Behold the Beast

It was in the ever-current of Anastasia Beach in 1896 St. Augustine, Florida that two cycling boys discovered a tremendous curiosity beyond their own play-brain imaginings. The monster carcass was partially buried, its immense weight too heavy for the granular earth. Amateur naturalist DeWitt Webb concluded that it was the partially buried remains of a gargantuan octopus. In the salty heat it baked and festered into pink whiteness. It gleamed silver under the autumnal Florida sun. A seaside hotel owner wrote that the head is as large as an ordinary flour barrel and further about how parts of its body had been found strewn for some distance on the beach. A little over a month later, the sea reclaimed the beast but regurgitated, leading Webb to use ropes to haul the carcass higher up the sandy shore.

Years ago when I was reading something I don't quite remember, I do remember a writer describing their writing process. To paraphrase, they said that their inspiration came upon them like an animal or a storm soaring above them in the sky. They described their mad dash up a figurative hillside to the abode of notepad or typewriter as if they were tools of capture and contain. And if they did not make it up the hillside in time, off the animal or storm system went into the dark horizon, never to return.

My own St. Augustine Monster is upon me, festering and oozing on my shore. A decomposing tentacle is down shore, a piece of fish-torn flesh is waltzing in the tide, deciding if it will stay or go with the waves. I stand in its shadows, wishing that I knew all the knots for the ropes to keep it still. Wishing that I knew the alchemy of vigor.