It's easy to miss stuff behind/beneath so much brightness and beauty and to ignore (willfully??) the less lovely aspects of anything. Okay, that's vague — but during yesterday's meander down to the fish pier, where I stood like a ninny taking pictures of seagulls as they dug entrails from a trash can, I missed something. Something ugly ...
No, not that (although seagull poo is certainly ugly). Posted on pilings — right there at the gull's feet, right there by that cleat — were laminated signs crying: "THIEF!!!!" I didn't notice them at the time, so I didn't read them, and the type's too small to read them here/now. But, wait, if I zoom in ... focus ... haul out my reading glasses ... squint .... I can just make out the accusation, under the alleged culprit's bearded grin:
"Stole lobsters Christmas Eve from fishermen at the State Pier in Newport." That's UGLY (unless the guy's family was starving or some such thing). And now his picture is posted all over the pier. He's wanted ... for all the wrong reasons. I don't know why that strikes me as important, or interesting, or why it strikes me at all. The mere idea of "there it was" — right there, all along — struck me as INSTRUCTIVE, somehow, as I stood like a ninny (again), feeling perfectly cheerful if half-asleep (half-dead??), snapping a picture on Long Wharf of a lovely red crane in a No Wake Zone ...
Stop, thief!! Time, for one thing, is getting away ...
Wake up! Get building! Why are you (I) wasting another day??
And how does one go about stealing lobster, anyway??
(Seagulls and cranes have so much say ...)
