A Day at the Beach

There were no sounds of tennis balls being crushed by zealous tennis racquets, no sounds of basketballs being dribbled or punishing the backboard behind the hoop, no smacks of volleyballs on skin or grunts of frustration, and no sounds of gleeful children jumping in the pool.

This was after all not the wildly popular Kitsilano Beach with its bounty of beautiful flesh, music of motion, or enormous outdoor pool of watery childhood celebration.

However it was a kissing cousin, Spanish Bank a series of three beaches that also was caressed by an armada of gentle waves by English Bay with its expansive beaches that at low tide would for some be a temptation to cross the Pacific as a land bridge to the Beijing Olympics.

The striking sentinel North Shore Mountains pressed the bay into its confines on the other shore. The human made towers of downtown Vancouver guarded the eastern shore while Pacific Ocean freedom towards Vancouver Island lay beckoning with innumerable sail boats, luxury yachts and enormous deep sea cargo ships propelled to freedom or resting at anchor.

The summer brilliance of the warming morning sun hanging in the clear blue sky was welcoming as I stepped (clad in my armor of sunscreen) upon the beach with sand perhaps not as pure white as other beaches but perfect for sandcastles and long relaxing walks. Large old cedar logs dotted the huge desert of sand perfect for shelter from any wind and comfortable to sit on or against while enjoying the vistas.

I had no need of a log as I carried my light weight expandable lawn chair (with drink holder). I found the perfect spot and planted my chair after resting the cooler on the sand. I sat down and gazed at the panorama before me, majestic mountains, a skyline of architectural glass and steel delight, forests of trees, calm beckoning waters, and a sub-continent of beach largely to myself.

As relaxation seeped into my soul, and sand tickled my toes I opened my backpack and pulled out the enemy, a demon of pages prepared as a book battle. Many a time I had attempted this project akin in scope of struggle for me to the Manhattan Project, Apollo Program, or perhaps more battle appropriate the D-Day invasion.

I had tasted only defeat in my many attempts to subdue, wrestle and slay this giant of a reported classic. Today I was determined to be as David unto Goliath, opening the book I declared in my mind to it (because saying it out loud would seem outlandish) “today you’re going down”!

And so the battle began as I abandoned the summer warmth and descended into a dark cold misty night, a Friday in November 1775 on the road to Dover…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the Season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going directly the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only…..

… His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining upon him.

‘If you hear in my voice – I don’t know that it is so, but I hope it is – if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while you poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!’

I closed the book after traveling some 47 pages (of a globe spanning 404 pages, a number indelibly imprinted upon my memory by prior failures), some on that dark road to Dover, others in that sea side town itself and then into the heart of Paris, a companion of three characters a currier named Jerry, a bank man of no less that Tellson’s Bank and a teenage daughter who would see her father for the first time after his imprisonment for many years, a daughter who would with broken heart reach deep down into her fathers broken life as he was reminded of his wife when meeting his unknown daughter for the first time.

A sip of water from the cooler, an adjustment to the sun glasses (the sun had risen higher and the heat was growing proportionally), a glance at the ocean water (the tide was steadily creeping out into the bay), mountains and skyline, an readjustment of the feet upon the sand and back to the battle of the book (beware Goliath I have my sling shot and a handful of stones and Coppertone sunscreen)….

The story becomes a sci-fi wannabe by time traveling 5 years into the future to 1780 as we join our characters at a trial of another man at the Old Bailey court in London…and the prisoner (charged with treason no less) Mr. Charles Darnay enters….

Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody’s cost, to a view of him – stood a-tip-toe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall at Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.

I found that scene from page 62 (“AQUITTED” we are informed on page 79) in steep contrast to this following one, that of another kind of Court….that of the uncle of the prisoner on trial above….

Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.

Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.

The flavour of this scene (page 108) makes my hand snake into the cooler without missing a heart beat of the story, I latch onto a Ritter Sport chocolate and lacking attendants and quickly (since the sun is greatly heating up not because the need for chocolate was urgent….) I feed myself some chocolate as I sink further into the story….

Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shriveled branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off

With that page 226 explodes with the French Revolution (and real problems for Monseigneur). I notice that the water has withdrawn further from my part of the beach and pick up my little encampment and wander out onto the sands exposed by the withdrawing tide. Battle lines are drawn up between seagulls and crows for the stranded seafood. I find a nice spot half way to Hawaii where the other people on the beach are like specks of sand on the horizon then with the sun heating my solar panels I rejoin the action…

….Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundation of the world – the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.

It was the popular theme of jests; it was the best cure for a headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.

Various nefarious plots eddy throughout the story, another trial of Mr. Charles Darnay (his second, AQUITTED), threads of love wondrously persist while the hate and blood of the Revolution is gushed upon them which entices me to another sip of ice water from the cooler along with some cherries the redness of which reminds me to continue now past page 291 after I douse myself in more sunscreen and adjust my hat upon my head which is still firmly attached to the rest of me… no La Guillotine for me but of course I am no “Monseigneur”….

Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave. His mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been read at his father’s grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing on high above him. 'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet he shall live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.'…

….The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s Dominion.

I reflected upon these words (from pages 335-36-37) describing the life of Sydney Carton a man of reportedly unscrupulous character. I read them several times then realizing that page 404 and the end of the book was in sight along with my victory over said book so I quickly read on after a quick glance at the fleet of sail boats plying past upon the smooth summer waters….

In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day waited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs tomorrow was already set apart.

These words (from page 372) describe the situation of Mr. Charles Darnay after yet a third trial (GUILTY)! The end is close as the afternoon ends I see the tide of the sea is once again devouring the frontiers of my temporary real estate of sand so I once again pick up my small encampment and move to the safer beach head to learn the finality of the story…murderous hate meets love and self sacrifice for friends…the walk to La Guillotine…

As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.

‘Are you dying for him?’ she whispered.

‘And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.’

‘Oh you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?’

‘Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.’…

…. ‘Do you think:’ the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: ‘that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?’

‘It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.’

La Guillotine does its ugly job carving off the heads of two innocents Sydney Carton and a kind but simple young woman victim of the senseless violence, page 402, Carton secretly taking the place of his dear friend Darnay the husband of his secret love, saving a life and restoring a family…we are left with his amazing sacrifice and his echoing words….

‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’

With those words my victory is complete; I have clawed my way thru this work…yet in my victory I find defeat, I succumb to the utter brilliance of the writer, his exquisite story telling embraces me and I am delivered from loss and victory and made friend and it is with sadness that I close the book…closing the first chapter of a friendship hard won with Charles Dickens thru his work A Tale of Two Cities…truly it was the best of books…and it is time to leave my sea side refuge….

I bring you this tale from Vancouver and now invite you for a different tale from a second city from another friend, let us visit a beach in Portugal with my friend Max.