Sea-side

I couldn't help thinking of that couple on the beach (see yesterday): the figure in the blonde wig, with white or silver penciled eyes. and the blonde-haired doll sitting beside her.  Both bare-footed, both wearing princess tiaras.  The doll's tiara was all askew, but she kept on smiling anyway. Whatever little scene the two of them had going, you had to love it, and the beauty of Coney is that still, however anodyne they try to make the place, it's the people that count, and the shore here still has the magic power of letting them do as they damn well please.  It's the city at ease. Everyone here is letting go of something or other - clothes, convention, inhibition.  The shackles of propriety. We're better that way.

For a while the doll was left alone while her companion took a dip, and she looked a little vulnerable, like somebody's human princess child, left there all alone without an adult's supervision.  I guessed the lifeguard could keep an eye on her along with the swimmers.  By the time I'd walked back from the end of the pier the two of them were gone.

Near where they'd been sitting, someone had written CHABOLITA in the sand, with a heart inside the letter 'O.' You could see the top of a head and a waving arm too and the start of a name, PAOL-, but the tide had rinsed the rest of the scene away.