Pelicans at the Jetty

Pelicans flew overhead. They glided. They undulated. They stacked on top of each other. They lined up. They landed near the river. They scooped the river. They flew parallel to the jetty. They flew perpendicular to the jetty. Five pelicans approached the jetty in formation and then when they reached the black wall, three would break left and two would break right. Why? Why not stay together?

A few gulls joined with pelican formations at the margins. Call them interlopers or call them pretenders. Perhaps even call them rebels.

I ate my breakfast of of apple, hard boiled egg, bread and watched pelicans on a gray morning before teaching a writing workshop. A few minutes before breakfast, I had climbed atop the jetty, a good 20 feet of climbing, and added a few flourishes to a driftwood sculpture that mysteriously reminded me of a pelican in flight when I came face to face with it.

The sculpture hadn’t been there the previous morning.

The jetty was slick and jagged. It felt vertiginous to stand here with the ocean on one side and the might river on the other. This was a risky place to make art. Nevertheless, there art was and it crooned to me. (Croon is such a great verb.)

I sat on a log. Pelicans kept coming. I looked up at the sculpture. It would topple soon, into the ocean or river; it all depended on the direction of the wind and waves or if a Philistine fishermen put in an appearance.

This sculpture’s crooning had induced me to climb the jetty to assist in its creation. It was made by an anonymous artist. I would be anonymous in my contribution, because no one was around for miles. I want to do this with my writing. Be anonymous to the reader, but share something that induces physical and metaphysical participation in the finder of the writing. The writer’s name doesn’t matter. It is completely irrelevant. In the past, I have experimented with methods of distributing my anonymous writing in anonymous fashion. I stole most of my ideas from other writers and artists, some from hundreds of years ago, but perhaps the best one from my ex-wife.

It’s gigging by stealth. There are no bylines. There are no press releases. There might not even be an audience except for gulls that can’t read. I sense this is my new writing path.

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