Please enjoy this potpourri of Megan’s Saturday at the Beach:
But first, we’ll start at the end of the day, make the tour, and then end with a song…
Some day I’ll stop messing with life’s veneer and just enjoy the damn view. For now, it only comes in waves. Of trash.
Shortly after I started working aboard those gray allocations of tax dollars, I started to enjoy swimming in the ocean a tiny bit less. Why was this? Well, as a part of my new job, I was made to memorize things that I would never be able to un-know- for as long as I lived. Are you ready to learn as well?
It goes something like this:
And you thought used bathwater was dirty….
So, with all of this in mind (and no, none of you should be surprised by that matrix), I give you a short photo essay of yuckiness that I discovered while strolling the sand expanse on my second favorite side of the Atlantic. And don’t you worry, I saved the best (or worst, as the case may be) snapshot of beach litter for last.
Little plastic baggies- Senegal’s version of seaglass. These start off as peanut containers, which sit atop platters that are balanced on the heads of women. They are consumed in a matter of seconds, tossed to the ground, only to be laundered by the ocean until they take on this beautiful weathered sheen.
These cuties were everywhere. Fantastically curious, the species of fish that live over here.
Yes, it’s a beach. No, Mr. Senegalese professional beach wanderer, I’m not gonna come with you and escape.
Your standard bleach bottle. While many toubabs use this product to clean their produce, I don’t think that this token amount could sterilize all the crap that high tide spit out today.
I take that back about the bleach. That white bottle is to be retrieved immediately after you step on one of these sand dollars and slice your foot open.
I take back the taking back about the bleach comment. It’s really for Megan to retrieve when she comes across European men who believe that the banana hammock is acceptable beach attire. I’m sorry, I can’t ever get used to this sight. I’ma take said bleach bottle, snap open that ribbon of spandex, and add new meaning to the term “french shower”.
I hope you enjoyed my presentation. I do recognize that much like how I can never unlearn how our oceans are polluted by various sea going vessels, you can now never un-see the pudgy dude above. His ass is burned into your brain, a mental image you can revisit again and again.
To reward, or possibly apologize for showing you that piece of photographic excellence, I now give you some true aesthetics, courtesy again of the beach:
Pretty isn’t it? And it goes down nicely with pastis.
I promised you a song, so I will thus end my essay the way I ended this day. It’s one final dose of silliness that was only funny to the Americans dining next to the beach. We ate fantastic seafood (and not the kind you saw above) as we were serenaded by live Senegalese music. No, not that kind of Senegalese music: