Saturday, August 12, 2017

Figures in the Sand

Wednesday, Aug 2

I dreamed that I was supposed to fill in for one of The Child's teachers, but somehow I had a dental appointment instead.  When I got to the class, the teacher's assistant, who was very miffed, said she'd gotten the class organized and now it was my turn to take over.

Things got jumbled.  The 2017 eclipse was happening, but it was cloudy.  Insert a cool computer graphic of the cone of the umbra touching down on the globe here.  Between thick clouds and a streetlight, we did manage to see the sun's corona, and then The Child was missing.

More jumbled scenes with tunnels and Batman being killed by the Joker.



Apparently, while Mark and I were enjoying a lovely evening reenacting "Moulin Rouge" from the back of an elephant's hadow, our niece, Shannon, and a cast of aggressive terns were reenacting "The Birds" on the Ocean City boardwalk (they wanted her fries).

Mark and I went to the hardware store and he purchased a measuring cup so he could make pancakes and I purchased a yard stick to help with sand drawings.

Before high tide, I was able to make a decagram, but I couldn't remember how to get the stars around the ends so they circled up.  I think next time I'm going to have to draw to interlocked pentagons and go from there.  I did manage to diagram a hexagon and conjoined pentagon.

The compass mostly works, but I have to pay attention to how I'm holding it so it doesn't flex out of the circumference I'm wanting.  The yard-stick works mostly for making lines, but it works better as a guide for the last remaining shish-kabob stick.

When I was finished with various circle and line constructions, a Montrealer (named Marc) came up and asked about what I was doing.  I was a little worried that he might launch into a "are you summoning demons" tirade, but I explained that some people knit to relax and I like making geometric constructions, and added how I was getting messed up trying to find the golden mean for some of them.  He seemed very interested in various drawings in my Book of Art and we chatted for a few moments.  It was a refreshing change from the "OMG, a Satanist!" looks I usually get on the Oregon Beaches.

Shortly afterward, the tide came in and wiped out all the circles and lines.  I'm sure there's a metaphor in there, somewhere.



After dinner, several in-laws informed me that Marc from Montreal had been hitting on me.  "He was standing really close to you," one said.  "I almost went and got Mark."   At the time over various geometric figures in the sand, I thought he was simply curious about what I was doing--but I had wondered as I trudged back from the beach if perhaps I had been so focused on the Golden Mean that I missed an undercurrent in his body language... and then dismissed the idea because he seemed about twenty years my junior.

In the evening, the family split up.  Some folks returned to Atantic City, others went out for a fish dinner, some to miniature golf, and others stayed home.

I stayed home; I tried to set up a table on an outside porch, but it was less rain-proof than I expected -- which was too bad, because I'd set up a table and chair to escape the episode of "Law and Order" that was on the TV.  I ended up writing to some baroque music I had on hand for just such a situation.

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