Along the southern portion of the beach, at the end of Washington Boulevard, is the Venice Fishing Pier. A 1,310-foot (400 m) concrete structure, it first opened in 1964, but was closed in 1983 due to El Niño storm damage, only reopening in the mid-1990s. On December 21, 2005, the pier again suffered damage when waves from an unusually big northern swell caused the part of the pier upon which the restrooms was located to fall into the ocean. The pier remained closed until May 25, 2006, when it was reopened after an engineering study concluded the pier was structurally sound. (Wikipedia)
I stuff my assignment, un-read, into my pocket. I walk away from the circus, the sun burning my back. Today isn't the day for interactions with a self-proclaimed town wino or with the boy sitting in a trashcan asking for money. I don't want to walk down the familiar stretch past someone walking on "glass" as leather-faced men write names of tourists on rice or giddy teenage girls hop into piercing chairs, hoping that from some angle they look like Evan Rachel Wood. I don't want a henna tattoo. I don't want to listen to your CD.
So I head south. I walk past garbage cans with palm tree leaves stuffed inside, a Buddha wrapped in unlit Christmas lights and a deserted lot with a fence that looks like broken teeth. I get to the pier. I walk and am slowly elevated. My skin isn't as tense here. I walk past a boy, looking out. He is thin but his back curves in a way that makes me think of Venus.
I walk past men on either side of me towards the end of the pier. Their eyes are open but their bodies stay still and their lips rest, unopened, even while next to people they know, even when the wind lifts up my skirt. There isn't anything to say.
I walk to the very edge. The immense, dark water makes me feel small. Below my fingers is a rotting fish carcass.
I sit on a bench at the end. Around the edge are rods that reach out to the sky and attached to the ocean by thin, invisible wires. The sun seems to shine only over the boardwalk. Here the fog is all around. It sits next to me on the impossibly blue bench and wraps around the yellow, paradise-printed sun umbrella to my left. There is an older man on the bench next to me. He sits next to his bicycle and smokes a long, thin cigarette. It doesn't seem to get shorter. It sits on his fingertips delicately. He holds it to his lips like it won’t kill him; like it's the only way he knows how to breathe.
My fingers search my bag for the crumpled paper that is my assignment.
Connect a group of people and a new world order.
But this doesn't feel new. It feels like it's always been there and it will always be there. I feel those thin, taut clear strings fastening me to the water — the rolling blue that could swallow us at any moment. I close my eyes and hope it does.
BB
