a war, a song -- all promised in three words.  And delivered, in thousands of lines of dactylic hexameter without a false note or a misplaced syllable. 

And somewhere in the middle, I came upon a phrase that stayed with me forever:  

Lacrimae rerum.  "The tears of things" is the literal translation -- but rerum means more than things.  It means what all things have in common, the common ground of existence.  

At the ground of existence, we cry.  

At 80, I hit the ground and cried.  I cried for everything I loved, everything I had lost, for life from beginning to end.  I saw my life and all lives flashing into emptiness and uncertainty.  I began to prepare for my own epic journey.  

First, you cry.  

-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips