The End of the Pier

What can I say? Yesterday we wandered around town in a "last day daze" and walked to the end of the pier one more time. I listened to the local boys foul-mouth it for the tourists. A dolphin swam close by and the European visitors gasped. Throwing a mackerel back into the water a fisherman described how a shark can take all your line in a second. I looked up and below me great currents of small fish painted Van Gogh swirls in emerald water. Why is it, when faced with a great expanse of deep water, I always want to jump in?

This morning it is stormy in the north country, and outside the sky is dark as night. It is a downpour, and I think of Veronica in the Florida sun going about her life so practically and viewing the world so concretely. We are exact opposites, of course. I am swept away, carried under by the current after wandering too far in search of what I have never seen. Sisters. How could it be any other way?

By the way, do you think it is true that "chance encounters are what keep us going?" I finished Norwegian Wood on the beach in Florida and am now reading Kafka on the Shore. Do we attempt to create for ourselves here in Blogworld the "chance encounters" that we crave? Do we look for the shadow that makes ours darker? The half that disappeared when God took a knife and cut everybody down the middle?