The other day, John’s thumb suddenly stopped working. It didn’t hurt but it was definitely on strike, to the point he couldn’t pick up a cup or button his shirt. This would be worrying for anyone, of course, but John’s conclusion was that he had had a mini stroke in his sleep and it was the Beginning of the End. I argued that (a) a stroke, even a mini one, would probably not solely affect a thumb and (b) he’d recently been doing a lot of IKEA carpentry, which involves hand gymnastics. That didn’t convince him but, sure enough, after a couple of days’ rest and some anti-inflammatories the pollice is back in action.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that for a couple of days John couldn’t drive to the supermarket, which is a couple of miles away. I don’t have a driver’s license but I can walk pretty far if I have sufficient motivation. Thanks to John’s temporary disability, this motivation materialized in the form of a strong desire for large amounts of food.
One of the nice things about our new house is that it’s on the sea, so it is possible to get almost all the way to the supermarket by walking along the beach. This I proceeded to do.
Despite his blighted digit, John heroically offered to come the first half mile with me. As usual, we looked out for the Beach Dog, who lives with a skinny guy with dreadlocks who spends all day in a Beach Shack. The dog is a friendly creature and likes to accompany us for a little way before investigating things in the pine groves or trotting ahead on official business.
Walking on soft sand is tiring. You can find some relatively hard sand near the water line, but sooner or later your feet are going to get soaked. Another, less effective, solution is to walk in someone else’s footsteps because they’ve done some of the work of compacting the sand. We tried both of these methods but in the end you just have to get used to the ground giving way underneath you. I pretty quickly started to feel small muscles complain in different parts of my legs.
As usual, there were a few wetsuited people out in the water checking crab traps or brandishing spearguns. A few weeks ago we saw a strange sight: a couple of priests swimming, one in speedos, the other in his big black cassock. It was a faintly medieval scene, a robed churchman emerging from the waves. Ever since then I’ve hoped to see them again but they seem to have vanished.
John turned back when we got to the agreed landmark, a closed-up café. Beaches in Italy are very definitely seasonal. Almost all beach resorts, restaurants and towns close for the autumn, winter and spring months. I still find this strange because in New Zealand, where summers can be just as rainy and cold as winter, beach towns and businesses are year-round propositions. As tempting as the sign saying BAR was, I knew it was just a will o’ the wisp trying to tempt me away from supermarket shopping.
At that point I think I got distracted by all the plastic I could see on the beach, including fragments that were well on their way to becoming microplastics. I wondered how long it would take to remove all of them by myself. You’d probably need 300 bags to cover a 1 km stretch. I once casually suggested to John that we might have a fun beach-cleanup day but, judging by his expression, he wasn’t ready for that idea. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’ve already been pegged as ‘Eccentric Foreigner’, I don’t want to do anything to tip that over into ‘Whacko’…yet.
My thoughts wandered further and I spent about ten minutes ranting in my head about the Gaza genocide. My therapist told me I should write about it if it bothers me, if it helps to feel some control. She said one of her clients, a Muslim woman, feels compelled to watch all the footage she can find because if she doesn’t she feels that she’s being a bad person if she looks away. An admirable desire to be a Witness but also a self-destructive compulsion driven by rage, guilt and distress, a caged animal gnawing at its paws… I can hardly watch any footage of the children, my eyes slide away in fear. How can this be happening? When Bill Maher quips that Palestinians should stop complaining because “Things Change,” the canned laughter sounds desperate, as if it’s coming from one man in a tunnel with a gun to his head.
It is necessary to spend some time looking at things around you and to connect with Nature because that way you regulate your nervous system, which is important, even if there is nowhere safe in Gaza.
