The Red World
Alessandra Sillo

            The scratchy whisper of the salty gales that follow intricate, labyrinthian paths. The insatiable desire of the grey, leaden ocean and its black velvet hand of treasure and deceit. The pinch of the sun against your cheek. The slow, hypnotic, incessant roll of the tides. The sweet scent of suntan oil and the warm feel of sand. The soft, anesthetized chatter of those who pass by with their sneakers clutched by their laces. Their voices are scratchy, fearful, yet compassionate and dear, instilled with a deep, wonderful resonant call of all they once yearned for, all that they still yearn for.

            Then there are those who look into the golden, shiny orb of the sun with squinty, anxious eyes. Those who fear blindness or deafness. Those who laugh and chuckle and sway their hands in the face of the biting salt-fringed wind. Those who play cards in attempt to keep them on the table. Those who fly their red kites in the midst of a rainless thunder storm. Those who watch their children with eyes of resignation, delight, and hopelessness. Those who stand still in the face of the roaring surf. Those who meander aimlessly along the shore with digital cameras, knapsacks or sand buckets. Those who walk on pointed, jagged shells, and fail to pick them up. Those who never look beyond what stands directly before them. Those who walk with their golden backs turned away from the sun.

            I could sit and listen forever. Orchard Beach is not any place that you can find on any map, heck it’s too small to be even known by many people, but how can a map, a mere piece of paper, something that can be torn, burned, and destroyed, find roots to each and every place in our world? I wonder about these things as I sit by the veranda and watch. I admire the stable, fiery core of the sun that lies within the starry and peach-stained horizon – the warm colors of pinks, oranges, and reds coalesce and their reflection dances upon on the water, that peripheral boundary that lies between fire and ice, life and death, freedom and chains, hope and desperation, loneliness and satiety.

            I hear the coarse, dry whisper, of a cloaked figure who remains invisible to our eyes alone. He walks slowly down the shore leaving no footprints, yet his voice remains as clear and succinct as the wind. He cries for humanity. He cries for justice. He cries for hope in a world of deterring creatures that are fearful, lost, and ashamed, in a world where nothing is what it seems or appears to be. The ocean man is what I call him. He only comes out when he hears the call of the wind or when he sees the smoky hand of the white fog spark the sky. He extends his feathered wings, throws his cloak aside and begins to walk around the seven mile radius of the ocean. He looks into the sun without flinching. He wears no shoes, but dons Abe Lincoln’s top hat and a pair of white gloves. He is part and parcel of the sun. But, he too only follows the circular path. Who is this man? How did he end up here? Is he winged or just broken?

            Do we ever take the time to see? To just see and listen to the song of the birds? When I was younger, I used to spend my days on the beach chasing the seagulls around the shore during low tide. My mother would stand in the distance, in her wonderful raspberry colored sun dress, and laugh and laugh. I would try to touch them with a cherry coated Popsicle stick. I was always afraid to get too close, yet one time I did. I touched his wing. He looked at me with eyes of sadness, horror, and joy. I smiled back and he flew away and looked as though he was riding a tricycle through the sky. The sea used to be a place for me. I still love the sounds, textures, and sights, but something has changed since then. 

            Upon our last return, I felt like alien in a foreign place. I imagined the wonderful expanse of blueness, a blue that can never be replicated on a color chart, but one that resides deep, too deep to even ponder. I always wanted to put ocean water in a plastic Ziploc bag, and carry it with me in my red lunchbox, but I never thought I would need to. 

            That sticky July day, my family and I emerged from the Seaside Resort in anxious hopes to see the ends of freedom take form and coalesce in the distance. My sister carried her Polaroid camera around her neck. My mother carried a stack of red and pink towels. My father carried the red cooler on one shoulder. My brother and I carried nothing but our shoes and my little sister held her little rag doll and a bag of lollipops and licorice. Before we crossed the road, we watched the cars fly past with their tops down – we saw men with gelled hair and women with fancy hair wraps, too much makeup, and large black sunglasses. I wondered where they were going. Where can one go?

            Once we reached the other side of the road, we took off our shoes and scurried up a small pathway that had a large strange straw plant enmeshed on either side. The ground was hot, and I ran and almost hopped up the narrow, smooth incline. However, when I reached the top, by stomach turned and dropped. The beach was abandoned. The lifeguard chairs and the snack bar were empty. Even the pigeons looked lonely. But as I glanced further into those scorched depths I realized why.

            The ocean was red. My wonderful grey, quiet ocean was infected with a cyclic overdose of whatever it was that lived beneath. What would God say if he saw it? Would God say anything at all? Would he ever know? Who would tell him? A red tide. Red. What did that mean? For me? For you? For humanity?

            The sad part was that we never even went close. We never even touched it. The ocean became a wingless monster with red, beady eyes and a furry tail. All that existed within me used to be reflected within those tides, the constant ebb and flow exemplified the incessant roar that exists within, whoever that was. Now the water did not even make the slightest sound. Even the ocean man was gone. There was no more fog and the croaking call of the wind was gone. The lighthouse was unlit. There were no fishermen near the shoreline. Time stood still then, held in abeyance from all that I once knew and held so dearly. Time only watched and waited. Waited and watched. The ocean waited, just as I did. Waited that interminable wait.  

            The more I glared at its solemn stare, the more I want to run and run. The ocean was filled with a million lonely eyes. No living creature remained. They were dead and infected with the red disease. Not even the small crustaceans that floated along the surface reemerged to soak up the rays from the sun. They were gone too. Even the sea grass that once was spewed along the shore had that strange and unfamiliar russet hue. I was disappointed in the world that I once knew. The world that I saw as always existing within the palm of my hand.

            I turned to my mother for an answer. I then turned to my father and then back again to the red sea. I wanted to ask them what this all meant. I wanted to tell them that the ocean man was gone. But nobody would ever understand. My father too said nothing, but the look in his eyes revealed the same pity I felt. He too wore glasses like me. But glasses or not, we saw nothing that we could reclaim as our own. His word was the law and nothing else mattered, yet here, standing beside the ocean, he no longer had the ability to speak. We were all on that threshold, we were on that unknown mountainside waiting for our cue for flight. Except we couldn’t even move. None of us could. We couldn’t even swim. We couldn’t enter the territory in which we so heartily came to seek.

            “Hello folks! Hey over there! How are you all doing this morning?” The pool man shouted from nearby and broke the silence that seemed to captivate and frighten us. He wore baggy blue jeans and a white collared shirt with a pencil in his pocket.

            “Very well, Sir,” my father responded. My father always knew how to talk with strangers. “Say what’s wrong with this picture?” He pointed his stubby finger to the ocean, its depths not even visible from up-close.

            “I don’t know much. But I know it’s called something like red tide. There’s too much of something in that water…and it’s not healthy for the water, or for the creatures that live beneath. Have you heard of it?” My father nodded and we all turned to face him, to see what he would say next.

            “No, we live up in Connecticut, so we don’t see much of the ocean down there,” he looked at my mother, smiled faintly, and then turned his gaze back to the ocean. “Is red tide common?” The man looked as though he had seen a frightened lightening bug in the wind. He twitched his nose.

            “It comes and goes.” My father didn’t seem to hear him anymore, he too was caught and lost in that realm that neither of us had ever bothered to lay a finger upon -- that realm of fire, snow, darkness, and scarlet light that only appeared in the afternoon.

            I wanted my father to continue with the questioning. I wanted to find out more. But he never asked more than what was necessary. He knew when enough was enough. And that was it.  But I can still remember that sad, nostalgic look in those giant, deep chocolate eyes. My mother always told me that I had his eyes. I hope that I didn’t show what his eyes did.

            I wanted him to bring my ocean back. I wanted to see that grand expanse of blueness just to know that it was there, that it still existed and wasn’t washed away. I only wanted to touch it. To know that something beyond me still existed, still thrived in a cold world in which nothing was discernable or apparent from a first glance. My father would have understood. If anyone would, it would be him. If anyone believed in me, he did. He gave me wings. But during the trip it seemed as if he rarely spoke. He was one man against the tide. Can man ever compete? If the tide is red, what does that mean for us? Are we are a red people, a red race of individuals who only yearn for things that we cannot have? Do we taste that poison everyday? Is this poison intrinsic in our system?

*          *          *

            I always told myself that someday I would live by a great body of water. There is something about it that has always pulled me toward it, as though a giant magnetic force had been instilled in my heart. For too long, I felt as if I was missing out, as though dry land didn’t offer me the same advantage, the same prospects. However, now I wonder if it is better just to stay away. Is it better to stay far away? How far is far away?

            The problem is that I never stop to listen. Nobody ever stops to just sit and listen. Listen. How often do we hear the rumble of ocean? How often do we hear the sweet cadences of blue jays or hummingbirds? Have we fallen so deep into the pitiless abyss that we fail to realize who were are as a human race, as a people, a generation of people, who succumb to a weak and feeble fate?

            As a child, the air was my friend. It created a beautiful symphonic melody of all that was lost and forgotten, all that I feared and all that I strived to do. We all yearn to reach that distant core, to reach some means of truth, but we are continually held back by the reigns of the ocean, by that anchor that takes hold in a crooked nook in our souls. We can attempt to break free from these chains, to extricate ourselves from such fetters, but we continually fail. We forsake what lies directly in front of us. The moon, a white ball of fire, stands us before each night and we turn the other way. We turn a cold shoulder to our world! We never contemplate its place amid the universe, or bother to track the trajectory that it follows through the scarlet and silver scorched sky. 

            The ululating sound of the ocean laments our fate each day. Why do we run so far, only to follow a constrained and limited path? Even along the shore, why can only I run so far? I only want to reach somewhere that’s not a dead end. The rocks are beautifully encrusted shapes, some are even in the shapes of distorted hearts and withered, fallen roses, but as I grow older, I no longer desire to climb them. I refrain from my place on top.

*          *          *

            But, I will never forget the sweet call of the white sprite-like birds that once dotted the shore. Those birds always seemed strangely misplaced. They hover and pick on the remains near a brown lunch bag only to find nothing more than aluminum and plastic. They find nothing to eat, the shore remains impeccable and dry, not a shell or oyster in sight. Years later I tried to feed them, yet they didn’t touch the food.

*          *          *

 

 

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