Playing Fair and Being Kind

HIDING PLACES

Doesn’t Matter Why

 Why doesn’t matter when ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘where’ are in play. My first favorite hiding place was in plain sight. I’d wake up in the morning and have the house to myself. It would be a few hours before anyone else stirred. Then the peace of the morning was destroyed with shuffling, grumbling, and family reunions of the day. Not for me. I’d sit nearby and scowl. My world was invaded and taken away from me. My fun was ruined.

For me, hiding is simply getting away; escaping to a place where I can sit and choose whether or not to engage. Driving is a more recent way of hiding. Get into the car and cruise across the country. Stop when I want to. Walk along side walks, sit on public benches, poke around in libraries, cruise the stacks, stop and examine photographs or paintings. Being alone is hiding in plain sight. Being alone is perfectly okay. Not the same as lonely. Some of us are usually alone and never lonely.

When I joined the Navy and eventually was assigned to submarine duty the hours underwater were perfect. Many of my shipmates were cut from the same cloth. We could choose to interact. We were appreciative of privacy. We learned to notice who was hiding and who was open to having company. The conditions fostered these associations.

Later on, in my career the nuclear submarines played a huge role in hiding from the world. A few hours after leaving port we’d pull the plug and submerge for at least two months! Just think of it. Leave port in the middle of June and return in the middle of August. Sometime in the middle of my submarine career I noticed a sadness would surround me when we got near the end of the patrol cycle. We’d be a about a week away from surfacing near our destination. Many of the others were happy to be getting close to port. They’d be trimming their beards and beginning to arrange their personal belongings into piles for packing their sea bags. I’d be growing more remote, detached from the crew. I was sad to be ending the patrol. The peace of the workspace was going to be invaded, destroyed by people who were going to be coming down the ladders from topside. There’d be different smells from the outside air pouring through the boat. The controlled atmosphere would be breached depending on the port we returned to. I remember Charleston, South Carolina as being the most offensive, smelly, humid air ever. Scotland was always chilly and damp. Spain was okay, just not like being submerged though.

My friends today tell me about their hiding places being their beds. Their safe places are remote, deep within their dwellings. We can relate, identify with one another. Under the covers. Behind the curtains or window shades. In the bathroom is a common hiding place. A headset or pair of earbuds will do often. Maybe a big hat that covers a lot of the face is good enough. Hoodies do it. Population growth has increased the need for hiding places.

I find I need to cover my windows. Café curtains are generally sufficient. One time during the mid-seventies I took up photography. I converted my apartment into a dark room. I covered the windows with black plastic garbage bags and made one large closet into the room for rewinding spools of 35mm film onto wire processing spools. It was totally dark in there. I did a lot of rewinding and film processing. Later I realized I had about reached the peak of my ability/need to be alone. Undisturbed. That adjective is ironic, eh? I was probably as disturbed as I could be.

Well, that’s all I want to reveal about those dark moments and periods of my life. I still enjoy the peace and remoteness of my house. The yard has strategically place gardens, shrubs, trees, tool sheds, etc. I can still hide in plain sight if I need. It’s fun.

G. M. Goodwin
16 December 2018

Here is a poem I’ve posted before. 
I’ve worked on this one a little. I like the flavors. On one of my adventures to the bottom of the sea I saw, in the darkest depths with the aid of Thallium Iodide lights, footprints of a crab. How long could those prints remain at that depth with very little current flowing? In the dark. Minus all the traffic of the land animals. How long ago had a crab walked through this piece of real estate and left prints for me to find? A week? A decade? A thousand years? How old were the prints I wondered about? I don’t know.

 

FOOTPRINTS

An Ocean-full

 

Running on a beach as a kid,

Leaving my mark in the sand,

Back and forth, forward and back,

Crossing and cutting leaving my mark.

 

Where did they go, my footprints?

My hand prints…all the prints?

All that energy expended in a signature,

Savin Hill Beach and Carson Beach. Tenean Beach.

 

One I left in the water with blood

From a glass bottle, broken and waiting

For me, stuck me, pained me,

Sent me to City Hospital in a police cruiser.

 

I feel it now like it was 70 years ago,

The instant of the stab up through my foot,

The tiny “ow” from my lips, I was taught to be quiet,

I hobbled to the medical office of the bath house.

 

All those actions of moving parts pressed into

The stationary parts,

Push the grains, compress the bits, leave a

Mark for eternity

 

Or until the next wave slices up the sand

And obliterates the message of me,

I was here until just then before the water

Was here next and it won.

 

Follow a set of footprints into a cave of sandstone,

On a stretch of Solana Beach,

Hug and kiss that little sand-witch,

Fall in love and get killed because that’s how it works.

 

Knowing that love lasts a little longer than

Footprints but not much,

All those footprints, human, animal,

Float away down the slope with the slicing waves.

 

Fill the ocean with happenings that happened,

Lasted for about as long as a love affair,

Not as long as the taste of lips on lips,

The ocean fills with brief ecstasy.

 

The ocean is the great depository for memories,

Written with heels and toes and insteps,

Forever in our minds you’d think,

I can hear them, in the ocean, running, laughing, weeping.

 

G. M. Goodwin

2 July 2018