Hovering about sand and sea, an emaciated silhoette clings to the horizon. A thousand frail legs thread themselves amongst the waves. A losing game of survival by numbers. A brittle platform strung above them with a few square shapes at its furthest reach. Drawing near: a few small groups laze either side the giant skeleton; woven reed boats lean immemorial against its limbs; the occasional couple track back and forth across its beaten back. In its shadow, another beached vessel props up an old man with a magazine.
I place a cautious foot on the dinosaur´s tail. The weathered beams crack and splinter variously, their rusting bolts exposed here, missing there - a naked history tatooed on every vertabrae - a distinct geography of grooves and gaps. I creep along, apologetically heeding their creaks and groans, carefully avoiding the unstable and unsecured, once or twice hopping back from an unseen seesaw. Below, the Pacific is late for something. It rushes recklessly towards the land. It carries the chill draft of a neighbour come in from the cold. My chest is a cosy winter scene disturbed by an open door. I shiver.
The track stretches straight ahead, its end barely visible. The pencil outline of box shapes tell me where it must be. They may also contain some clues as to the existence of this fallen monster. This seeming reason enough, I push on and brave the gusting wind. Really, there can be little mystery. Surely some humble feat of maritime engineering. A place for comings and goings. Loadings and unloadings. Of commerce. Of shouting. Of jokes, laughter, sitting around, waiting, dozing in the shelter of some shack or barrel or rigging. Of arguments, reconciliations, invitations and singing. Of accidents and injury. Recovery and loss. Of marching out to work and trapcing back home again. Of food in the stomach. But its the decay that fascinates. That has picked the carcass clean of all the above. Did it come swiftly or savouringly?
Perhaps its not quite finished. A gaggle of teenagers have made one section their hangout. Sitting amongst a pile of crumbling timber, they chat intermitantly and spit into the sea. One lets out a loud and defensive burp to let me know I´m trespassing. Further on, a man in balaclava drops a line between the planks. Head down, sensitive to its tension, he awaits his supper. Finally, a few gulls adorn the horizontal of a slanting metal cross. Some sleeping, others looking out to sea. The last life to depart a dieing coral. Lining the left, the backdrop to these scenes, I discover the box shapes - a collection of abandoned sheds. They are bleached blue and camoflage themselves meekly against the sky. Blown crooked, they slant towards the beach in a futile effort to escape. Visible through missing doors and broken windows, some more reed boats and the half green bowl of a toilet. Little to indicate the exact nature of the once living reef.
I think of attempting a sketch - a frequently unfulfilled intention - but I didn´t prepare for the wind and its too cold to stay any longer. I feel no shame at my morbid voyuerism and walk back along the pier as one closes a gloomy book.
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