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I was sitting in the F train, headed home, stopped at Jay Street, when an A train to Far Rockaway pulled up across the platform.
And never mind that I was wearing a silly dress and silly clogs, and carrying a ridiculous little purse: when the sea calls you, you come.
If it happens to you, this is what you should do: Walk up the platform, enter the first car. Sit by the window on the starboard side. Old men will try to catch your eye. Young men will try to catch your eye. Speak to no one. The train will speed down the dark heart of the tunnel on the express track. The train will stammer to a halt, stopping and starting, on the local track. The train will burst out of the tunnel into the bright day, and any children in the car will leave their seats to press up against the eastern windows. Start paying attention. You will pass the shining and concrete walls of the JFK airport station. . . . and suddenly, like a wet smack in the eye, you're flying out over wide water. The train seems to be skimming over the waves. Then a narrow strip of sand appears, seagulls trotting up and down it, the strip thickens into a beach and a clump of green rushes appears, and a white heron craning its long neck upward, toward one of the airplanes that's lifting off overhead, over the sea. When the sea and green islands, sea and green islands have repeated themselves so often that you can't believe the train hasn't run out of track yet, you will feel the gears grinding to a halt, in a dry place, in the middle of nothing. This place is called Broad Channel. Exit and wait for a shuttle to come and take you to the end of the line. Follow the crowd of passengers and the trail of dirty stores selling brightly colored disposable plastic things, and eventually the acid smell of the waste refinery will give way to the fried chicken smell of the entrance to the beach. The distant silhouette of downtown Brooklyn will be on your left. Take a right. Walk ten blocks down the weathered old boardwalk till the planks give way and you must take the stairs down to the sea. Take off your shoes and carry them in your hand. Cross a waste of grit, feathers and broken shells. Lurid towels and small boys throwing mud. Seagull chewing on something alive, red blood welling up over its yellow beak. Holes of the small crabs that burrow between the tides. Scraps of green seaweed. Fronds of purple seaweed branching like fennel. The sand will become more level, become a smooth surface polished by water. The wind will enter and fill your lungs, carrying the tang of salt. And then the body within your body will unfold itself. Blue horizon, gray-green water. Rush of the surf. Rush of the surf. Now the pulse that you carry everywhere with you, that you can hold up a shell to your ear to hear, syncs up with its source. Churning and breaking into white, flooding up with the water swirling around your ankles, a wave that raced here all the way from Portugal pauses now to lick at the hem of your skirt before it heads back out into the open water. Another arrives to fill the space. An infinitely slow vibration between shore and distant shore, echoes of echoes. The ocean is a great harp that was plucked just once, when the world began. Sounding the deep bass note that underlies all things. Hush. Draw closer. Listen.
say
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