A couple of hours ago, they took off. When I was driving back home, I felt like a person leaving rehab after spending in a while. Amazing how things change and the way you find yourself in situations hard to imagine.
Have your good old roommate as your guest! Might be priceless.
Today we were in one of the infamous beaches on the East Coast. It was a lot warmer than the West Coast (!) making us wonder about why. Group decision on the issue was the Gulf Stream. It somehow invoked my imagination with a totally unrelated story... Geppetto's inside a whale stomach. He works on some useless work on his desk even in there...The beach was a national park in fact. Sometime after, I spotted this man when I was in the water. He was wearing a white shirt and a gray hat holding a stick with a net in its end. He was standing next to where the waves reach the sand line, like trying to find something.
Isn't that what we all do?
Then I walked to him. We started talking about what he was doing. The net was for catching small crabs. He was using them as baits. I was told that they were the best. That made me question him about how good was fishing in the beach. 'This place gets very crowded' he said. 'You should have seen yesterday, all the beach was full of amateur fisherman', added in a second. His pale blue eyes were lively, even though his age must be close to 80. He was spending the winter in here and the summer back home. Then I listened to the mountains in the north of Syracuse and how fruitful the great lakes are over there. We talked about fish for a few minutes more. As always when I talk to interesting strangers, I told him where I came from and proudly spoke of my country. I like the idea of shaking the stereotypes that live with people. Interesting enough, people that I find interesting happen to be unshaken and enjoying some sort wisdom about it. Then I got bored and went back to swimming.
Ed, as he asked me to call him so, then put a small creature in my hand.
There it was... The tiny crab from the white waves on the shore.
Playing with it for a few minutes, I noticed Ed leaving. I walked after him and gave the crab back. He said, 'Thanks for 10 cents' and we laughed.
And I thought about myself, Ed and the little 10 cent crab. Does the accustomed habit of pricing everything -innate to capitalism, transform the way how people think? Is this the right question to ask? If so, does it make any sense to ask it? And the thrilling question about ourselves haunting unconsciously in this any given beach on a random date with a stranger; do we have prices as well? Ask the question to a crab and watch, as it acts like 'no'.
Ed and I, there's a world between us.
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