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penfield"There is ice upon the walkway
On the boardwalk craft of stone
Sealing underneath it
Dreams that slipped between the cracks
All those hopes and fantasies
Die fallow and unknown
With their final breaths they echo
What the waving water asks:
Move on, move on"
- from Sunday at the Lake, January 1997
(all photos circa 2001)
Lake Ontario and I have a complicated relationship.
Obviously, it's not just a great lake, it's a Great Lake. With the smallest surface area of all the Great Lakes, it is not the "greatest" of Great Lakes, but since "Ontario" is actually a Huron word for "great lake," it is the Great-Lakiest Great Lake -- much better than that stuck-up asshole Lake Superior.
It is also the northern border of Webster, NY, the suburban hamlet in which I spent my carefree youth. Webster Park, a green expanse that abuts the lake, has hosted birthday parties, ultimate frisbee games, cross-country races and prom pictures. It is a point of pride in the town where life is worth living. But the funny thing is, I didn't really become aware of it until after I left high school.
That was when my relationship with my high school sweetheart started to disintigrate. There were a whole truckload of reasons why it started falling apart, at least some of which were probably my fault, but one of the last and largest dominoes to fall was the revelation that she was meeting at the lake for illicit rendezvous with her personal trainer.
It took me a while to get over that, and throughout my rehabilitation I irrationally viewed the lake as a willing accomplice, its shushing waves and champagne sunsets complicit in her seduction. Eventually I conquered those notions by confronting them, and solitary pilgrimages to the lake were an essential part of that. Ultimately, I fell in love with that spot just like she did.
In college, I wooed another mercurial young woman by bringing her to Webster Park. The lake, perhaps feeling that it owed me one, worked its magic on her and we ended up having a good year or so together (spread out over about two and a half years).
Toward the end of that two and a half years, I could feel us drifting apart, which was understandable given that she was still in school in Rochester and I had moved to Washington, DC. But I didn't get the strange, sinking feeling in my gut until she mentioned matter-of-factly that she had been spending her spring evenings at Ontario Beach Park, eight miles due west of Webster Park, with my good friend and former suitemate.
So I suppose it shouldn't have come to me as such an incredible shock when I learned that she was dumping me for him. But the human heart has remarkable capacity for denial -- and a mysterious weakness for that lake.
I forgave Lake Ontario for that one, too, after a while. It was harder to hold a grudge by then, since I lived so far away and visiting the lake was a small part of a largely fulfilling homecoming. And every time I made the trip -- in the winter, with the abstract ice sculptures, or in the summer, with the sky a thousand shades of pink -- I always paid my respects to the lake and thought there a while until the seabreeze had whispered some wisdom in my ear.
My relationship with the lake is now so healthy that I didn't even mind taking J. to Webster Park this past weekend, curses be damned. And a funny thing happened: although it was a beautiful June night, the scene left me very cold.
It was as if the lakeside portion of the park had been mistreated, neglected and abandoned. The creek that ran beneath the bridge to the parking lot reeked of dead fish. The flatrock beach behind the paved sidewalk was overgrown with grass and weeds. Of the soft coil guardrails down the side of the pier, many were missing and most others were in disrepair. And nearly all of the giant boulders lining the pier were coated with a thick, hairy, algal slime.
It was depressing, like coming back for a high school reunion, seeing that everyone you knew is now fat, alcoholic and miserable and thinking to yourself, "what happened to my youth? What happened to my home?"
The lake means many different things to many different people. For me, it has been both a perpetual friend and nemesis. I always thought it would be there forever, calling me home and pushing me away, toying with me and pacifying me.
And now I see that it is aging right along with me, the tide carrying my youth away and delivering the present to lap impatiently against the shore.
Aging brings a very different kind of beautiful -- it takes some time to accept it, it takes some history to appreciate it and it smells kind of funny. But it is some small comfort that we're not going through it alone.
On the boardwalk craft of stone
Sealing underneath it
Dreams that slipped between the cracks
All those hopes and fantasies
Die fallow and unknown
With their final breaths they echo
What the waving water asks:
Move on, move on"
- from Sunday at the Lake, January 1997
(all photos circa 2001)
Lake Ontario and I have a complicated relationship.
Obviously, it's not just a great lake, it's a Great Lake. With the smallest surface area of all the Great Lakes, it is not the "greatest" of Great Lakes, but since "Ontario" is actually a Huron word for "great lake," it is the Great-Lakiest Great Lake -- much better than that stuck-up asshole Lake Superior.
It is also the northern border of Webster, NY, the suburban hamlet in which I spent my carefree youth. Webster Park, a green expanse that abuts the lake, has hosted birthday parties, ultimate frisbee games, cross-country races and prom pictures. It is a point of pride in the town where life is worth living. But the funny thing is, I didn't really become aware of it until after I left high school.
That was when my relationship with my high school sweetheart started to disintigrate. There were a whole truckload of reasons why it started falling apart, at least some of which were probably my fault, but one of the last and largest dominoes to fall was the revelation that she was meeting at the lake for illicit rendezvous with her personal trainer.
It took me a while to get over that, and throughout my rehabilitation I irrationally viewed the lake as a willing accomplice, its shushing waves and champagne sunsets complicit in her seduction. Eventually I conquered those notions by confronting them, and solitary pilgrimages to the lake were an essential part of that. Ultimately, I fell in love with that spot just like she did.
In college, I wooed another mercurial young woman by bringing her to Webster Park. The lake, perhaps feeling that it owed me one, worked its magic on her and we ended up having a good year or so together (spread out over about two and a half years).
Toward the end of that two and a half years, I could feel us drifting apart, which was understandable given that she was still in school in Rochester and I had moved to Washington, DC. But I didn't get the strange, sinking feeling in my gut until she mentioned matter-of-factly that she had been spending her spring evenings at Ontario Beach Park, eight miles due west of Webster Park, with my good friend and former suitemate.
So I suppose it shouldn't have come to me as such an incredible shock when I learned that she was dumping me for him. But the human heart has remarkable capacity for denial -- and a mysterious weakness for that lake.
I forgave Lake Ontario for that one, too, after a while. It was harder to hold a grudge by then, since I lived so far away and visiting the lake was a small part of a largely fulfilling homecoming. And every time I made the trip -- in the winter, with the abstract ice sculptures, or in the summer, with the sky a thousand shades of pink -- I always paid my respects to the lake and thought there a while until the seabreeze had whispered some wisdom in my ear.
My relationship with the lake is now so healthy that I didn't even mind taking J. to Webster Park this past weekend, curses be damned. And a funny thing happened: although it was a beautiful June night, the scene left me very cold.
It was as if the lakeside portion of the park had been mistreated, neglected and abandoned. The creek that ran beneath the bridge to the parking lot reeked of dead fish. The flatrock beach behind the paved sidewalk was overgrown with grass and weeds. Of the soft coil guardrails down the side of the pier, many were missing and most others were in disrepair. And nearly all of the giant boulders lining the pier were coated with a thick, hairy, algal slime.
It was depressing, like coming back for a high school reunion, seeing that everyone you knew is now fat, alcoholic and miserable and thinking to yourself, "what happened to my youth? What happened to my home?"
The lake means many different things to many different people. For me, it has been both a perpetual friend and nemesis. I always thought it would be there forever, calling me home and pushing me away, toying with me and pacifying me.
And now I see that it is aging right along with me, the tide carrying my youth away and delivering the present to lap impatiently against the shore.
Aging brings a very different kind of beautiful -- it takes some time to accept it, it takes some history to appreciate it and it smells kind of funny. But it is some small comfort that we're not going through it alone.
Only the good die young
Date: 2008-07-03 01:48 pm (UTC)But I'm telling you, I've never seen anything before like what I saw on those rocks. It was a viscous, bright green goo like something out of a Jim Henson workshop. I wanted to barf.
Incidentally, your quotation of "Keeping the Faith" brings up a question about I've always had about those lyrics. At the end, does he say he's "going outside to have a nice, cold beer in the shade" or "going outside to have an ice-cold beer in the shade"? This has been bothering me for 20 years.
According to Billy Joel's Web page
Date: 2008-07-04 12:43 pm (UTC)