Six Seconds Since

Seconds will slip away, unraveling from the favor of the present much like the curling, vaporous whisks of condensed breath escaping from between his concave furrow of chapped lips, ephemeral exhalations quickly vanishing from existence, diverted by the early morning’s easy easterly blow to course elsewhere, to neutralize from the nineties and assimilate with universality, to blend as the autonomous exchanges of purpose for that continuous effort to define reason (or is re-define or re-discover or defy or more so, illusory mirages of each?) amongst life vanishing into the trailing slipstream of reality like the backwash of the wave his planted feet are now shifting and sinking softly within, essentially escaping from somewhere to elsewhere, physically, in time and sand-covered space, seawater and spray, but more so mentally, behind the guise of half-opened eyes and thoughts contained within a wrap of dry, wind-taut cold skin, a kinetic energy returning seaward to where perceptions of all else have originated and so return to remain forever kinetic as though that very millisecond of thought he just thought, that swirling and sinuous inspiration as mesmerizing in beauty and subliminal in self-rooted-recognition as dawn’s witnessed creeping cast of color served to impress one mortal man’s immortalized imagination, those affected brushstrokes upon the soul, spewed trailing and twisting, spiraling and sweeping, bending and blending, as though the ossified oils conjured and frozen for all time for all to see like van Gogh’s The Starry Night have in his mind depicted a masterpiece of Nature’s impression-able, impossible to imagine any more immaculately impactful in immortal image as Her impermanent Inspiration of a Splash of Time.  This breath and blink of time, growing to flower in grafted scions of seconds, born of a bearing impression, germinates the soulful seed of this awestruck angler. 

My rigid and austere accomplice has endured once more, resisting submission to a countenance of everlasting curvature.  A line tension unyielding to slackness.  An eventuality yielding the crushed-barb hook-set, now un-set, from her creasing cortege of cartilage as nothing more than a sharpened, dangling placidity, static, awaiting aerial course and aqueous trial by its regulated, fibrous staff of potential, but again, I arise from a squatting observation of ease to stand upright within the shallow, seething blanket of foamy water rushing back eastward over the smoothened and striated runnels of carved, coarse sand and pebbles, racing towards the building curl of an oncoming wave, one having been brave enough to charge free from these mysterious depths of uncertainty, splashing wildly upward and turbulently encircling my firmly-set footing with the forceful influence of a schoolyard bully’s provoking shove, hissing below my bloated smile, inciting a sudden flash of mental and environmental alertness as she asserts, yes, I feel you here, just as I have now made you aware of me.  Her invitation to feel uncreated.  Familiarized with the unfamiliar.  Her assertion to become less unreal, and more real.  Another kind of alive.  Six seconds after coming to terms with the realization of what just was.  What is now gone, returned to the unseen vastness of the sea.  Of the hook-sinking fate that may await after the next thrust of my finned-prize’s tail, one that may be her last exhibition of glory before becoming the principal ingredient to the chemical involvement of another being’s metabolism.  As energy forever flowing in motion.  As energy enveloped in a fatal transformation.  As matter, neither created nor destroyed, but altered from fusiform form.  Nevertheless, not a matter of conservation, for she will forever be gone.  Her stripes stripped of form.  Gone to become the building blocks of life in another, adenosine triphosphate, but I don’t need-a-seen the trip of its fillet-fate.  I just know.  It’s inevitable.  The complications of the two coexisting.  Her impulses to feed.  Her hunger to strike.  His impulse of hunger to cast.  Man, the stalking, ever-present dealer of death, the imposter devising for her decided destruction, poses to pitch and immerse his imitable, plastic offerings of wounded prey.  He is the otherwise indistinguishable embodiment of impending doom lurking from above the fatal fringes of her watery ceiling retrieving rolling rattles or baiting Bunker bodies or trolling lured dredges or sieging sudden surrender with seins of scooping, championing Saxatilicide, achieving esteemed status as the slayer of Morone Saxatilis.  For him to find harvested, oven-baked and pan-seared succulence or gaudy showmanship of trophy, an egotistically-inspired carnage and catharsis of conservancy by means of Pisciphilocide (or, love of killing fish) committed in the dragging of drying caudal tails over sand and pavement, the gripping hoist of gill plates, the closing of crammed coolers, the evisceration of body cavities, the snapping of spines and the callous carving of cartilaginous carcasses, upon which discarded, severed heads, whose glassy and wide-open, wizen, golden-colored eyes are disjointed from tamed tails upon the inky, open pages of section A’s five-day-old entrail-sodden editorials.  Extra! Extra! Read all about it! exclaim the words from her unseasoned obituary.  Her purging extirpation from elegantly existing as a principle ingredient to the memory and moment of Nature.  I read this daily news.  I know of the flesh-war waged upon her every seasonal whereabout.  The mounting struggle for equilibrium until there is equilibrium no more.  This metamorphosis of momentum, unstoppable as the wind is to open palms and cupped fingers held outright against an oncoming, onshore breeze.  As unstoppable as tomorrow’s inevitable sunrise, and as cheated in one’s anticipation of viewing such a fiery glow bleed in color across the dawning sky when it is otherwise obfuscated and obscured by drawn curtains of bloated, blackened clouds ominously stalled upon the horizon instead.  This evaporation of what is now from the flowing stream of time, the vaporizing pool of potential ever-increasingly disappearing in what remains of this season’s fleeting continuum of fortuity and of limited time and tail and tide.  Gone, yes, but never entirely purged from the churning metabolism of my own memory.

It is said that Nature abhors a vacuum.  She suffers a fear of emptiness.  And should not Her most capable and intelligent descendants fear an empty sea?  Or do his repeated acts alone speak for themselves, selfish, and without depth of conscience?  As one pair of eyes see, it is the ship of mankind whose piercing bow carelessly slices over the charity of Her back, disrupting the fragile reflections of harmony cast upon Her surface, rearing ripples of ruinous repercussion, while setting a stormy sea of uncertainty in his wake.  Entropy may be of Her own creation and accord, but in the perfectly-arranged composition that is Her unsurmountable, unsurpassable magnum opus sprouting the symphonious sounds of the living, Her swimming swarms of fellow brothers and sisters will never be left willingly in abandon, blinded by a blankness of white nothingness, for there shall always exist, for all conceivable eternity, the fertile touches of their dearest Mother, in all colors curing.  There is always the recurring promise, the heal of Her hope, of mature masses migrating, scores of schoolies schooling, the annual lengthening of lateral lines layered on the brooding classes of bruising brawlers, the growing rewards of Her perpetuating fecundity.  Of a saltwater-brined future yet unwritten, a telling tide yet unrisen.  Of a wet-sand-slapping, truncate-tail yet to radiate as this fisherman’s sweeping tale, somewhere and sometime before a sunrise yet unborn.  A day yet to awaken one man’s dreams in stretching hues reddened and breathing to mirror the pulse of life in her image. 

So I plead, dear son, that you be sure to always look further, broadening the shores of your mind, but also do your best to eye nearer, ever closer, to wash over this world of mine with that drifting gaze of your calculated curiosity, just as my surging tide too rushes over the migrant presence of your found-feet towards higher ground, prying, as if to feel with my fluid touch just who this is before me, where we both happen to explore this mutual acceptance of what is, here, now, during this thin sliver of time we share, fostered within this shower of the breathing tide, for my forthcoming light-of-life unhurriedly emerging before your staring eyes is something greater than that which may ever be attributed with a certain physical existence, one as simply instinctually-driven and corporal as your own.  Remember, dear child, that above all else, what you are is the sum of who I already am and have always been, she hints from a pouring of abounding breath.

The eternity of my voice will always be.  I will always be here, timeless, roaring, waiting.  Inescapable to your soul and unavoidable to your sight.  My thundering heartbeat, ubiquitously alluring, will never ebb further than the harbor of your own mind, as haunting as the murmuring resonance heard from the spiraling depths of a knobbed welch held close to your ear.  So I will whisper this more, for I know you regard the unfailing sounds of reflection I shell-out.  Know that what I am is greater than that which you seek the striped-body of, the familiar, dignified odorous residue of what you may praise as an exalted morning from the suds of my surf, of fish-slime glazed upon your dampened palms, of wet and sticky sand granules adhered to the inside lengths of your chilled, pruning fingers, or the flaky, translucent proof of small, cycloid-shaped scales donated upon the connected angler’s sleeve, your own, those noticed only after his benevolent revival of my otherwise finned-sacrifice writhes and wiggles wildly to vanish from sight under a concealing cloak of foam, the pride of this angler’s collagenous souvenir, his bonus brooch, may it serve as mindful evidence of the fragile living pulse pumping and surging forward, enduring everywhere, gliding with the every tidal motion in which I rise and fall, beating and coursing within this salty soma of mine, the very element you now see swelling to life with each repeated cast by the growing flame of an effervescent effusion coaxing chromatic change.  So I am…

And so the penetrating renewal of morning solicits for his sight, outpouring in prominence to pass into the permanence of his mind’s eye.  Elevated in stance and renewed in esteem, he stirs from a drifting daze to cast aside these perturbing perceptions of a piscatorial pessimism.  Behold! For the shining stripes of her glistening contour reflect the glow of a growing orange orb of optimism, one rising from the reaches of darkness to slather both with the conspiring seconds of time for which they are held frozen.  Both, awash in a light and life, ascending.  He invites the lineaments of her image to rest alight in the longevity that is a reeling remembrance mounted upon the wall of his mind, alongside her many kin who have all come before.  Who must all come before, after all have been left to go, released in form to stream within her tides of favor.  Those torrents of time which have all favored him so generously.  The whip of a cast revives a pause from the present, and so, his perpetuity of purpose.  The surf, smashes at his feet.

Where The Sky Is Born

There is yet the promise of dawn.  That renewal of light which severs black from blue.  A gift born anew each day, bleeding before the world as rays of irrefutable truth.  A cyclical certainty, a transition between the stupor that is restful night and the fury that is a hungry sea filling with penetrating bands of illumination.  An occurrence which spurs the aggressive impulses of scaly hunters and the restless, unnerved behavior of the hunted.  That event which draws man to the edge of this obscure and murkily-blackened expanse of roiling brine, and for his finned-ambitions, undaunted in having shoaled these shallows of the shore in an otherwise near-blindness, under the ineffectual accompaniment that are countless pinholes of starlight above, it serves as prime opportunity to ambush unsuspecting prey.  A narrow slant of time for the striped of scales to winnow the minnow, to remarkably visualize any palatable profile forms fluttering in unison within the seawater’s inky blackness.  She will tactfully exploit this inherent physiological prowess granted by endowment of Nature, specifically, that of her predatory favor of eyesight dominance brandished against the inferior low-light optic faculties of lesser-fortunate baitfishes as emerging light begins to filter into the roaring tidal conveyor gushing over my feet, rushing landward up sandy-slopes seething in sibilant sounds as if these were the gasping pleas of the sea, objecting the forthcoming change, begging for the sinking moon’s return from the western sky.  For the serenity of nighttime to ensue. 

It’s a yearning cry of breaking waves booming, trickling tides talking, and lapping water lecturing that I faithfully listen to during this dissolution of darkness, where I, in turn, silently stand to hunt among the hunters and the hunted.  A man’s insignificant six-foot profile wielding his armament of concentric ceramic coils epoxied to a tapered shaft of carbon-fiber, whipping and slicing forward through the very air he breathes, enlivened by an inseparable companion of thoughts rebelling to the surrounding placidity, rambling in an internal thunderstorm of immutable chatter, however evanescent to the magnitude of greatness that is everything else surrounding him.  Faint retorts to the sea’s indomitable voice.  Participation, in part, of his witnessed awakening to this water-born world.  For this sea, I fancy, wishes for the soft shining of her nocturnal spotlight to forever shower upon her furrowed surface, skittering in a lustrous diffusion of vanity, for the phases of their ancient friendship to continue in coexistence, for this celestial stage-lighting illuminating the changing acts of her tidal performances to outlast time itself. 

No matter, I imagine, for by planetary providence, she is cordially graced with the longing attribute of seduction, solicited for between the daily-pleading and twice-determined serenades of two wooing suitors, Luna and Soleil, both of whom patiently remain at wait for their next assured orbital encounter.  For their next opportunity to charm her as they slip upwards in slow, parabolic ascension and sojourn skyward from beyond that linear mirage marking the distant depths of unseen truth.  For the following moon and sun rises.

Unlike the slender luminosity of Luna’s subtle surface and her ambivalent, chalky-albedo-colored phases cyclically waxing in magnitude and bashfully waning in retreat, soon will begin the diurnal courtship of Soleil, robust in fervor, storming skyward with flaming intensity, boasting a bathing, colorful rebirth from beyond where the earth and sea brew in stirring froth and foam.  It is where Eos will awaken, dawn, ascending from the faraway depths of Oceanus.  This awe-inspiring outburst of creation, in essence, a devout angler’s greatest catch, a blazing keeper for such a worshipping soul, is merely to stoke wonderment, for it will never be quite close enough to grasp or even boast for one’s own attainment.  She is merely ours to marvel, to feast upon at will, to ogle and undress with hungered eyesight as though her solicitation to the senses were as similar in appeal to the suggestive curves of a calling, hourglass figure never meant to satisfy one’s desire of want or belonging, of sweeping with a salacious touch.  However close, yet forever a tease too afar. 

Praised rather, is the extraordinary, eye-catching spectacle of her breath-stalling form, an unabating allure calling one closer towards this all-consuming nature of Nature, a reality tugging at one’s direction to be here, on sand, where the lapping surf and bath of briny air dares without permission to infuse within the very pores of one’s skin, where a life, one as seemingly inseparable to continuance and impulsive in its embrace as wind beneath an ensemble of sharp-sounding shrills squawking from breasting seabirds, swooping and hovering upon the mass of cushioned air pressed against the scalloped waterline, insists in reinforcing to remind me of my own saltwater-stricken motive and piscatorial-prescribed passions.  A fluttering beat of life trying the limit of its own aerial boundaries.  A man astir, maneuvering to define his own.  Ascensions to freedom by individual factors of choice, dare, and provocation.  This act of acceptance being like an unquestionable truth, a fully-accepted, fundamental force of Nature defining a fibrous fragment of one’s existence.  A fleeting snapshot surfacing from the latent depths of reality much like the enigmatic, striped-fish you so patiently pursue, the once beached, finned-prize you admire briefly before release, when only by perfect timing as she is momentarily mirroring and glistening of the rising sun’s low-angle bath of orange and sanguine hues, those first shed upon the world, does it become understood that such imbued observations are only yours to relish in sensation and visual experience before disappearing into the vastness of sweeping transition and faded recognition.  The elastic sky of color, the fluid saline home, the furtive fish.  All become an acclaimed acknowledgement of opportunity for another time, another day of existence, yet unborn.     

And so exposed through the widened-pupil aperture of gazing, seaward-directed eyes, and developed in the darkroom of the mind, hang this series of drying prints capturing for the personal experience what is a worldly awakening that only may be observed during these intimate, parting minutes of time, as damp and heavy, salty inhalations invade one’s being to its deepest reaches, weighing to dissolve what is flesh from splashing foam, as boundaries successively come revealed through the shedding layers and gradations of darkness, as the disrobing of homogeneity ensues, that visual oneness as perceived throughout an otherwise monochromatic vastness of a seascape devoid of color.  The wrapping cloak of night slowly unbuttons and undresses her nighttime gown to make plain a natural bareness, the nakedness that are the curves and lines defining her distinct shapes and form.  The lineaments of recognition.  Familiar tones and hues shared in her gathering embrace.  The blurring bewilderment between shadowy sand and sea becomes obliterated with this increasing acuteness of a sky growing in refined focus with deep gradients of blue towering towards the heavens from the horizontal division of these distant waters.  As if the sea herself offers to share her own complexion, diffusing upwards in a casting reflection of rising reform.  A gaining charge urging the eclipse of night to finally resign.

An incessant beeping sounds, startling my mind, interrupting a silent state of blanketed blankness.  I mute the digital invader of quietude.  The time has arrived. Groaning through a twisting, body-arching and stretching exhalation of rigidity, I remind myself that I wanted this moment more than sleep itself.  The staggering temptation to resist springing upwards cowardly coaxes, those devilish seconds as daunting and tiresome as dragging chains of iron shackled to your drowsy spirit of motivation and seeming to last minutes instead.  I cannot allow this to sway my desired ambitions.  Don’t mess this up.  The weekend.  Too short in duration and precious in possibility.  A somniferous skirmish I will win so as not to regretfully cross the divide of slumber returning me to sound sleep, and fishless dreams. 

Yet supine, but awake. I squint, breaking-open cemented-closed eyelids to hazily peer through the bedroom window’s drawn-shut sheer drapes.  Nighttime.  There is a single hue coloring my view, that of the artificial, yellow-colored light of a neighbor’s outdoor flood-lamp, diffusing valiantly as the only challenger to a domineering, obsidian-colored darkness.  In time, its tungsten filaments will cease glowing, perhaps at the electronic command of a programmed timer or photoelectric sensor, retiring in brilliance, an unfaltering feather-weight victory in its own right over the preeminence of night, having become relieved of sentry as it is outshined by the creeping omnipresence of a fiery orb ascending slowly from the fathoms of the east, torches of unyielding brilliance now passed of hands, the latter stripping reins of control from the slipping grip of night, bleeding the dim shades of an indigo blue skyward from under the faraway horizon as if they were the blended swirls of watercolor paint becoming drawn upwards into the bristles of Nature’s brush daubing at the surface of the sea for the morning’s first stroke upon this new canvas.  For now, this prismatic exhibition is yet unpainted, indiscernible in greatness.

I am in a physical race against the ticking advancement of time.  Of sneaking within the opportunities of open window which she so obstinately presents before shutting closed and locking from outside entry.  Time and tide wait for no man, remember.  The ocean is rising.  The sun soon too.  Both are unstoppable in motion, posing specific slivers of promise each.  If I am so fortunate as to wade amongst the presence of stalking fish, at best, I can only expect such a gift of linesided-luck to occur when I act with calculated timing, so as to allow an opportune collision-course between environmentally-attentive lateral lines and acoustically-enticing retrieves of swimming plugs to impart what is a striking encounter of fate.  Even at ungodly hours of the morning on a desolate stretch of beach, under a fading ceiling of stars, timing remains to be everything.  It is the only thing as reliable and necessary for a successful run-in with fish as the submerged, shifting grains of sand scoured from under the heels of my planted feet before the rhythmic flooding of broken waves and backwash rushing towards the surf, grabbing at my ankles to seduce and solicit my attention seaward, will have in letting me know that I am boldly alive and in no better place possible.  I will have witnessed another day bloom in creation over the Atlantic.

My bare feet, curling as they stretch awake after hours of weightless surrender, swing from the warm, layered depths of cotton and flannel sheets, dangling from the mattress edge to make contact with the plush sponginess of a cool, awaiting carpet.  Opposites touch.  My mind briefly focuses upon the chilly sensation.  An environmental stimulus.  Nothing more, then it’s gone.  It’s something that comes with waking early in late-November.  A primer, insignificant in scope, as compared to how the elements will aspire to challenge today.  I stand upright in this quiet darkness, in a room seemingly unfamiliar to me at this time of the morning, slowly shaking fuzzy thoughts tempting me to take the easy way out, returning to the carefree comfort of a toasty bed, empty to my backside, bleeding away warmth from the wrinkled impression of my contour, as I shrug-off a stiff sluggishness.  I have awoken with anticipatory determination.  Excitement for what lies ahead.  To make first-contact with sinking sand under the boots of my stomping waders, beginning the meandering march made foot by foot, closer towards the moment when my first cast will become rocketed seaward, will be worth all my effort and every second of otherwise lost sleep. 

Just as the familiar daytime colors of reality are suppressed, drenched in shrouds of darkness which only impart subtle recognitions of form, shapes, or outlines of my surrounding environ, so too are absent even the slightest sounds of this world to the keenest of listening, those which otherwise enliven our awareness with sonic signatures of what is.  I consider this impermanent semblance of deafness an acceptance of peace.  An aural retreat from the cacophony of everyday existence.  Appreciations of undervalued understanding for the price associated with calming silence.  No matter, for with increasing light, will come sprouting sound.  Testaments to change and proclamations of a world in motion.  Occurrences of life unfolding. 

For one, I anticipate listening to the distant, resonant sounds of tightly-curling waves crashing ashore, “good-morning” greetings from the sea, saltwater salutations tumbling ashore as their fluid, circular motions pound the beach, producing a muffled, thunderous sound in the bass-range.  I think of it as Nature’s barefooted heel striking firmly and thudding repeatedly against her sandy floor, proclaiming a booming presence during the changing tidal state.  To walk closer to the site of her stomping footsteps, to feel these split-second, shuddering vibrations carrying throughout the surrounding air, absorbed into your body, is attestation to having tread your wader-clad feet upon this heartbeat of the surf.  You have listened through the tried-and-true stethoscope of your soul to the healthy, beating pulse of an ocean alive with an incessant intensity of unmatched strength and vigor.  She is a temptress to the thirst of your devotion.

I pick-up an ignition key that I placed overnight atop an end-table set beside my apartment’s front door.  The key’s rounded-smooth edges, worn by the treatment of time, do nothing more than wait to become inserted for the ten-thousandth time into the lock of my car.  It’s a perfectly-mated, sawed-tooth gateway offering liberation of sorts, allowing me to begin a physical journey elsewhere.  My mind, in a newfound frame-of-reference, jumpstarted in motion, will unlock the rest.  Dormant in the elements all night, my escape is nothing more than an inert ice-box on wheels. 

A buffeting of arctic wind driving from the north-west shears across my ears, producing a ruffling sound when the angle is made just right to the cold, fluttering breeze.  I yawn, scrunching my face.  My vision briefly falls bleary, momentarily blurred under the refractive distortion of tears.  Both eyes glaze-over, watering at first-contact to the abnormally-cold November air stinging the dry, taut skin of my face.  A Jergens model’s nightmare.  Nature has unapologetically piqued my attention.  A divide of comfort crossed.  Forgotten are the sensations of soft cotton comforts, the stillness of rest, and the smothering warmth of bed.  I am in a different state-of-mind now, excited to have immersed myself yet again, challenged as a vying contender to these elements, to my own willful stamina, at the tail-end of an ebbing season, tested in a trying bath of frigid air.  All to find fish. 

Any sane person may question my motive.  Is not the beach for summertime enjoyment, under the baking heat of the sun?  I would not necessarily disagree, but I am also a fisherman.  Fishermen see the sea differently.  It is on the sand and jetty tops where my roots find nurturing ground and scaly sustenance.  That is my place in the sun.  Is this really the same beach I am venturing to step foot upon at it was in August, anyway?  Seasons have brought about change.  She more resembles a barren tundra now, combed-over by a frigid wind sending a tan-colored haze of scattering sand granules airborne about her surface.  A sinuous, miniature sandstorm at ankle-level.  Caustic in reception, but graceful in its own effect.  A never-ending rearrangement and reshaping.  Besides, only our perceptions define what becomes of reality.  The way I see it, there are fish gliding within the very depths where I swam months prior, stalking prey from beneath where my tanned, bobbing face was influenced skyward to those sedative rays beaming from the sun shining high above, legs gently kicking and arms sweeping, where this man’s unsinkable spirit was held buoyant by an ablutionary liquid-peace, his body floating idly in refreshing, seventy-eight-degree water beside his smoking-hot better-half precariously wrapped with stretchy and stringy, suggestive threads of Lycra knotted at her hips and tied mid-back.  Memories, now, being the only evidence salvaged after this dissolution of time.  Remnants of activity much like the dried residue of salt blanketing one’s skin, and thickening the volume of hair atop their head, an aftereffect of emerging from this ocean.  This fine, dusty coating, this accumulated layer of experience encased tautly over your body’s exterior, an artifact of action enriching your being, will only endure for as long as you can preserve its accompaniment to complexion, texture to reality, importance to memory.  

On this morning, all barriers characterizing the many constricting constraints limiting the latitude of my personal choice, those which entreat ascension to routine weekday conformities, are unabashedly breached.  Dissolved like salt in water.  Finally cleansed of.  Made invisible.  With the evaporation of the weekend, I will come to see their routine reappearance.  For now, today, I am free of the damned demands associated with earning a paycheck in this go-go-don’t-stop-for-a-single-second society of ours.  One would be hard-pressed for arguing a logical reason to follow them anyway at these burgeoning, single-digit hours of the clock-face during the final weeks to the calendar year.  I think of this liberty as a weekend rite-of-passage towards renewal, as the real-self reemerges from what may be thought of as a fisherman’s false-reality, one I bear to live as “the workweek.”  There will be no pressed white-collars and neatly-fashioned Windsor knots at this morning’s meeting.  Uni and Albrights only.  And I proudly wear stubble instead.  It’s a natural, gruff, complimentary appearance I look forward to wearing all-week-long. The growth of change.  A detachment from my morning norm.  The parting of an otherwise daily ritual.  At some point, I’ll find myself brushing the stout stubble of hairs lining my jawline and cheek into an open palm in slow, up and down strokes, impulsive inclinations coupling those otherwise languid occasions fraught with flat-lined thought and unblinking, thousand-yard stares out to sea, a habitual course of comfort nursing paring moments of repose, all of which seem to be second-nature whenever sporting this protruding signature of manhood from the rim of my face.  A homage to habit.  Similar in condition to the coarse and tangled disposition of the surf during an easterly blow or when fouled by weather.  Unshaven, just as well.  An embraced state, whether masculine at heart or gnarly in temperament, both are something I like to tangibly feel to my touch to know they are real.

 

The cushioned, rubber weather-strip seal insulating the frame of the drivers-side door resists my pulling tug of separation, stubbornly tearing apart from a frosted adhesion set overnight.  The ambient temperature had reached dew point.  Ice formed.  The air itself laminated these two mating, otherwise protective layers from the extremes brought about by weather, forcing them temporarily bonded to one another.  I can relate.  There are mornings where I too, am just as difficult to peel from under the sheets welded against my warmed skin, lying embedded into a sunken mattress like a fossil frozen in a slab of stone.     

I’m here, again, motionless, sitting in the driver’s seat of my sedan, exchanging short-lived puffs of condensed breath into the crisp-air of the cabin.  The engine turns over, idling high.  I wait.  For both the car, and myself, to warm.  I look ahead, out the windshield, but not at a roadway passing by.  I’m looking miles ahead in my mind, drawing my crossed arms tight unto my torso, as a quick muscle spasm shivers across my chest.  Even at an hour like this, in a comatose world devoid of even the slightest hint of liveliness, a thousand random thoughts, alive and aloft in their indulgence, find a reason to parade inside my head.  Sometimes I feel as though they themselves, swarming about my face like a dense offense of mosquitos, buzzing, distracting, annoying, threatening, weaving and tangling amongst one another, the baggage of bête noire side-tracking tranquility and sound well-being, nagging for the continued sustenance of a host, despotically commanding valuable time or increased effort and attention, are those that attempt to detract me from what is surfcasting’s overall simplicity, awaiting unhooked from reality.  Where I may swim freely as the fish I seek.  Think as clearly as the fresh air I breathe. 

Still waters may run deep, but actions speak louder than words.  The crunching carbide-tip studs of my Korkers grinding atop mossy granite jetty-tops will serve as stepping testaments of conspiracy against an affiliation to life lived on land.  And with that, I will allow only one string to remain attached to myself, most willingly and dearly, of course.  Perched atop an awaiting, interlocking passageway of boulders leading to depths of the unknown, I will use every caution to stay bound to the frailty of my retrieved mainline, my indispensable, millimeter-thin helpmate, faithfully drawn from the sea with each repeated cast, a braided ambassador of my soul’s intentions, neatly repacking onto my reel’s spool, layering tightly with a weaved and winded order, where I will remain at the ready, for more.  It’s my essential lifeline to sanity, to a self-preservation of sorts.  But these interloping thoughts, in order to survive day after day, in order to materialize even, must live-off the favor of the present, greedily seeking to suck from the warm blood of memories ago in order to survive.  Parasitical judgments to those remnants of the past, resplendent or not.  A past, if relived once, was relived one-thousand times already.  Being here, I simply want to get away.  I want to use my best judgment, find a favorable spot, somewhere, and cast away.  If fish are there, I will know.  If fish are not there, I will still harbor hope.

Sometimes, to strenuously over-think is to simply over-work.  Why must I project so deeply into the matter, analyze, wonder, fantasize?  Why can’t I save that energy for work, for the endless challenges that are life, for what really matters?  Release.  It is all waiting for me anyway upon my return home.  Just where I left it.  Or does sitting in my car, in the desolate darkness before dawn, matter just as much?  Isn’t this simply a pastime in which I engage, an escapism, a hobby which doesn’t translate direct value to life?  Leisure, satisfaction, and refinement of skills, sure, but it’s more of a personal, visceral challenge to the physical embodiment of oneself protesting to the oft harsh and unforgiving elements of Nature, those that incessantly wear away at one’s foreign composure of order pitted against a merciless saltwater environment, that unnatural neatness accosted by a natural entropy, but there must be more.  I can feel it.  Something deeper, harping at the very fibers of one’s essence, plucking at the strings of one’s soul, the music thus sounding being the magnum opus, the very notes, the unique signature of oneself imploring and provoking at the listening ears of the sea, a casting composition of sound proclaiming what it means to be a human placed wildly amongst the natural world, if only for hours at a time.  A perennial pupil learning what really is. 

Relief is within casting range.  Very shortly from now, I will become the wayfaring surfcaster who embarks eastward, treading atop an oceanfront altar sedated under this blackened veil of nighttime, forging forward prior to any crimson coloring of the heavens, before Eos’s rosy-fingered awakening paints the familiar hues that are a new day erupting from the sea’s horizon.  Physically, I’ll be in search of a suitable spot to stand upon cold, wet sand squiggling throughout a beach’s unsettled wash-zone, where my bootprints are the shifting evidence of a shore-bound, clandestine-calling leading me to the smoothened, striated sand of the surf’s slope, where these tracks of mine will eventually terminate, becoming dissolved from sight.  That will be where I am finally freed from objection, where I sink into an unspoken sanctum, spanning a turbid event horizon near my boots, defined at the brink of a liquid existence, one rising and falling, splashing and flowing.  I will feel the firm base of sand shift slightly under the weight of my bearing, radiating rings of water from its saturated mass, offering solace for my bruised sense of devotion while away in absence, a caressing invitation for my mind to ebb with the towing tide, to float purposefully adrift on the coddling currents of reckless abandon.  You would not understand what I wish to express unless your outstretched wings too, have spread wide and far, holding you aloft, suspended within the thermal updrafts of freedom, the cushioning billows of air allowing you, in an abandoned mind-set, to effortlessly glide with ease to new-found, soaring heights, all-the-while possessing complete control of choice, for when you deem it necessary to shed this inspiring, invigorating energy, and remit spiritual altitude from these outstretched wings of ascension, choosing when to retract these fluttering feathers to the very air you breath and descend closer to reality in a spiraling finality of finesse, holding in deeply the inhaled hopes of something nearly imperceptible, but sacrosanct and metaphysical to one’s self, before finally returning with the softest of landing, rebounding to the world we all know and awake to each morning, in this moment, grasping tightly to a radiantly consummate feeling of rebirth, a rejuvenation of purpose, as if the time spent alone brought you closer to an existential enlightenment, a moment of environmental clarity whispering panoramic murmurs, elucidations for your longing, listening ears to gorge upon. 

The splashing, rushing, and babbling of mightily moving water against rock and gravel, the hissing seethes over the surf’s sand, the hollow booming of curling waves breaking upon the shoreline’s backbone, these autonomous actions of Nature, will always occur, regardless of occasion.  Unending repetitions with no beginning and no conclusion.  But for the seeking surfcaster, there exist a limited, precious minutes of time where one will have the best standing-room beset before the aquatic amphitheatre of the sea, with the most coveted view of this stage’s closed curtains, soon to draw open for awaiting eyes, to enrapture the senses with an unrivaled performance of color and sensation to spirit.  If you must find me, simply follow my meandering, smeared sand-impressed signature of concave, crimpled boot-prints left abandoned in my slipstream, evidence of my wandering course which abruptly terminates from sight along the leading-edge of the sloped beach’s face, where the farthest stretches of the foamy white water’s rhythmically-reaching fingers fan, washing-away into bubbling sand to mask the perambulatory presence of those like myself who wake and come to cast. 

These are my guiding directions.  Waypoints I’ve set on my map of discovery.  The pillars of support to my faith.  The sextant I hold to the nighttime sky in order to align myself and learn bearing.  This is why I have arisen from sleep in the middle of the night, for the moving finger of this fisherman writes.  I am a disciple to the playhouse of the sea, to a sight yet unseen, to this, the very moment of intrigue at which I tread before, as I stand waist-deep in the ink-blackened water of the surf amid nighttime’s blinding fog of darkness, with nothing more than miles of empty space set between the advancing seconds of dawn and my seaward peering eyes, waiting for when those windows to the soul, fixated upon a horizon awakening in contrast, hungry to be fed light, are finally rewarded with a nurturing feast of color.  For the debut of encompassing detail to furnish this silhouette of encouragement.  For when the chromatic spectrum spanning from complete blackness above my head transforms vertically, retreating, as subtle gradients of midnight, cobalt, and navy blues, intensifying in opposition, bleed skyward, all of which become accentuated by vivid, airbrushed sprays of color painting the undersides of low-hanging cumulous clouds.  For the breathtaking seconds of crimson change to compete before clearly culminating in a climaxing crescendo, screaming, as emergent, brilliantly emanating slivers of striated scarlet streaks tear-open the sky, burning like a bed of glowing coals smoldering in the hearth of a forge or the ashen, flaky growth rings and fluttering embers of a split log wavering within the heart of a wood-fire, arresting one’s attention of all else near. This forthcoming medley, this waterborne-wildfire enveloping the eastern vista in a sea of flames, a concordance of yellow, orange, magenta, copper, and red, fueled by the precious, billowing minutes of daybreak, is surely the apex of the ephemera.  The welcoming bath of dawn, consummating in sunrise, will be a special moment to savor, to taste upon my salty spirit.  I will be amongst those who have witnessed this unfolding metamorphosis evolve from the blackness of night to the very last second when the burning gaseous orb, refracting orange celestial light about its wiggling periphery, ascends above the faraway horizon, slowly breaking tangential contact of its lower arc from the sea like that of a drooping drop of morning dew, stretching from the tip of a leaf before slipping away, breaking free.  The sun, at last, will have been released to orbit the sky yet again.  A day rebirthed anew. 

I will come to visualize, with an absolute certainty reinforcing my seasoned convictions, that there is no place better I could be right now, for not everyone is remotely fortunate enough to journey where the sky is born.

The blurring bewilderment between shadowy sand and sea becomes obliterated with the increasing acuteness of a sky growing in refined focus with deep gradients of blue towering towards the heavens from the horizontal division of these distant waters.  As if the sea herself offers to share her own complexion, diffusing upwards in a casting reflection of rising reform.  A gaining charge urging the eclipse of night to finally resign.

A fleeting snapshot surfacing from the latent depths of reality much like the enigmatic, striped-fish you so patiently pursue, the once beached, finned-prize you admire briefly before release, when only by perfect timing as she is momentarily mirroring and glistening of the rising sun’s low-angle bath of orange and sanguine hues, those first shed upon the world, does it become understood that such imbued observations are only yours to relish in sensation and visual experience before disappearing into the vastness of sweeping transition and faded recognition.

~

“Before the passing sky, in long hours of contemplation of its magnificent and ever-changing beauty, I am seized by an incomparable emotion.  Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul.  To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! ... that is what I call prayer.”  -  Claude Debussy

Contrails Across a Cloudless Sky

Location: facing eastward, Monmouth Beach, NJ (40.34°N, 73.99°W)

Air Temp/Speed: 38°F, 6mph W

Water Temp: 46.9°F

Surf Condition: 0ft. in height, 2^nd hr. of ebbing tide

Moon Phase: 85% waxing (visible) risen for 1hr.

Equipment: St. Croix Avid Surf ASRS100M2; Shimano Stradic 8000FI

(WHAMM!!)  Yessss, you’ve got to be kidding me!... I haven’t felt a strike like this in a looong time!  Ohhh, this is grrreat!  This has to be a Bass, the fish isn’t shaking its head madly like a Bluefish would be..    Just keep the line tight, you can’t lose this one!  Steady, steady…. maintain pressure, take in every inch of line you can… that-a-boy, pump, reel… pump, reel… Just concentrate, you’re doing great, she’s right here now, in a few feet of water swirling at the surface.. (mouth agape) WHOAA! loook at the SIZE of her!  (mouth remains agape, eyes now fixed wide-open at a 36” beached specimen)

Without hesitation, I systematically meld the cork-wrapped section of the ten-foot graphite rod to the underside of my right forearm for a desired sense of “oneness” with this finely-crafted tool, this essential accomplice of mine, a veritable slingshot, and by its own nature, an agile authenticator to Newton’s third law of motion (for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction), demonstrated as such with every loaded cast it rockets from the shore, like an arrow fired from a drawn bow.  Right now, I am poised in a very special place as a surfcaster, bound in a memorable moment that I initiated, that this fish instinctively reacted to as a result, and together we are forming the related experience thereof.  I feel as though I’m held paralyzed by the time-warping peculiarities within the epicenter of a spiraling vortex delivering finned-fortune and pulsating-prosperity to my clamping palms.  It is now my duty to make battle, to reel her in and free her of the embedded lure she mistook as prey, earning for myself an incalculable satisfaction all the while. 

When clenching this slim companion in my hands, it’s as if my right-arm has tripled in length, offering me a vicarious expansion to my tactile faculty, enabling me to sense and envision each of the fish’s thrusting, side-to-side dashes in movement, her rigorously yanking head-shakes, and in my mind, allow me to “see” the fish without ever laying eyes upon her, accurately imagining the zigzag, lateral courses of her tugging, impaired movements underwater as she hovers in a listing position along the striated, sandy bottom, perceiving these sensations of her writhing struggle as they’re delivered directly to my body under the straining, carbon-composite equalizer I hold, that which acts as an enlivened, hyper-sensitive extension to my piqued nervous system.

This is how I’ve always chosen to fight my fish.  I realize it’s not the most efficient method, as arm and shoulder muscles unnecessarily strain harder and fatigue quicker than employing stress-free leverage, as when gripping the rod higher up its spine, but it’s an adaptation I prefer for attaining a richer experience of connection to a hooked fish that I immediately follow and conform to, finding it as natural as riding a bicycle again for the first time after years of abandonment have concealed from sight the underlying glossy luster of its frame with a caked accumulation of dust and the oncoming rush of air glancing off  my face being the testament to rediscovered freedoms found as I pedal forward on two wheels with the rejuvenation of a bird released from its cage.  This time however, I’m compelled to react otherwise.  A steep hill lies ahead.  The rod is being pulled away forcefully from my attached, white-knuckle grasp and backward-leaning body balanced upon anchored feet.  She is commanding respect from me, peeling out line to no end like that of a one-thousand-pound Black Marlin on twenty-pound-test monofilament. 

On this chilly evening, I have been granted front-row, V.I.P. standing-room to the sweet-sound of symphonious, stripping line quickly disappearing from my reel’s rapidly revolving spool.  Its engraved inscriptions, blurring beyond any legible discernment, appear as linear, parallel striations, as its unrelenting rotation vies to challenge the physical limits of the finely-tuned drag system’s compressed washers.  The friction these tiny discs produce is all I have in hopes of turning her head shore-bound before the deeply-buried backing to my braided line becomes visible.  This fish, somewhere out of sight below the bluish-gray waterline, is demonstrating her unremitting might to me with respondent, surging downward shakes of my rod.  I clearly feel that this heavy-weight contestant is anatomically endowed with broad shoulders and a wide, fanning tail pumping and broadsiding powerfully through her life-sustaining environ, the very surrounding water she swims within, now exhibiting to me an entirely unnatural, extreme behavior of sorts, in that a survival instinct to escape, to regain her sense of free-will, has manifested from an unbridled ambition to unhook herself, urging to break-free from this imposturous plastic-ploy lodged into her mandible.  The resulting engagement in a tug-of-war with me, a veritable plea for her unrestrained freedom, her deeply-ingrained desire to continue living, yields this undertaking I know as fishing.  I have met with the likes of fish this size before, so judiciously, I prepare for a more disciplined, calculated approach to induce submission of this linesided-leviathan. 

From my perspective, the straining endurance and yanking ferocity of her runaway struggle is what makes this a fight.  Understandably, her evolutionary conditioning, her biologically-programmed fight-or-flight behavioral response, her very determination to live, initiates immediately with the unstoppable fury like that of a boulder tumbling down a mountain.  She will not stop swimming away from this shore-bound, pulling force until her uninhibited sense of freedom is regained.  In the meantime, as the man dressed in waders, as the fisherman I chose be on this evening, I alone act as the sole benefactor of this primitive entanglement, but unbeknownst to her, she is fortunate enough to be in such a compromising situation with a man who values a continued existence of her life immensely, more so than she is ever capable of cognitively weighing as a cold-blooded, aquatic member of a lower-level life-form than myself.     

She will fatigue eventually. For me to fully-command the reins of this engagement before she exhausts herself, I’m forced instead to utilize full-leverage by selectively seating the rod butt on the inside on my pelvis, tightly grasping the backbone of the rod higher above the singing reel in order to best prevent premature muscle fatigue in my arm.  If this battle must be a marathon of endurance, I will pace myself, knowing from experience that brains trump brawn during any long-distance race against fish tails.  Steady, continual pressure on a fish behaving like a runaway freight train will always result in triumph for the angler, sans any tackle failure or cunning maneuvers by a fish near structure, or worse, sudden maneuvering or rolling in such a manner as to agonizingly free a barbless, or simply poor, hook-set.  The resulting dead line, once an electrified, taut piano wire of hammering exhilaration becomes nothing more than a lifeless, limp tease, a sudden, blind-sided black-eye to the face, and a painfully-sharp, false-mark of victory stabbing at an otherwise invincible, high-flying, adrenaline-fueled episode feeding a starved manhood rumbling from an evolutionary, primal-past as hunter, becomes this vacuous void infecting the cavity of the fisherman’s chest. 

This fish feels to be anything but the size of a schoolie-Striper.  She is everything an ailed angler dreams about during his aching, terrestrially-based waking moments.  It’s the reason we rise hours before dawn, bathing ourselves with the reflected sunlight beaming from the argenteous-white surface of the moon as we fastidiously work a desired section of beach, intent on proving to ourselves that our gut-instinct knows fish are here.  It serves to make us want to try again.  I may have been completely surprised to feel the instantaneous hook-up that I have during this encroaching period of dusk, but I feel as though I’ve done everything as best I could to successfully lead myself to such a rewarding juncture set atop local sand framed by this uncommon instance of a placid, sleeping sea.

The inserted key held in my hand has turned to open a locked door, allowing me to freely step-through to a world rarely visited and in this case, never thought quite possible.  Holding the weighty, dripping-wet, slim-covered paragon of my endeavors and staring her in the eye is always an unparalleled breath of satisfaction, a unique gift, but at all times, I am the wayfaring fisherman casting much, much more than plastic swimming lures.  I am engrossed within a perennial pursuit of the mysterious allure associated with angling, with the red-blooded, invigorating challenges presented by my fundamental inability of never being quite capable of seeing directly the extensive world which exists below the enigmatic waterline marrying to the sandy stage which I set my sinking feet upon, with embarking upon courses of solitude, appointments with peace, where I may pronounce myself “as one” before the soft photonic surge of a new flaming sunrise or conversely, the dimming and dipping disappearance of the circular, orange-colored flood lamp below the western horizon.  I am at odds, constantly poising and repositioning myself along the shoreline, a knight on this chessboard seeking to exclaim “checkmate!” sometime during this match of determination, this guessing game where I never wish for a guarantee, but rather hope for an opportunity to prove myself capable.  This magnificently vast sea, uncontrolled in her daily actions, may be thought of as my world-class touring theatre company where I alone act as my own director responsible for every action I make, restlessly intent on drawing-forth a one-of-a-kind performance from her obscured, aqueous depths.  Tonight, I have been fortunate enough to do just that.  My cast of characters has gracefully performed on an unprecedented level of showmanship, inciting this audience of one to his feet in a roaring ovation.  Bravo!  This very special span of time is all mine.  I own it. 

Be ready to take-up any line she doesn’t strip off the spool, or you’ll lose her, these are barbless hooks, remember! I silently yell to myself.  My instructional words of advice are like those made to an exhausted boxer from his shouting, bulging-eyed trainer in-between late rounds of heated fighting.  As seriously-minded as I must remain in order to land this fish, I cannot help but to also embrace the flooding associations of joy harmonizing my spirit, derived from this yet unseen, temporary connection now bound on the other end of this carbon-fiber fulcrum I hold, pumping-in the prospects of scaled opportunity.  I find myself lost amongst the riveting, giddy-feelings awakening a not-so-distant, child-like euphoria where I’m lost in the moment, literally reeling-in the soul-satisfying pleasures of discovery wrought from an ancient, and to this very tense second, basic activity of leisure. 

I’m only fighting a fish, remember.  As surfcasters, it would be correct to say that each of our spirit’s teem with the unassailable gift of hope we carry packed into the tubes of our surf bags, where we seek to wade the fringes of the Atlantic, casting these plastic and metal-lipped testaments of our ambition deep into turbulent, foaming-white waves, waiting patiently for that shocking tug, our fifteen minutes of fame when we are called to wrangle with fish like this.  If you’re amongst the many who have achieved “veteran status,” having logged countless hours on the beach, season upon season, year after year, fishing steadfast through the most trying of times and unforgiving of challenges presented by weather, you will know that occurrences such as this one do not occur nearly often enough.  You may stare at the wide, nighttime sky for as long as you choose, but doing so will never guarantee you the opportunity of viewing the instantaneous, explosive finale of a meteor entering the earth’s upper atmosphere and tracing towards the horizon in a flash for the very last second of its existence, catching your eye in pale blue and white colors of illumination.  As a wide-eyed human, and on this evening in particular, a fisherman entangled with luck, I’m reminded that the bounties afforded by life are granted to those who are in the right place at the right time.  That’s exactly where I find myself standing right now.  I am more than grateful to be the only devotee standing on the beach with a heavily bend rod.  I say this, because I know to genuinely appreciate it for what it is, especially since at this time, the current state of fisheries is different today than what is was yesterday, which serves to reinforce my belief that whenever I’m fortunate enough to hook a three-foot Striper on a swimming plug in the surf, I’m in a really damn good place. 

Today, the stakes are higher, the incessant, mounting pressures on the living resources which some dastardly take for granted are greater than ever, the fishes environment, their home, is in a deteriorating state of flux, mostly at the physical and political mismanagement of mankind, stemming from his inappeasable, ravenous desires to crawl in the shameful footsteps of greed and at times, never allow an opportunity to pass without exhibiting his boasting egotism for a cheap cellphone picture (financial gains realized at the hand of Striper stock and forage base overharvesting, senseless kills discarded as by-catch, illegal poaching, freezer-filling mentalities, and trophy kill-tournaments), there are seasonally-recurring, multi-state harvests (inconsistent, individual state regulation mandates, bonus tag programs, and resultant overharvesting of large, female breeders season after season), habitat destruction to contend with (pollution of waterways, hypoxia in Chesapeake Bay estuaries and crucial breeding grounds), and ultimately mankind’s inherent desires to reign supreme over the natural environment (futile rounds of seashore beach replenishment projects, consequential underwater “sand-desert” creation, reef burials, and proposed groin notchings coupled with sand-fill interments). 

I’m not nearly as pessimistic as my bellyaching appears to sound, especially in that with the taut and bending, pulling sensations of things tonight, my distinction at this very second, I should have nothing to complain about.  It’s just that when I stop to really think about it, I’m taken aback that this stock of fish is hit from all angles, every day, around the clock.  This fish has evaded untold peril to grow to be this size.  I’ve fancied many times what it must have been like to surf-cast these same beaches in say, 1680, when the entire ecosystem was virtually as pristine as Nature allowed her to be.  It must have been outrageous.  Would the probability, or even the possibility, of catching up to twenty thirty-pound-plus fish every time I made an outing be as rewarding, or is this sport more of a psychological endeavor to the angler, where the hunt reigns supreme as we are lured deeper into its holding, salty entrapment, being sprinkled with just enough reward to fuel a fin-chasing addiction where we patiently wait-out the turning of another tide, impatiently restless for more?

Of course, there always exist rewarding rays of hope, although sometimes pale in comparison, muted in strength or even obscured beyond common recognition, but they’re out there, you just have to find them.  Fundamentally, this is the very reason we willingly choose to fish; the rationale behind every occasion where we find ourselves against all odds with Nature, a pawn in her commanding hand.  I know I’m fortunate enough to feel the shining of this light more so than often, this core characteristic which sets one angler apart from another.  It’s an intangible, self-defining sense of refinement I find myself stepping closer to with each passing season, as I’m always creeping about, seeking to emerge from the darkness, in search of this splendor, waiting for its familiar warmth to strike my bare, projecting cheeks.  And there’s absolutely no confusion whenever it’s found, I might add.  You will feel it, arresting your body, massaging your soul. 

When it’s all said and done, things could always be worse, right?  That’s why tonight, while standing within the wrapping blanket of ensuing darkness, I feel as though I was made fortuitously illuminated by a coruscating bath of personal fulfillment.  This is my time to bask in glory, for it will not last for long and there is no promise of its return.  There never is.  This needle pulled from the proverbial haystack, a defiant victory over the encompassing cold elements and the capricious nature of my quarry, is nothing more than a perceived moment of piscatorial-perfection ordained through good measure and wise judgments made on my behalf.  While lost in this state of stupor, an anesthetized reality, I smiled with a found joy like that of a man lost at sea finally becoming rescued, as his distressing sense of hopelessness is immediately overcome with a powerful-as-life, riveting vitality, a rebirth of spirit never considered imaginable, as the underside of his forearm is firmly clenched by the unifying grasp offered at the hand of his rescuer, a miraculous sensation thought never to enliven his godforsaken soul, as his life-threatening ordeal vanishes in an instant and a new lease on life immediately blossoms into existence.  Such was the happiness pervading this fisherman’s soul.  A striped fish has come to his rescue.

And so I stood as a man refreshed of vigor, straddled upon a sandy altar along the edge of the calm Atlantic, rolling my head backwards while laughing aloud to the silvery, waxing moon risen over the sea’s horizon, my voice drowning-out in the biting vastness of the thirty-eight-degree air before ever reaching an unseen audience, while looking skyward at the beautifully-impermanent arching of my rod’s upper-half contrast against the gradient of a cloudless, azure-blue sky subsiding with each minute into the advancing twilight.  It was in this very frame of reference where I came to notice a high-altitude, twin-engine jet aircraft at cruise, heading in a north-easterly direction, crossing above my bent rod, a pseudo-distraction of sorts reminding me that I am only temporarily escaping reality during these unfolding seconds while connected to the fish I am focusing dearly on to land, admire briefly with staring eyes and esteemed spirit, before returning her to the dark depths of the sea, submerging my hands above both wrists within the frigid water to feed water over her gills, wriggling her body lengthwise from the grip of her wide peduncle to ensure a proper resuscitation.  As I stood below this passing airplane on the cold November beach, glancing at these dissipating trails of vapor whose texture resembled puffy cotton-balls, illuminated by the sun’s dissolving light in a dull, off-white color, they reminded me that, for while I am alone here on this beach tonight, I am never completely alone.  Within my short-lived solitude, where silence was interrupted only by the cold breeze buffeting my exposed ears and the buzzing bursts of drag taken from my reel’s spool, where I was accompanied by only my thoughts and the darkened vista of an expansive ocean lapping ever so gently towards my feet, I knew I would be reclaimed by modernity the second I turned my back to the sea and my eyes fell upon the world which waited patiently over my shoulders.

To imagine, that this pressurized tube of aluminum and carbon-fiber composite engineering, an altogether taken-for-granted, marvel of modern civilization flying fellow members of mankind from somewhere on this planet to somewhere else could have been regarded an impetus bearing me to conceive these thoughts.  Chances are, I likely wouldn’t have even paid any mind to it being overhead, even if I concentrated haphazardly on spotting its movement, let alone while doing my best to maintain connectivity to a weighty, thrashing fish, but its large, billowing stream of condensation trails were anything but unnoticeable.  These contrails, otherwise known as vapor trails, or even specifically, Aviaticus clouds, are simply the result of water vapor being emitted as plumes from the engines exhaust flow, byproduct emissions from hydrocarbon fuel combustion which resultantly crystallize upon coming into contact with the ambient atmosphere when the air temperature is at least negative-forty-degrees-Fahrenheit, as the droplets raise the saturation point of the surrounding air, cool immediately, and then condense to form the streaks we see.  Very simply put, they are man-made clouds. 

I even think to myself, that this rod I am holding, the tool which initiated this entire plight, is constructed of the very same atomic elements of carbon and hydrogen which are also the primary molecules of the kerosene fuel combusting and vaporizing to propel those passengers along their journey through the sky.  They’re only arranged in different chemical chains, one of which allows me, a man organically composed of these same elements, to hold this staff of cylindrically-rolled carbon-fiber and applied epoxy resin now unified as a fishing rod, also composed of these same elements, and grants me the autonomy to connect with a living organism organically comprised of the very same various elements arranged in the form of a large, swirling fish.  We are each creations formed from these infinitesimal building-blocks of Nature.  We are all one and the same, but altogether different.  

It would be safe to assume that there were easily two-hundred passengers on-board that jet, travelling at over five-hundred miles-per-hour, all occupying seats in the sky, with each valuing a unique existence defining who they are, individuals all living a life entirely different from those seated a row ahead or behind, each guided by different principles and purposes, and each with a presumed reason for necessitating the inestimable benefit of travel offered only by modern aviation.  Where are they all going to?  Here I am, stationary at the foamy fringe of an ocean, more than thirty-thousand-feet below them, fortunate enough by my own estimation to be fighting a species of fish I spend all too much of my waking time preoccupied over.  If for a moment they could possibly see me through those Plexiglas windows, I cannot help but to wonder if any onboard would question my actions, upon viewing a man happier than most poising himself within the elements of a blustery, mid-thirty-degree November evening, hoping to lure a fish into striking a plastic presentation, a fish which may not be anywhere within hundreds of yards from the furthest reaches of his meager cast?  Why does he willingly choose to place himself out there?  Is there something which he feels he needs to prove to himself?  Or, is there some primitive motivation aching from his inside which he feels he must appease, a type of guiding principle or compelling instinct regulating his behaviors?

My counter would simply entreat said inquiries with the following: Have any of you ever connected so close with Nature, so as to stand alone, face-to-face with her, with only the brisk, restless air you breath-in separating your perceptions of reality from her raw, fundamental truths?  Have any of you ever stood before her, wide-eyed, allowing her arresting influence seize the entire core of your being, while succumbing to that unregulated feeling which beckons to draw you nearer to your native self, as you were meant to experience the delicate tenacity of life in this world?  You may very well have, and with that there is nothing more for me to plead.  You have seen the light.  You have felt its warming splendor.  If however, you have ever felt greater than a single grain of sand settled amongst the countless multitudes lying upon a wide, sandy beach stretching for miles, then you may not understand what it is I am hoping to communicate.  You have not yet searched hard enough.  You have not yet witnessed greatness.  On top of all that, I also happen to be a fisherman balancing a bent rod, immersed in a self-satisfying glory.

This life is ours for the taking, for each of us to explore robustly like pioneering adventurers who find themselves driven by insatiable appetites to continually learn from and understand to the best of their abilities this at times bewildering, but always most rewarding in promise, this endeavor known as life, to experience the endless riches of its limitless bounties, for at all times we are nothing more than essential ingredients to a greater whole, individuals bestowed to cast our altogether unique and indelible mark upon the world.  Rise forth! She is begging for your participation!  Breathe-in deeply this brilliance penetrating the deepest reaches of your chest’s expanding lungs!  The mysteries which lie unknown to us in this life, awaiting our discovery, constitute the very courses distinguishing how each of us chooses to define ourselves, which combination of colors we will select to paint our paths with like that of a quintessential masterpiece, illustrating each of our intimate revelations made to this world to proclaim just who we are.  And so at the moment I happen to be wielding a fishing rod, but it is here, in Nature’s guiding presence, where I am ever enlightened as her eager protégé, a student intently engaged in listening to every spoken word she whispers in my ears.  I come here to listen, so I am determined to listen well.

During this short, passing minute in time, others miles above are en route to a destination important to them, just as I stand submerged within a watery destination important to me.  And tonight especially, I had the unexpected company of two extraordinary specimens to ease my standing solitude through the dimming daylight of another slipping sunset, where another cold and blustery autumn afternoon spent casting for striped-dreams and a sense of soulful relief along the shoreline transformed into a type of season-closing demarcation of flopping, scaled-perfection.  After scores of outings had on beaches, I have hooked-into, fought, and successfully subdued not one, but two, personal-best Stripers from the New Jersey surf.  Who would have thought it was to occur at the heels of the third straight week of a relentless, west-wind onslaught, where fish were taken from a glass-smooth sea, with no baitfish present, during a lackluster (at best) fall-run of migratory fish, amidst a lunar-illuminated sky only days away from a full-moon.   As a welcomed reward, I was made benefactor of being in the right place, at the right time.  It was as if this date with destiny was orchestrated exclusively for me, for nobody else along the entire beachfront.  How else would you explain to me that the very spot I chose to fling my first cast from this beach, whereupon seconds of retrieving a plastic swimming plug, it was aggressively attacked by a 36” fish.  On my second cast of the evening, after reeling yet from the ecstatic aftermath of the finned-fortune I pulled from the infinite, unvarying Atlantic, my retrieve was stopped suddenly again as another keeper-sized Striper of 34” locked jaws onto my offering.  For me, this was a slime-laden, piscatorial present, ripened fruit snatched from the Fishing Gods cornucopia, imparted to me by means of the feverish, favonian winds, but ultimately, a found sense of freedom afforded by the hunger-pangs of apex predators stealthily cruising the shadowy shallows of a glass-smooth sea at dusk. 

With the falling water temperature, these fish are quickly on the move south, driven by a biologic instinct to migrate.  There is no stopping them.  The distinct changes occurring daily within this playground of the sea are just as apparent as those left in the wake of an aircraft painting streaks of contrails across a cloudless sky.  And much like the impermanence of vanishing vapor trails, one morning I will wake-up to learn the fish I chased all season-long are gone too, and all that which will remain in my wake are the expansive, trailing stream of memories, the byproduct of my high-flying passions for navigating the wide, blue unknown flowing before my feet.  Yet another season of surf fishing will have ended, and the sea’s boundlessly breaking waves rolling ashore the only haunting reminder that finned-life gliding under these waves is someday promised to return.

Billowing contrails, crystallized water vapor, streak the sky in the wake of a commercial aircraft.

This 36” Striper was taken from a glass-smooth surf, hooked in less than six-feet of water.