For many a year, Dusty has assigned me the task to go deep and fast with her, but since I adopted the sonic approach, our friendship has moved into a new phase. Where the motorised dolphinuniverse.com seems to have been overtaken by her own wake, an affectionate shoot has sprung from the clearing. Central in Dusty's rapidly increasing close-up approach is my waterwing. From time to time she bumps into it deliberately and rubs herself against the humps like a darling. I discover ever more rhythms and sounds I can elicit from it and manoeuvrewise it is becoming as agile as a pen that can describe three dimensions.
The other day, after weeks of hopeless visibility the vile veil lifted and the sea was of an almost uncanny calm. It was as if she opened her eyes again and there were fish and colours and weeds uncovering her bed's intimacies by their incessant sways. Usually the shore beyond the corner on the right bank is a no go. The ocean waves bequeath their final energy to the sloping shelves and sign off with white water. No visibility in a turbulence where chinks have been ground into channels in ways too brutal to attend.
As smooth as the rolled-up stones are, at some places in their thousands, even smoother are the furrows through which they roared. They display with unexpected tenderness the flow of water, captured in rock, so eloquently carved by devastating forces.
Dusty led the way. She blended curvaceously into the stony arches and drew a web of approaches, disappearing into nowhere and popping up in the single one angle uncovered by my vigilance. Into a hollow I would become circumspect of the momentum of the waves, but she ventured into cul-de-sacs I did not dare to tread. She swung through kettles and corridors as if she showed me her powerhouse and when she paused, it was with big eyes and sometimes a sudden shiver.
In every way the world is round around the massive winding bends, brightened by impatient water.
This stony hold, locked by the raging waves, is only accessible when the elements only just hold their breath and you have the benign guidance of its keeper, Milady Dusty.