Water Stories
2023-
Where did hard working people go in-between their hard work?
They went to the water. Any body of water that they could afford to go to.
If you were living in NYC in the 1920s and 1930s you went by subway to the sea shores of Coney Island in Brooklyn or Rockaway Beach in Queens. If you had money, a car and time you went to the ocean beaches on Long Island.
These are memory drawings about my family but they fit into any ethnic or larger cultural story which on turn fits into a much larger story about America.
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
Bertolt Brecht
The larger story is …
What do people bring to a sea shore?
What do they leave behind?
How does that magical exchange take place?
