FISHING

Close your eyes and imagine you are on a beach. No not a commercial tourist trap beach smothered with sun bathers and umbrellas, but a working man's beach lined with folded sails, oars, poles holding up nets for repair, and boats hauled on shore. Children are running up and down but there are no swimmers, nor people sunbathing. This small beach is like so many others that pepper the coastline and separated by patches of green palms and mangroves. If one listens tentatively, one may make out the shouting above the surf as it laps on the moist brown sand. Is that Spanish or Portuguese? It doesn't matter, you speak neither. You are out of place in this setting. The setting is poor, poverty all around but not the pathetic poverty one thinks of when they think poor. It is rich in beauty. A kind of untouched beauty that only the overlook of those with money cannot comprehend, an oasis in a capital driven global tsunami.

On the horizon one barely can make out fishing vessels, full sail trying to reach home before the oncoming storm. The surf is choppy with white caps contrasting the stormy grey sky. I am captive and spellbound by the circumstances that have driven me and my easel here. Grateful too.