Dolphin Address 24 2003
August 9, 2003
The last week and a half I have been swimming everyday. From Bridie beach to Pollenawatch and back. The distance is subordinate to the current. I am in for roughly two hours and I take my time, because there is lots to be seen underwayves. Except rays, dogfish, wrasse, haddock and spider crabs I have seen a conger eel twice now. The second probably had a flatfish in its mouth and was as big as my calve. Also the growth is brilliant, especially by deep crevices with sandpits as bottom, that hold in turn perfectly g/round stones.
Sand eels slithering, sorted on size and clouds of tiny pink fish, gazing at things that escape me. And then, a sudden symbiosis: a jellyfish with a small fish, that tries hard to keep in the photo shadow of his buddy.
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I have enjoyed it, without intending to understand or explain everything. It is very tempting to 'understand' something's benevolence. It is hard to decline an offered hand. It is almost a reflex to accept it. But you've got to enable your thoughts to regroup. Not everything around us is intended or unavoidable. Some things are themselves, with or without a rhetorical lining.
We usually think to understand things in one time. But when you want to explain it to some one else, you have to reconstruct. Because it went different, bit by bit, inimitable and not logical. Because your brains, however disciplined, have a friendly wild dolphin inside and sniffed out parts create their own entirety. When it all seems too beautiful, you'd better take a brake.
The more often I swim with Dusty, the more tangible she seems to become, the more grip I seem to get on her, like everything she does is self-explanatory. Some things have changed. Dusty got wounded on her dorsal fin. On the right hand side, just under the top, a chip has been cut off, probably by the propeller of a speedboat. Regularly fast boats come with drinking beer bellies that don't give a shit about Dusty but to mess around with her. It is incomprehensible that they get away with this. Ireland may prosper economically, a substantial part of its inhabitants is, considering environmental issues, still traveling in a mules cart.
Dusty is still tearing along with the speedboats, but towards the swimmers, the 'real' people, she has taken a distance. To me she has gathered forthcoming ness, but I still have to earn it.
Now it happens daily that two or three speedboats or jet ski's moor at the slipway to brag about the power of their boats, how much they can cap without sizing and how many teats their dodgy girlfriend has. In between they take a turn at the throttle to wear out the dolphin, while at Bridie's beach, at the slipway, at the second cove and at Pollenawatch dozens of people are longing for a glimpse of Dusty. With these boats and their ego trippers they don't stand a chance.
Perhaps County Clare should take a few brakes here.
Jan Ploeg, somewhere in Clare, August 9th 2003
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