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 

 
  

Early-Morning Aristocracy

“An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”    H.D. Thoreau

“Tradesmen and domestics must use the freight elevator”   Sign in east-side apartment house

Morning Glories in Morningside Heights 

I get up early these days, partly because sleep is scarce in old age, but also because the hours around dawn are the best of the day, and I don’t want to miss anything.

From four to six, the city is as quiet as it ever is.  The breeze is fresh, the air is clean, a rare calm prevails.  And it's time to commune with the “early-morning aristocracy.” 

This little phrase occurred to me many years ago, riding the subway from the outer reaches of Brooklyn to a job in Manhattan that began at 5:30 a.m.  The subway car was full, but still quiet and calm.  All around me were sitting half-asleep, in various states of meditation, my fellow morning laborers: bakers, coffee-shop waitresses, horse-cab drivers, construction workers, nannies, food-cart vendors, garbage collectors, news writers, fishmongers, who knows what? They were up early so the city could get the running start it demands every day. 

Outdoors, other species predominate.  Pigeons have an early-morning dignity they lose when the sun rises higher.  Left to themselves, they strut and peck about the pavement, clearing the deck for the flood of pedestrians who will soon overrun it.  Dogs, wide awake, pull their walkers along.  The dominance is reversed after breakfast, when the dogs settle down for their long day’s nap, and the owners get about their affairs. 

Flowers preen as sunshine steals through the trees.  Morning glories climb the fence and open royal-hued reproductive organs.  Bees and butterflies oblige.

It’s all over by seven.  The coffee brewed, the pastries baked, the chairs set out, the news written, the ticker up and running, the garbage collected, the morning glories visited, the early-morning aristocracy yawns, and “dawn goes down to day.”   

Copyright 2015 by Tom Phillips