A man makes a design well because he feels it. When he makes some one else’s design, you can tell. If he is to make some one else’s design, he must feel it in himself first. You cannot point a pistol at a man and say, “Make heat-lightning and clouds with tracks-meeting under them, and make it beautiful.”
- Two Bows. Laughing Boy, Oliver La Farge
There was a rhythm to it. There was no Monday or Friday. Every day was either one day further away from fall or one day closer to spring. The sun was either setting earlier each day or later. That was it. The work knew no time either. Nights, days, weekends, it was all the same. Working until 11pm, going out on the water until 3am, waking up at 7am to do it again.
When it was going, it was the only show in town. There was everything to watch. The moon, the wind, the pressure, and what was happening in the surf, in the woods, and on the bay. Write it down after walks, after the seeing. Write down everything, and look for patterns. Although the only way to really see patterns is to be in one place year after year. That once seemed viable. Now of course, who knows. Conditions have changed. I have changed. The place has changed. Are there more mysteries to discover? Undoubtedly. But the learning curve is getting steep, and you can look around and see what happens when you go all the way up it, over the top, and back down the other side.
At one time, it was about learning. How to fish. How to build fishing rods. How to tie flies. Rig up, fix gear, and to find fish. There was success, at least in reaching a state of informed incompetence. Sometimes a piece clicks. Like the time when you realized what a bad fisherman you really were. And there was the island too. The white oak groves, the holly stands, the different cedar trees, the bushes, the birds when they were here, and how everything changed day after day. Because this is a place that is burned into my subconscious. It is the dream map. Sometimes when I dream the dreams take place here, and I travel down paths that are not paths to houses that are not houses, but it is all here.
It is necessary to “choose” to be here and then everything works out better. If it is just a last resort then things don’t go as well. Chose to be here tonight. Chose to fish the electric sunset. Chose to fish the heavy surf ripping up steeply carved sand banks, sometimes rushing up to knee height and above - the water is whipped up white and there is some junk in the water but not much. Only a few birds overhead. It is an exercise in being here, as opposed to being here and wishing one was elsewhere.
One day, today will be just a memory, and therefore it is possible to choose what you will remember about today.
There was once a day when the water was dark and choppy. Thicker clouds were up in the sky, puffier than in previous days, and plenty of gulls on the beach dropping clams. Look at the water and think of the day last year during the summer when it was starting to get dark and you were casting the gold and green Yozuri crystal minnow out in front of the small points that the beach makes and drifting it along until the line came tight, like swinging a streamer in a fast flowing river. You were catching bass like mad that night. Remember that, and then put on a gold and green Yozuri. Don’t need to cast far, that isn’t always the point. And then you land one very small bass. A few minutes later, another, and then another. Keep on walking down the beach back towards the outwash. At the outwash, one more bass, a bit bigger, but not by much, than the other ones.
The whole world is right around here. It is not the world that is far away. It is the first hand world. No adjectives.
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