Seal Beach. That’s what I

August 11, 2003

Seal Beach. That’s what I call it. It is on one of my running routes. Development of the auto-mall on the waterfront has made the city make a bridge for me that connects to a nice strip of beach that used to be hidden behind industrial knuckles, pipes, grease, and utilitarian nothingness. The new plastic light box, stucco and polished metal auto-mall was a big priority for the community. New automobiles needed a place to lay fallow before they burst out onto the troposphere and lay ruts and farted fertile fumes that would pave the way for the next inhabitants of this planet. Those inhabitants will be much hardier than the poor souls who will soon be unable to tolerate such splendid smells and magnificently carved tracts of earth.
Before my beach was uncovered by the last retired mayor’s anachronistic pursuit of “progress” (he wore a brush cut right through the last decades ...badge of honour, comfort food) it was first mangled up by an early sawmill. I can now see in my time what our first nations elders so rightfully predict. They will sit and wait until all the buildings and crapola have fallen and dissolved and the white men have failed and left and died. Things will go back to the way they should be. Just pull up a lawn chair and watch the over serious “builders” with the fumbling hands erect the tragicomic legoland. Its easy to see, by how it looks, it can never last. Its easy to see that the Europeans are only really ever concerned about what happens in their lifetime. Only one of them seems to have achieved any kind of notorious immortality. . .oh . . . I believe that chap was middle eastern.
I run over my brand new bridge past the throngs of giant inflatable animals and bouncy castles of “family day” at the auto mall. Open the hoods of thirty two new cars on the same lots they sit on all the time and direct traffic with a Day-Glo vest on and you have a “free car show”. Invite the police department to park a few cruisers and speak of traffic safety and you have increased your community event child magnet quotient by three. A few free juice boxes donated by someone else and you have community spirited your way to commissioned sales on a Hyundai Elantra and a Pontiac Grand Am. “Sure they look like rental cars but why do you think rental companies buy them in the first place? Yes! So they can walk the fence of style and pretend that cheap and new is better than well maintained and classic”.
I run past the playground that keeps the wheels of commerce doing donuts and reach the beach on the other side. Here I stop and pretend I wear a veterinary dog cone on my head. It is translucent vinyl and blocks out all that is happening behind me. I look out onto the water and to downtown Vancouver where the water ends. I see a large bald eagle moving toward me across the water at about 30 feet up. It is chased by a seagull and I rotate on my hips to watch them skim the trees to my left. That image will stay with me and be used in last night’s bout of writing. I then begin to count heads. I count the heads of all the harbour seals that hang out in this one little bay. Each night I run here I count no less than ten and sometimes as many as forty. There are babies and moms and baskers and bobbers. Barges, empty or full of wood chips, are hitched to giant mooring spools in the near middle distance. Tugs shunt them around like a rail yard and the seals don’t mind. I have seen their heads turn to watch an overcrowded, 130 decibel, pounding disco yacht on pride day as it nosed in on its cruise around the harbour perimeter. Drunken sun burnt revelers trying to extend the good time vibe of a successful parade danced on the twilight deck with their hands above their perfectly shorn heads. The music was born in a laptop in a euro bedroom beside a poster of Cher. Mixed drinks dribbled accidentally overboard in festive colours as the conga line skirted the railings. The seals must have felt like I feel about the auto mall. Its all too stupid to last. Metal shouldn’t even float in the first place.
My uncle is a longtime skipper in these waters and I asked him tonight why the seals are there. He says they’ve always been there. My point exactly. He’s not sure why. He postulates that a change in current in that spot might signal a food source. I think they are watching that spot because the turnover in manmade endeavors seems to be fastest there. This could be the place where it finally all caves in and they want to be the first at the party. Seals love a party. This may be the Berlin Wall wrecking shindig before the continent opens up. Domino effect. This may be the lynchpin. Seal Beach.