ll
t
I
o
yn
ey m
st
the waterfront has undergone a trans-
formation. Now transformations can
be good things--even great--and I am
sure in the master plan of development
there used to be a lovely unorderliness to it all. I felt
comfortable plunking my little beach chair anywhere,
whipping out a book, and hanging out. I still come. I
still watch the seagulls zoom in, landing just a few feet
from me, where they peck and strut, balk at each other
over something. I still read.
and-white striped chair. There's a bunch of prettifying
going on, and fences going up, and stuff being built,
and one thing that I loved seems to have gone away.
kite-flying skills. I can kill a soaring flyer faster than
anyone. I have no aerodynamic awareness at all. I am,
however, a professionally adept kite watcher. The lift
and the thrust--the way the colors and shapes take to
the sky. I could watch the launches and the landings,
the twists and dips, all day.
the cusp of being men and women, really--were
whooping and running in the big field--the one that
seems to have a bigger purpose this year, the one that
needs a fence. I heard the whooping and turned from
my book.
and cotton puffs of clouds with sunlight leaking
out--and a slew of kites that they were maneuvering
through the air. The way kites can share the same
space without biting each other, without irreparably
tangling themselves into knots, without taking each
other down, always seems like a miracle to me.
have no reason to think any of them were the same
kids as last year's--although it's possible.
and Australia, Chile, Haiti, to join the Americans and
Canadians--and fly kites. All kinds and shapes and
sizes take to the skies. I read there are hand-painted
kites that look like they should be hanging in a
museum, and kites as big as a city bus, a house, even.
kites I miss. It's something much bigger. Every time
I witnessed those kite flyers, they gave me hope for
the future. More than one kite in the air at a time
requires cooperation--an inherent comprehension
of, or willingness to figure out, how to get along.
And the kids on this scrappy field by the river always
seemed to get that.
Jakimides' work has been published in journals, magazines,
and collections, as well as broadcast on National and
Maine Public Radio. She is the editor of the monograph
series of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.