Cursed

Some things are too beautiful. These past days have been, days on Florida's Gulf Coast with sand so white you cannot open your eyes, sugar sand that doesn't get hot, that stays cold in even a blistering sun, and water a deeper blue than the too blue sky. And kayaking in the rivers among the mangroves and oyster shells, the waters churning with fish, water birds. And all this only a part of what it was. You must be rich now to get to these places, rich or lucky. The beaches and rivers are lined with condos for miles and miles and miles with only an occasional small parking lot to serve the rest of Florida. The rich have these wonders to themselves, now. When I was young, I came to these beaches with my family. My aunt and uncle lived here and there was nothing, really, but the cold white sand and blue water and mangroves and oysters. My mother and aunt would pick up shells piled so deep there seemed no bottom. They brought home sharks teeth by the bucket, some the size of a toy car. We fished for snook and snapper from the rocky jetties and seined for shrimp in the sloughs. We set traps for stone crabs. When I turned into a teenager, I got bored with it all. It seemed a punishment to spend weekends with my parents and relatives with the sand and salt and the smell of fish and rotten sea weeds. Youth.

I was with my mother and and aunt and cousins yesterday. I had my old Rollieflex on the jetties. I took photos of my family, then turned to the fishermen who lined the rocks. My cousins and I walked down the beach. People liked seeing the old camera, stopping and staring and asking me about it, telling me about an old camera they had somewhere. People approached me. Two women and a girl asked me if I had taken photos of the sea urchins that lined the beach by the thousands.

"No, but I will if you will hold them out to the camera like this."

"No, I don't want to touch them. Here, my niece will. She's studying Marine Biology."

A pretty young girl walked over and got a nice specimen and held it low toward the camera. I framed it close so that her arm and knees and belly button were just out of focus, a line of urchins falling off in the background from the corner of the frame.

"Wait a minute, something's wrong," I told her. My camera wouldn't wind. It was locked up completely. She waited for a few minutes and then I told her thanks, but the camera was broken.

I had the camera repaired two days before I came. It was working like new. Just two rolls of film passed through it before it locked up. I was just beginning. It is difficult to photograph people on a beach, but I was in a zone. The camera was a magnet. There were American classics there that I would never shoot.

Later, at sunset, I went to another beach with my new Nikon. The light was incredible, warm, brilliant, throwing shadows across the sand. Everything looked 3D through my viewfinder. I took my eye away. Everything looked more 3D than I had ever seen it in my life. But I couldn't take any photos, at least not of people. A man on a beach with a big digital camera is bad news. I was nothing more than a voyeur, a danger, something to keep away from the kids.

I am cursed. Two cameras that had just been repaired broken down again for no reason. They were repaired by top camera guys. No, there is no rational reason I can find for this. It is fate, pure and simple. I am cursed.

I walked the beach, my camera in its bag, framing scenes with my eye. Families building sand castles wearing bathing suits of cobalt blues and brilliant reds, long legged kids wearing hats and sunglasses. How will I ever record all that?