Things are beautiful if you love them.
_____ Jean Anouilh
Beautiful things have always been important to me. That is I suppose, why I became an artist.
The Beautiful
Thing
I can
say without a doubt that the most beautiful things I have ever seen were my two
sons. Not that there haven’t been times when the frustrations and tribulations
of parenting led me to believe that maybe they were somewhat less that
beautiful, because there have been. The
first time I saw their little red wrinkled faces I fell in love, forever,
unquestioning, irrevocably and unconditionally. Slimy and bloody, I saw them as
miracles and that has not changed even after all these years. Whenever I lost
patience with them all it took was moment of stillness or a night’s sleep and
everything clarified itself, came full circle and they were again beautiful to
me in every way. They are men now and some people may not, for whatever reason
thinks that they are beautiful but they certainly are to me and all ways will
be, no matter what.
When I was
seventeen and in military school I took Spanish classes. Although I was not gifted
in languages, (not even English), I was fascinated by the study of Spanish and
actually got reasonably competent at speaking it. Part of the reason my grades
were as good as they were was because I dated the Spanish teacher’s Daughter
and went over to her house several times a week. From my dorm room to her house
was less than a quarter of a mile and was considered on campus, which meant I
could walk to her house and never leave campus. Leaving campus was against the rules for all cadets
except on certain days and in certain circumstances. The Spanish teacher’s
daughter and I would sit in their living room with the gauzy lace sheer
curtains blowing against the window to kiss and cautiously fondle each other
for hours on end. She was a beautiful girl with eyes as black as the darkest
night and skin as brown and warm as a summer’s afternoon. Like all good things our
little romance eventually came to an end. Military School ended and I went home
for the summer where I immediately started a campaign for my parents to take me
to Mexico where I could practice my newly establish Spanish language skills,
such as they were. They reluctantly agreed after I explained the positive
educational benefits it would afford me. My brother David, just three years older
than me was twenty or twenty-one and far too mature and independent to be
traveling with his parents and little brother. “There is no way I would go off
on a trip with you and that’s for sure!” He often declared. He somehow got
caught up in the excitement during the planning stages of the trip and ultimately
agreed to make the trip with us, despite his serious reservations. No one
pressured him in any way to go but I think he was afraid that he might miss
something if he didn’t go. So he went along and complained, moaned and groaned
the entire time. He hated the food, the plane trip and most all being with me
for such a long uninterrupted amount of time. Clearly he should have stayed
home. Because he was so unhappy he virtually ruined the entire trip for the
rest of us. We left south Alabama near the first of July. A hot and sultry, dusty
month that time of year there and we flew away to Mexico City where I expected
more hot and dry weather. When we arrived there was a torrential rainstorm where
wind, thunder and lightning greeted us on our arrival. We almost froze to death
getting off the plane because at that point in time you walked from the
airplane to the terminal in whatever weather was prevailing. This first
introduction to Mexico City was anything but what I had expected, cold and wet.
Brother David thought everything was terrible, “I hate this place!” He stated on
the way to the terminal in the rain for the first of many times and how sorry
he was that he came.
We toured
Mexico City and the surrounding areas for several days seeing points of
interest, the large University of Mexico complex with Diego Rivera murals
adorning the exterior walls, Maximilian’s palace, deserted monasteries and assorted
museums. Bougainville vines hung twinning from many upright structures blooming
in profusion in brilliant shades of almost garish brilliant colors. On an
excursion outside the city one day we stopped at a cock fighting farm. Here a
man in a large colorful hat placed two iridescent beautifully colored roosters
in a small circular pen where they began to attack each other with unrestrained
fury. They lunged feverishly at each other with razor sharp spurs attached to
their ankles, sharpened metal devices making the deadly birds even more lethal.
They fought till blood was dripping from their bodies and collected on the
sandy floor of the pit. Finally one of the chickens fell over onto his side
mortally wounded as the other combatant mounted him and crowed a victorious
winner’s cackle, spurring him one more time for good measure. This experience
was a preamble to the next day when we went to the Bull Fights. The whole
experience was most impressive even though it was far bloodier that the now
seemingly insignificant cock fights. The brilliantly attired matadors and picadors
along with their horses and the rest of the spectacle were extraordinary
despite being almost overwhelming in its intensity and cruelty. It impressed me
immensely despite the obviously brutal and malicious treatment of the bulls. One
night in the city my father hired a taxi which toured us through numerous
interesting spots including a park where dozens of Mariachi bands all played at
once, for tips. After the mariachi park the taxi driver drove us to one of the
most horrendous slum area in the city. It was appalling how the people there
had to endure. They had nothing, not even clothing for their brown skinned children
who stood naked in the doorways and loitered hungrily everywhere staring with
vacant eyes. It was exceedingly disturbing and at the same time enthralling and
you could not look away despite the awful situation they were in. We looked at
them in almost total silence as though they were animals in a zoo, a little
frightened and a little thankful. They looked unflinchingly back.
Returning to
the hotel we walked through the extravagant lobby where I noticed a slick, full
color brochure on one of the side tables next to the sofa where a massive brass
chandelier with prisms of crystal hung reflecting a rainbow of colors above. Picking up the brochure I saw an advertisement
for a hotel in another city on the west coast of Mexico. The city was called
Acapulco and it looked like a paradise of tropical plants, crystal blue water
and striking women in bathing suits. One photo depicted an attractive dark eyed
beauty swimming through a swimming pool of the bluest water imaginable. On the
surface of the water floated thousands of Gardenia blossoms which she paddled through.
The girl’s black hair trailed behind her in the photograph like a shadow of the
blackest silk. It contrasted with the snow white gardenias and took my breath
away. The next morning after having a fairly erotic dream about this
infatuating stranger I woke to insist over breakfast to my parents that we make
a side trip to this new arresting destination. This place I had to visit. David
said, “No, no I want to go home and I want to go today!” I mentioned that in
the brochure it said that Acapulco was world famous for their sail fishing and
people from all over the world came there to catch the fish. Perhaps it might
be fun to go out fishing for them. This ameliorated David somewhat as he, like
my father was an avid fisherman. Mother and daddy were reluctant to say yes but
ultimately they agreed. We flew to Acapulco from Mexico City and were dazzled
by all the natural beauty we encountered. The hotel from the brochure was a
little less than impressive once we got there but we checked in anyway. The
many individual little bungalows were separated from each other and perched on
a hillside that careened steeply down into the incredibly vast Pacific Ocean. The
whole place was more than a little shabby but clearly had been awesome in its
day, many years previous. Huge malevolent looking iguanas lay sunning on the
tops of enormous rocks surrounded by vivid multicolored Crotons and other exotic
plants adjacent to the walking paths. These monster’s eyes seemed animated and
oddly clicked as they followed you as you passed. Some were huge and quite
scary if you happened upon them unexpectedly. It would not have surprised me at
all if they had scrambled off the rocks and charged directly towards me taking
large bites of flesh from my legs. Having no experience with reptilian
creatures almost as large as myself I didn’t want anything to do with them but
the only way to go from one part of the complex to another was to pass by these
monsters lounging in and around the paths and on the rocks that abutted the
trails.
Breakfast
was served on the boat docks next to the beautiful crystalline sapphire water
of the Pacific Ocean where boats rocked in pulsing unison with the surging
ocean. Lunch was offered in a fresh air pavilion overlooking the ocean atop a windswept
cliff. Dinner was served at an enclosed more formal area in the middle of the
complex. For lunch one day we went to a different restaurant perched on the
edge of the Pacific Ocean closer into town. Here brown skinned Mexican boys
dove from dizzying heights into a turquoise water filled horseshoe shaped lagoon.
The divers were extraordinarily impressive. They leaped from rocks jutting out from
the steep hill sides of the mountain. When the waves were out the youths dove
but they timed is in such a way that when they landed at the bottom of this precipice
the waves had refilled the small inlet completely. They hit just at the moment
when the waves rushed back in. If the
boy’s timing had been off they would clearly dive disastrously into nothing but
a sandy rock littered beach. None of them did this of course. When the diving episode
was over, the Mexican boys came up to the dining area dripping wet smelling of
sea water and passed through the people seated at the tables in the restaurant to
collect coins for their diving efforts.
After
breakfast one morning we went down to one of the many boat docks circling the
cove area of the city where numerous partially dilapidated fishing boats rocked
uncertainly adjacent to the wooden docks. Everything smelled of briny water and
fish. It was not an objectionable odor and not uncommon to us as we had a cabin
in the panhandle of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico and fished and frolicked
there in the summers. Daddy had chartered one of the Mexican fishing boats through
the concierge at the hotel for a day’s soirée fishing. Many boats sloshed about
in the briny water one of which we boarded and went out in pursuit of the exotic
Sail Fish which was of great interest to all of us. On the swaying boat we rode
for what seemed like hours to get far enough out into the Pacific where the
Sailfish were found. We started fishing dragging silver cigar minnows through
the water behind the boat elaborately rigged with hooks leaders and line by the
Mexican men and boys working on the boat. After trolling for hours I finally
fell asleep in the trolling seat with the butt of the rod firmly jammed down
between my legs, oblivious to any further happenings. In some time one of the
Mexican men awoke me crying “Ola, ola”. I sat up quickly, just in time to see
the sail of a huge fish attacking my bait far behind the boat. This woke me up
instantly and adrenaline began to race through my veins. One of the Mexican men
helping on the boat ran up behind me and flipped the drag off my reel and let the
line race away into the hypnotic deep blue water. This was like no fishing I
had ever experienced and seemed counterproductive. Apparently sail fish need
the release time to run swallow the hook and get prepared for the show they ultimately
put on. The reel screamed as the line shot further and further away. The
assortment of Mexicans seemed to race about the boat in fast forward all
readying things for the struggle with the huge sailfish. I was just about to
panic when the Mexican flipped the drag back on. That’s when it happened. My
reel jerked, bent over double and the fish rose from the depths of the ocean
and shot up into the air to an alarming height, throwing salt water in a huge
half circular spray. The butt of the rod lunged upwards from the tension the
fish exerted on the line and pounded me in the testicles. I made an awful sound
and bent over double without losing the end of the rod. The sailfish was enormous
and a shade of blue I had only seen in the tail of a peacock, like no other
color. He danced and rocked on the tip of his tail flipping and skittering
across the water doing what appeared to be some other worldly feverish dance on
the top of the water. It flipped, spun and twirled in ways I would have thought
impossible had I not seen it with my own two eyes. Water spewed and foamed as
he shook his massive head and jerked his bill back and forth in the dance he
preformed. We all lost our breath. It was amazing! My Dad excitedly said,
“That’s the God damnedest thing I ever saw!” He almost never used profanity and
I knew this was indeed an extraordinary moment in time!
The fish
fought valiantly for what must have been fifteen or twenty minutes. When it was
over he was completely exhausted and only once as I reeled him in and he neared
to stern of the boat did he muster enough energy to race briefly away. Finally
he succumbed to the insistent pull of my line and rolled onto his side as he
gave up his escape attempt. The two Mexicans at the stern of the boat pulled
the huge fish onto the gunwale of the boat. I absolutely could not believe my
eyes. The colors on the sailfish fish flashed like a strobe light displaying different
shades of blue, aqua, turquoise, flecked with flickering purple spots and a green
patina all over his body, sail and tail. It was though in his final minutes of
life his beauty was beyond anything conceivable to a human eye. Stringy crimson
blood poured from his gills in a prodigious stream and leaked off the side of
the boat into the water turning it a temporary shade of pink as it effaced out
into the salty water. It almost made me cry it was so amazing and I knew this
he was in his final moment of life as his rib cage and gills shuddered and
slowed in the afternoon light. The thing was so incredibly stunning that I knew
it was a sin to kill it. The matter was however out of my hands, Daddy said,
“No! Of course we’re not going to release it we’re going to have him stuffed to
hang on the wall at the office of the mill.” The fish weighed right at a
hundred twenty seven pounds and I will never get over the experience of
catching it. Watching it dance, seeing its colors as it laid dying on the deck
of the boat and finally knowing that I was responsible for killing such a
magnificent living thing. The fishing continued and in a short while we hooked
another sail that performed much as the first one had and was equally as
incredible. We killed this fish as well. Later in the afternoon after we returned
to the docks and were waiting for a taxi to come and return us to the hotel I
saw it. A truck drove by. A dump truck passed that was filled to the brim and
rounded over on top overflowing with the dismembered bodies of hundreds of sailfish.
I was thunderstruck. All of them long dead with their beautiful colors faded
and gone. All caught in the space of this one single day. They were, at that
point nothing very impressive, just a truck load of dead fish. The image
remained with me for the rest of my life.
Months and
months later a large box arrived in Dothan Alabama from Mexico. It was opened
and the remains of the magnificent fish were unpacked and hung with great pride
and ceremony on the wall of my father’s small office. It was absolutely nothing
to look at. Dull, lifeless, color all wrong, sad and almost obscene. The bill
of the fish stuck out into the space where it impeded any passerby and
invariably poked them in the arm or neck. I rarely went into my father’s dusty,
saw dust sprinkled office and saw the fish that I didn’t feel a deep sense of
shame, regret and embarrassment. Eventually the remains of the fish were
relegated to the dirty crawl space underneath the small building that served to
house my father’s office where it slowly decomposed and eventually disappeared
there in the dark.
tbd
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