Beholding Paradise Bay

Beholding Paradise Bay

L. Edgar Otto    28 November, 2012

As it came to pass again for the first time Olney stood over the precipice atop the tectonic plate and beheld the Paradise Bay.  It was pure in its form and free but for traces on its rocky shores from the time reckoned by the narrow inlet of his present form unclogged with falling sand.

The long journey across the acetic desert seemed but a memory encased inside itself where even shadows now past could only be imagined in the briefest of moments or in some distant place forever far away.  Olney no longer craved the sea breeze nor thought to hoard the dewdrops of water that meant everything but now were as replete and common as once the tears or sweat and salt to taste not to let them go into the fire heavy burden of the empty sun its surface rays pushing him down making his blood thick with his confining brine.

A mare maiden, a very young sea nymph poked her head up from the small pool far from the tide and waved to him bidding him come down and play, enjoy the dance of sea weeds in the shifting currents, watch the shape changing clouds rise and fall in squalls merging with the scud and brief downpour that gave life again to all but the skeletons seagull plucked and noon star dried as the prickly pears blossomed and their thorns turned to leaves of green against the deadened strings as if frightened feathery things with stings withdrawn into their shells in the wake of great ever swimming shadows so that they breathe or worse in the joyful trust of all things in paradise a galaxy so wide one could live a long time safe until a marauding falling starfish questioned again the reality of any pacific dream.

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Coming down from the precipice Olney learned of the long history of the changing sea and land along the way.  But he realized this was not the only path down only it would take too long to try every path as the climb upward would prove too exhausting.  But from this one viewpoint of truth he was armed with wisdom as he surveyed the flora and fauna of the teeming life along the sound, once a dry delta, then the encroaching  bay into the fertile enclaves.  He also thought deeply about the mare maiden, taking her offer of the zest oil fruit adapted as if mangroves after the last few geological floods changed the landscape.

But he did not eat it right away for he had been around a little longer than the shifting of the land, its coming together and breaking apart into great single continents and a single sea.  He knew hers was an issue of mortality and the search or myth of soul.  He tasted it as it extruded drops of salt yet its fresh flavor prevented anything within it from breaking down into nutrients so what was added to it within of healing herbs and toxins tended to stay, freeze into solidity more salty than the sea.  Such was her world somewhere in the half reality of the shores of half dreams.  Yet he was young enough to at least relish the temptation from a distance so sweet the fruit, so protected as if a paradise the safety and isolation of the bay.  The mare maid offered this to him as if what more of life could be worth the living and in the taken of the fruit there is rest and her pure form could not imagine some tomorrow without innocence in desire and beauty that could decay.  

She replied as if she really knew the depth of musing and contemplation with smiles and mirth that in some end or at beginnings all creatures finding souls became equal in the eyes of beliefs that this is the best of paradise nothing lost of privacy of  subtle freedom to which we trust to at least this world, and porpoise play in its waters. Hers was not an offer of deceit nor in her heart that in the living as the fruit screams out to replicate, burst through the prison of its rind, that once set in motion all of it would have to be made again until love itself came closer this time in its quest and arduous journey.  Olney was half willing to accept and choose these half dreams and his own mortality himself.

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