Words&Dirt

“It was good hunting that day.  He got twenty-two little octopi.  And he picked off several hundred sea cradles and put them in his wooden bucket.  As the tide moved out he followed it while the morning came and the sun arose.  The flat extended out two hundred yards and then there was a line of heavy weed-crusted rocks before it dropped off to deep water.  Doc worked out to the barrier edge.  He had about what he wanted now and the rest of the time he looked under stones, leaned down and peered into the tide pools with their brilliant mosaics and their scuttling, bubbling life.  And he came at last to the outer barrier where the long leathery brown algae hung down into the water.  Red starfish clustered on the rocks and the sea pulsed up and down against the barrier waiting to get in again.  Between two weeded rocks on the barrier Doc saw a flash of white under water and then the floating weed covered it.  He climbed to the place over the slippery rocks, held himself firmly, and gently reached down and parted the brow algae.  Then he grew rigid.  A girl’s face looked up at him, a pretty, pale girl with dark hair.  The eyes were open and clear and the face was firm and the hair washed gently about her head.  The body was out of sight, caught in the crevice.  The lips were slightly parted and the teeth showed and on the face was only comfort and rest.  Just under water it was and the clear water made it very beautiful.  It seemed to Doc that he looked at it for many minutes, and the face burned into his picture memory.

Very slowly he raised his hand and let the brown weed float back and cover the face.  Doc’s heart pounded deeply and his throat felt tight.  He picked up his bucket and his jars and his crowbar and went slowly over the slippery rocks back toward the beach.

And the girl’s face went ahead of him.  He sat down on the beach in the coarse dry sand and pulled off his boots.  In the jar the little octopi were huddled up, each keeping as far as possible from the others.  Music sounded in Doc’s ears, a high thin piercingly sweet flute carrying a melody he could never remember, and against this, a pounding surf-like wood-wind section.  The flute went up into regions beyond the hearing range and even there it carried its unbelievable melody.  Goose pimples come out on Doc’s arms.  He shivered and his eyes were wet the way they get in the focus of great beauty.  The girl’s eyes had been gray and clear and the dark hair floated, drifted lightly over her face.  The picture was set for all time.  He sat there while the first little spout of water came over the reef bringing the returning tide.  He sat there hearing the music while the sea crept in again over the bouldery flat.  His hand tapped out the rhythm, and the terrifying flute played in his brain.  The eyes were gray and the mouth smiled a little or seemed to catch its breath in ecstasy.”

––Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, loc. 1255-71

“The fact that a scheme is doomed from the start to become a disastrous embarrassment and put its instigators in prison does not mean that some isolated clique of egotists in power won’t convince themselves that it is, in the immortal words of Oliver North, ‘a neat idea.'”

––The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, by David Brin, pg. 193