“The sea is a sort of pants for the earth.”
“Excuse me.”
“Pants for the earth, hiding any number of crabs and other crustaceans … whelks and winkles…”
“I don’t think that analogy bears much scrutiny, Fred.”
“I prefer to call it a poetic metaphor, Charlie. Not an analogy as such but a symbolic statement, a shorthand for carbon skidmarks…”
Laughter. Like squelches of breath. Or elbows greasing up for a fight.
“I know we humans need to clean up our act, Fred, but I’m sure there are better ways with which to flag these things up than imagining someone’s UNDERPANTS!”
“Charlie, if it gets people thinking, then that’s half the battle.”
The two figures disappeared into their own laughter, like shadows into night, except only one was laughing, the other still complaining that humanity had lost its way. From the other direction, two figures – whether the same or different shapes or silhouettes as those that had earlier disappeared – returned along the sea front. Night had passed around the world like an all-enveloping pair of trousers amid a soaking drizzle and only vague glimpses of the moon between the strides. The sea sounded even nearer when it couldn’t be seen. A plaintive, meaningful rhythm of the waves. A sense of slacks and tights. This time laughter was in short supply. In quick gasping bursts of breathless endeavour. But like with all good stuff, never mind the width, or its girth of mirth, one must feel the sheer next-to-skin quality. There was joy in the marching steps. Made-to- measure footprints in the light of new hopes, new beginnings. The two figures soon passed like strangers in the night, with no need to talk.
Come dawn – and a relenting of the drizzle into just light sprays of ghostly saliva – the sea was more like curdled ankle-sock than untidy Y-fronts. The sun rose as the burning head of a snake upon the ridge of the sky. Fred and Charlie bobbed sluggishly upon the now vaguely perceived swell. Laughter etched upon both faces as if they had resolved their differences with friendly boxer shorts just short of jutting fisticuffs. If it gets people sinking, then that’s half the battle. The wiry appendages of a sea monster dragged them under towards the half-submerged caverns where new races prepared themselves upon unmade seabeds for eventual emergence as denizens of the earth. Hirsute coils moving into alert states of variable concretion or vertical eyes flashing their eyelashes. But it was all a poetic metaphor. A pathetic analogy. None of it was real. Even Fred and Charlie seemed to lack any visible footprints in the soft squelching sand. And their once sharp elbows will soon be in torque to sanitary nirvana.
No comments:
Post a Comment