budding scholar

The birds swoop over our heads as we walk by, diving towards bread tossed from the small boy’s hand. They fly down and linger a moment, trying to fill their bellies with bits of bread. The bread blankets the beach, and the birds must quickly find as many grains of sand as crumbs of bread because they sail back to the breaking edges of waves and settle down upon the water again. But their bellies call them again, and the instinct to seek food, and once again they burst toward the bread and peck away in the sand.

We walk with shoes off, toes curling around pink, gray and brown rocks that spot the grainy sand. My nose is filled with the smell of fried food, myseriously blanketing the beach though I see no fast food joint in sight. The smell, and the loud roar of traffic in the distance remind us that we are on an urban beach, on the edge of a teaming city.

I hold my breath, stare into the foam, feel the cold Mediterranean water on my toes, and hope to follow the birds this week, bursting forth again and again, pecking in the sand, flying on inertia and instinct. My bread is my research. I am here, in this city, knocking on doors, calling for interviews, looking for people who will talk with me and share their stories. Like the smell of fast food as we walked down the beach, the weight of the project is ever present, nagging at me, sometimes scraping and grinding, sometimes sparkling into inspiration. I wonder what I’ll find in the sand this week.

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How’s the week looking to you, dear readers? Thank you for your thoughts, reactions, comments. I love hearing what my writing and photos bring to mind for you.