November 2, 2007 Word Count 3,345

October 6, 2007

As I ran down the beach this morning, away from the lighthouse, I spotted a dead sea turtle in the sand. I stopped to mourn. It looked as if it had been hit by a boat propeller, which had nearly severed it’s head. Or maybe it had run across a particularly hungry shark. In any case it was dead, and while that made me sad, it didn’t anger me. What made me angry was the graffiti written all over it in red and yellow spray paint, like it was the side of a high school gym wall. This beautiful, majestic creature had been killed not by spite, but through carelessness, and then had become a sounding board for a 13-year old’s self-absorbed angst. I wanted to go home and get a bucket of suds and a scrub brush and come back and clean it up so it could at least lie in dignity. But I didn’t. The few neighbors I had already believed that I was a crazy ghost lady who only spoke when spoken to. I didn’t need to add this to my list of eccentricities…she cleans up the dead marine life when it gets beached.

I did pick up some of the seaweed that surrounded it and finished my run. I left the slimy brownish-green algae perched on my deck railing and went inside for a shower. I don’t know what made me pick it up in the first place. It just felt sacred to me, like I needed to honor that turtle in some way, to enshrine it and give it place. After my shower, I sat on the deck with a bottle of water and stared at it. It had started to dry out and was beginning to blow a little in the breeze. It reminded me of Ruthie Sipsey’s hair in the second grade – curly and wiry and twisty and unruly. Poor Ruthie. She just never had good hair.

I walked back into the house and grabbed my sketchbook, pens and pencils and headed back down the beach to find the turtle. When I reached it’s resting place, I sat down and faced it and the sea. As I drew it’s elegant lines and regal head, I talked to it a little. I realize that is crazy, but it just felt right. I drew and I drew and as I drew, I could feel a little release…in me. I was here. On the beach. And I was drawing – drawing a life that once was, but no longer would be. Drawing the passing of a great and beautiful thing. Drawing the pain of the world that carelessly rolls over you, intending no harm, but causing near decapitation. As I drew, I realized that I was drawing my life.