March 5: "Tides," Light-Footed and Casual, "The Bigfoot Trap"

Mary Oliver on her morning walk . . .

Tides

by:  Mary Oliver

Every day the sea

     blue gray green lavender

pulls away leaving the harbor's

dark-cobbled undercoat

slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls

walk there among old whalebones, the white

     spines of fish blink from the strandy stew

as the hours tick over; and then

far out the faint, sheer

     line turns, rustling over the slack,

the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over

the clam beds, slipper logs,

barnacle-studded stones, dragging

the shining sheets forward, deepening,

     pushing, wreathing together

wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

spilling over themselves, lapping

     blue gray green lavender, never

resting, not ever but fashioning shore,

continent, everything.

And here you may find me

on almost any morning

walking along the shore so

     light-footed so casual.

I wish that my mornings could always  start like this--a walk along a beach, watching the blue gray green lavender sea.  The life that I've created for myself doesn't usually allow me anything so leisurely.  When the alarm goes off in the morning, I hit the ground running, my brain already listing and organizing and prioritizing all the tasks of the day.  Nothing light-footed or casual for me.

That's why I've really enjoyed this weekend.  No jobs to worry about.  No church services to play pipe organ for.  No lesson plans or grading.  Pretty much all I've had to do is get up, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and plan what movies to watch at Midwest Weirdfest.  Yes, the majority of these past three days have revolved around quirky, artsy, experimental films about UFOs, diabetics, demons, beaver armies, and Bigfoot.  For a person who spent a good portion of his childhood reading Stephen King novels and issues of Starlog and Fangoria and The Weekly Weird News--and watching movies like The Legend of Boggy Creek and miniseries like Salem's Lot--it was a perfect getaway.  (The fact that I was involved with one of the movies premiering at the festival was just a bonus.)

Of course, I head back to my "normal" life tomorrow, with all of its stresses and obligations.  I'm not complaining, mind you.  For the most part, I love what I do.  However, there is something to be said for a day where your biggest worry is making it to a screening of a movie titled The Bigfoot Trap (one of my favorites of the weekend, by the way).

Tonight, however, I played board games with my family and friends when we got back to the hotel.  We talked about our favorite movies of the weekend and ate Oreos.  It was a great way to end this cinematic adventure.

If Saint Marty were Mary Oliver, he would write a poem about Bigfoot walking along a beach by a lavender sea, gobbling hundreds of beavers.