There is a smell to the ocean that is unique. What you sense is not one smell. Each cove and bay and bit of open shoreline has its own scent. The sea grasses that hold the dune in place in North Carolina smell different than the various reeds and runners that serve the same function in New Jersey. Every beach after a storm smells different that it does during a hot dry 10 day stretch. Still the smell is very visceral, very primal. When I travel I can tell when I am about 10 miles from the beach because the air changes in a palpable way. I don’t know if everyone senses this but I can feel the shore approach.
One of the strongest memories I have of the years on the beach was of the smell and feel of the sea air at midnight. After I would close down the store, Kurly Kustard to be precise, I would get on a 10 speed bike and wheel down the wet boardwalk. It was about a twenty minute ride home.
Shutting down the store wasn’t an instantaneous process. It took a bit of time to break down the store. You had to disassemble the custard machines and drop the blades and gaskets and knobs into sanitizer. You had already blended the sanitizer if you were smart. All remaining dairy product had been drained and put away for the night in the walk-in cooler. The fountain heads had been removed from the soda fountain and the store's awning rolled up. The windows had been slid across the opening onto the boardwalk and locked into place.
After stashing the cash I would go out the back door. At the base of the back steps I would pick up my bike. If I was lucky and had a roach I would burn that mother crushing it at the very end and swallowing the roach. I was a weird fucker that way. It just seemed to me better to get all the THC in me and not to leave any evidence on the ground just in case the gendarmes were about. I would throw my chain and lock into my backpack and off I would fly.
The rules of the boardwalk prohibited me riding my bike on it at that hour. A few blocks down south of the store the cops stopped enforcing the rules. Reaching there I was free to leave the surface streets and tool down the damp and sometimes quite wet boards at whatever speed I deemed safe. On the right night I was free and I was flying.
On a late summer nights under the influence of cheap assed Mexican reefer if the moon was up the ride became a religious service with its own sacraments. My muscles would flow smoothly and the bike was just an extension of my desire to be moving. Riding wouldn’t require thinking it would just require being. On those nights as I swooshed down those blocks elevated over the ghostly illuminated white sands of the beach I would glance out at the reflection of the sun’s little brother over the water. The air was cool but comfortable as I split its molecules on my ride.
Invariably I would stop near the end of the boardwalk and just stare out at infinity.
The water was dark except where the moonlight bled across it. The air smelled of sea rocket dune grass and of damp sand. I would breathe in deeply and just listen to the waves. At that spot the beach air was somewhat sweet and soothing, breathing was like drinking some Thai lemongrass soup refreshing and cleansing. Every sense was alive from the endorphins my muscles were producing to my eyes to that sound of waves in my ears. It is almost like my life began and ended at that moment.
You got the beach and the bicycle in the paragraphs above, now it is back to On Caring
Mayeroff shifts gears just a little bit when he moves into Section II. Having identified caring as helping another to grow he lists and discusses traits of appropriate caring. When you read each of the attributes of caring they sound for the most part a great deal like a Boy Scout oath. The qualities he cites are knowing, alternating rhythms, patience, honesty, trust, humility, hope and courage. The funny thing is that while these sound simple and easily understandable the reality of each characteristic is deceptive. It is like an old bumper sticker I remember, “Live Peace”. As we used to opine about that sticker, easy to say, hard to do and life changing if you try.
Section II of the book commences with the attribute of knowing. The author begins by saying caring is neither good intentions nor warm regards. (The Buddhists say one small good deed is worth more than the greatest of good intentions.) Caring begins with knowledge. Knowledge is not a monolith or a single granite direction marker.
Knowledge in caring according to Mayeroff breaks down three ways. One way is breaks down is a requirement of knowing what the other needs and knowing what you can really provide. The next breakdown of the attribute is what you know explicitly about the other and what you know implicitly. A final delineation is being aware that knowing can be direct and indirect.
Huh, what? This is all too murky. No it isn’t. To care I must know the other’s needs. I need to know, really know who the other is, not just to have a surface knowledge about who them present themselves as. I have to take the time to understand the other’s strengths and weakness and what will move the other to real growth before I step into a task of caring.
While Mayeroff only cites it quickly in one line a critical theme of self knowledge arises on the bottom of the first page of this section. I must know what my own powers and limitations are. In almost every section of this book Mayeroff talks about being aware of what you are, being secure in who you are, realizing your limitations both as to yourself and as to your relationship with others. What he keeps saying is that you have to be at peace with yourself and know what you are trying to give the other and what growth you are trying to motivate in the other and in yourself.
I think the fact that Mayeroff accepts that we know things about who we are and what we can give to another on an implicit or gut level shows he really understands us humans. Sometimes we can put this stuff into words but other times we can simply know it without the words. I think his comment at the end about limiting caring to only things that we can put into words is arbitrary is dead on the mark. We may know more than enough to care when we know ourselves and when we are aware of the realities of the world than we could ever communicate with words, even after 3 or 4 beers.
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