When I was a boy, I lived by the ocean with my grandfather. I didn’t want to. I lived with him for one summer. He was blind and I was young. My grandfather had worked on cars until he lost his sight, then he moved to the coast and lived on the edge of a small town. I didn’t know why he isolated himself; he never went to the beach and couldn’t even see the ocean out of his window. He was not a rich man. He didn’t own anything other than his apartment and what was in it. He was thin and wiry and his clothing fit loosely because he ate little. He never touched a drink. He had already been blind for a long time when I lived with him. I worried that he might have fully retreated into himself being apart from other people and without something as important as his sight to connect him to the world. I worried that his mind would be weak because he had outlived it, that he would be a lump. I didn’t understand why It scared me. At the time I was just concerned for my summer thinking I would have to do everything for him, though that turned out to be untrue. I helped him to his rocking chair and put on records for him, but not much else.
It was the beginning of the summer and the middle of the day, a Saturday I think, but that hardly mattered when I was young. Most of the houses in town were painted white, but some were painted in pastels, blue or green or yellow, and when the sun was bright and shone unobstructed the colourful buildings became even more vibrant. I was in town and watched a party on a terrace from across the street. The party goers were playing loud, fun music and there was a woman. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I didn’t join in. I didn’t want to join in, these were adults, but I did want to be close to her and hear her laugh. I started drifting towards the party, but was resisting every step. I stopped walking, started again, turned around and walked away, turned back and started towards the party again. It hurt. I was being pulled apart from the inside by two forces that I could not see, but felt deeply. Though I couldn’t have said that at the time. So I just watched them in their colourful shirts and short pants. I followed her in her long flowing red dress with my eyes. I watched her dance and glide lightly through the party smiling and chatting with the others for some time, it was so easy for her.
It was after lunch and I had to return to my grandfather’s apartment by the water on the edge of town because he liked to listen to records after meals. He could still find his way around his apartment without a problem and fix himself meals. I didn’t understand how he could do that, but still needed me to take him to his chair and play records for him. He never went into town, except to the market to buy food once a week. I didn’t understand how he could be so alone. I didn’t like the ancient music on the records he listened to, it took too long and was hard to dance to. It sounded far away, like it was coming from a great distance. I liked the new music that they played at parties in town that made you want to dance.
I hated his apartment. It was only three rooms. The walls were white and had nothing on them. The floor was bare, except for wooden chairs around a wooden table in the kitchen, a bed and frame for him and me in the same room, and a rocking chair next to a record player in the living room. I was free to go anywhere in the town when I lived with my grandfather, he was too old and too blind to stop me from doing anything and he never tried, but I was bored. I was always bored. I never told him because I knew he must be so lonely and I felt something like pity for him. I helped him from the kitchen table to the rocking chair. He had twenty one records, and I had already played them all for him many times that summer. My grandfather had never talked a lot, and even less when he lost his sight. I don’t know when I assumed it was because he had nothing there anymore, but he always asked me to choose the record. I didn’t know how to pronounce all the foreign names on his records or what the titles meant. I grabbed a record at random. Beethoven I think, but that meant nothing to me then.
“Why do you listen to records?” I asked him. “Why don’t you let me stream music for you. Now you can stream all the music in the world you know.”
“I don’t need all the music in the world. I just need my records.” He said. “Streaming is too easy.”
“What do you mean? Easier is better.” I said. My grandfather had a habit of speaking vaguely, and I resented having to work to find out what he was really trying to say.
“Records, at least, make you listen to the piece entirely, from beginning to end.”
“What if I don’t like it? I don’t like music that you need to wear a tuxedo to enjoy. I like the fun music they play in town. I could stream some of that for you, or you could come into town. It’s no good being alone.” I was a boy, and I had no problem telling my grandfather how to live.
“I’ve never worn a tuxedo,” he said. “Some things need more time. Even if you don’t… like it.” He said that word like it tasted bitter. His pause before finishing the sentence made me think he was actually saying something else.
“Why did you say it like that?” I asked.
“You know when this music was made there weren’t even records.” He said. My grandfather had a habit of not answering me. “You could only go to the orchestra to hear it played by the musicians.”
“Whatever.” I said. “I’m going to the beach.”
“Put the record on for me before you go, and stay out of the deep water.” He said that often. I took it out of its sleeve and placed it on the record player, and lowered the needle slowly like he had told me even though I was in a rush. I wasn’t going to the beach with anyone, or to meet anyone. I was just bored. I walked down to the shore in my bathing suit and splashed around in the surf for a while and then began to swim out to the reef that I had discovered, just out from the shore. It was a little deep, but I could hold my breath for a long time and I had goggles. I liked to watch the bright fish around the reef. I liked how they swam and played and chased each other around. A large, vivid red fish dwarfed all the fish on the reef, but it was gentle and swam without effort and didn’t scare any of the others. It was the biggest fish I had ever seen and I watched it swim among the smaller ones for a while. They were too quick for me, and I didn’t try to catch one anyways. I didn’t want to. The reef fish were fun, but that day I got bored with them after a short time. Normally I would have swam back to the shore and dried myself in the sun, but underwater I turned away from the reef and the fish that lived in it. I turned to look at the huge blue against blue of the ocean that was behind me, and I began to swim. Slowly outwards, away from the reef. I didn’t realise how far I had swam until I looked back and could not see the reef. I couldn’t even see the bottom anymore, and when I surfaced I couldn’t see the shore. I was scared. All I could do was swim. I chose a direction and dove again to avoid the waves.
I stopped swimming and floated below the surface when I saw it. At first it seemed to be a great distance away because it was faint, but the longer I looked the closer it came. It swam towards me. It was huge but difficult to see. Blue against blue in blue. I had read about whales in books – I thought I knew they were big. This one seemed to have no end as it swam by. If I wasn’t holding my breath I might have thought it took an hour. As it did I didn’t even realise I wasn’t scared anymore. It passed by me slowly without making a sound. I reached out to touch it, but it was too far away. Maybe it had seemed closer because of how great it was. I could feel how vast it was, and it overwhelmed everything I had previously thought I knew about whales. The power hurt. To see something so much more. Something that just by existing confronted me with the true scale of the ocean, and of myself. It was a miracle. Its greatness was beyond any attempt to measure or imitate, I was baffled by how evocative the slow, silent beast was. It was a beautiful gift which I could not understand or deserve. I felt an oppressive gratitude for it. I didn’t know how long whales lived, but it seemed to me to be ancient and I hoped it remained to my everlasting awe, in its limitless expression for long after I was alive. Just to know it was somewhere out here would be enough. I was running out of breath, but I stayed underwater for a while longer just to look at it as it continued on its way. Too long. The whale hadn’t even noticed me, and when its great tail passed its stroke disturbed the water around me and sent me swirling and spinning to the surface. I gasped for breath amid the waves. I was too far out. Once the whale had passed I started to feel an ache in my muscles and I was breathing hard before I even realised I was panicking. I did not belong out there. The only thing I knew was that all I could do was swim. I looked up and saw seabirds high overhead and hoping they would be going towards land, and started to swim in the same direction.
When I came to the shoreline I was far down the beach, but I knew where my grandfather’s apartment was. Even though I had nearly lost myself and I was exhausted, once again I could only think of one thing. I wished he could have seen the whale. I told myself that I would have to explain what I saw to the poor old blind man, but the same thought troubled me because I knew I wouldn’t be able to describe it well enough to make him see. It made me sad, how deprived my grandfather was, but I would try. I sat on the beach panting and looking at the ocean. The waves still came ashore one after the other, the sun still reflected off its surface, but everything seemed different, new. After I caught my breath from the exertion of the swim I walked home slowly. I climbed the short flight of stairs and entered my grandfather’s apartment quietly. The music was still playing. I sat dripping wet at the kitchen table for a few minutes just listening. It sounded different, not fake and scratchy and dampened like it was being played from behind closed doors. It sounded close, full, real.
“Do you hear it?” my grandfather said suddenly. I was surprised he knew I was there, but I didn’t say anything. I had heard this record many times before, but this time the music wasn’t just playing. It was emanating from the source of all of nature. The sound had an enormous weight, it gathered and moved in churning eddies in the air around me. I was suspended in this new atmosphere that seemed even heavier than me. All I did, all I could do, was listen for I didn’t know how long. Maybe just for a moment in my life, maybe for the whole summer. I was floating in the sound of the cosmos in turbulence. It was irresistible and could not be fought or reasoned with, but I knew it meant that no one ever had to be lonely.
“You know when this music was made, if you were like me, you were lucky to hear a piece like this once in your life. Do you hear it? Just to hear it once and then to know that in us there’s something like that would be enough,” he said, and then, “Stay out of the deep water.” Restating the warning he had given me before and carrying on the conversation we were having earlier. I wondered if he was confused. If he was too old, and had been blind for too long. I sat in silence in the next room and listened to the music. It did not need my attention, it demanded it because it was not trying to say anything, it was the thing itself. It rose and then fell, swelled and then subsided, and then finished. I entered the living room and looked out the open window facing the town, I could see the terrace where the party was still going and where people were still dancing. I closed the window, put the record back into its sleeve and placed another one on the player. After lowering the needle I turned the volume up slowly and sat on the floor next to my grandfather for a long while. I listened to the music and my arrogant, selfish boredom was gone. Nothing ever felt as intense as when I was young and unready. Now, only by trying to remember as best I can in the stillness of old age I have made sense of it, but then maybe not. When I was young my heart was stronger than my mind, but I did not know it. How could I? I never forgot about the summer I lived with my grandfather, but I didn’t tell him about the whale.
Matthew Cameron 
When I was a boy, I lived by the ocean with my grandfather. I didn’t want to. I lived with him for one summer. He was blind and I was young. My grandfather had worked on cars until he lost his sight, then he moved to the coast and lived on the edge of a small town. I didn’t know why he isolated himself; he never went to the beach and couldn’t even see the ocean out of his window. He was not a rich man. He didn’t own anything other than his apartment and what was in it. He was thin and wiry and his clothing fit loosely because he ate little. He never touched a drink. He had already been blind for a long time when I lived with him. I worried that he might have fully retreated into himself being apart from other people and without something as important as his sight to connect him to the world. I worried that his mind would be weak because he had outlived it, that he would be a lump. I didn’t understand why It scared me. At the time I was just concerned for my summer thinking I would have to do everything for him, though that turned out to be untrue. I helped him to his rocking chair and put on records for him, but not much else.
It was the beginning of the summer and the middle of the day, a Saturday I think, but that hardly mattered when I was young. Most of the houses in town were painted white, but some were painted in pastels, blue or green or yellow, and when the sun was bright and shone unobstructed the colourful buildings became even more vibrant. I was in town and watched a party on a terrace from across the street. The party goers were playing loud, fun music and there was a woman. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I didn’t join in. I didn’t want to join in, these were adults, but I did want to be close to her and hear her laugh. I started drifting towards the party, but was resisting every step. I stopped walking, started again, turned around and walked away, turned back and started towards the party again. It hurt. I was being pulled apart from the inside by two forces that I could not see, but felt deeply. Though I couldn’t have said that at the time. So I just watched them in their colourful shirts and short pants. I followed her in her long flowing red dress with my eyes. I watched her dance and glide lightly through the party smiling and chatting with the others for some time, it was so easy for her.
It was after lunch and I had to return to my grandfather’s apartment by the water on the edge of town because he liked to listen to records after meals. He could still find his way around his apartment without a problem and fix himself meals. I didn’t understand how he could do that, but still needed me to take him to his chair and play records for him. He never went into town, except to the market to buy food once a week. I didn’t understand how he could be so alone. I didn’t like the ancient music on the records he listened to, it took too long and was hard to dance to. It sounded far away, like it was coming from a great distance. I liked the new music that they played at parties in town that made you want to dance.
I hated his apartment. It was only three rooms. The walls were white and had nothing on them. The floor was bare, except for wooden chairs around a wooden table in the kitchen, a bed and frame for him and me in the same room, and a rocking chair next to a record player in the living room. I was free to go anywhere in the town when I lived with my grandfather, he was too old and too blind to stop me from doing anything and he never tried, but I was bored. I was always bored. I never told him because I knew he must be so lonely and I felt something like pity for him. I helped him from the kitchen table to the rocking chair. He had twenty one records, and I had already played them all for him many times that summer. My grandfather had never talked a lot, and even less when he lost his sight. I don’t know when I assumed it was because he had nothing there anymore, but he always asked me to choose the record. I didn’t know how to pronounce all the foreign names on his records or what the titles meant. I grabbed a record at random. Beethoven I think, but that meant nothing to me then.
“Why do you listen to records?” I asked him. “Why don’t you let me stream music for you. Now you can stream all the music in the world you know.”
“I don’t need all the music in the world. I just need my records.” He said. “Streaming is too easy.”
“What do you mean? Easier is better.” I said. My grandfather had a habit of speaking vaguely, and I resented having to work to find out what he was really trying to say.
“Records, at least, make you listen to the piece entirely, from beginning to end.”
“What if I don’t like it? I don’t like music that you need to wear a tuxedo to enjoy. I like the fun music they play in town. I could stream some of that for you, or you could come into town. It’s no good being alone.” I was a boy, and I had no problem telling my grandfather how to live.
“I’ve never worn a tuxedo,” he said. “Some things need more time. Even if you don’t… like it.” He said that word like it tasted bitter. His pause before finishing the sentence made me think he was actually saying something else.
“Why did you say it like that?” I asked.
“You know when this music was made there weren’t even records.” He said. My grandfather had a habit of not answering me. “You could only go to the orchestra to hear it played by the musicians.”
“Whatever.” I said. “I’m going to the beach.”
“Put the record on for me before you go, and stay out of the deep water.” He said that often. I took it out of its sleeve and placed it on the record player, and lowered the needle slowly like he had told me even though I was in a rush. I wasn’t going to the beach with anyone, or to meet anyone. I was just bored. I walked down to the shore in my bathing suit and splashed around in the surf for a while and then began to swim out to the reef that I had discovered, just out from the shore. It was a little deep, but I could hold my breath for a long time and I had goggles. I liked to watch the bright fish around the reef. I liked how they swam and played and chased each other around. A large, vivid red fish dwarfed all the fish on the reef, but it was gentle and swam without effort and didn’t scare any of the others. It was the biggest fish I had ever seen and I watched it swim among the smaller ones for a while. They were too quick for me, and I didn’t try to catch one anyways. I didn’t want to. The reef fish were fun, but that day I got bored with them after a short time. Normally I would have swam back to the shore and dried myself in the sun, but underwater I turned away from the reef and the fish that lived in it. I turned to look at the huge blue against blue of the ocean that was behind me, and I began to swim. Slowly outwards, away from the reef. I didn’t realise how far I had swam until I looked back and could not see the reef. I couldn’t even see the bottom anymore, and when I surfaced I couldn’t see the shore. I was scared. All I could do was swim. I chose a direction and dove again to avoid the waves.
I stopped swimming and floated below the surface when I saw it. At first it seemed to be a great distance away because it was faint, but the longer I looked the closer it came. It swam towards me. It was huge but difficult to see. Blue against blue in blue. I had read about whales in books – I thought I knew they were big. This one seemed to have no end as it swam by. If I wasn’t holding my breath I might have thought it took an hour. As it did I didn’t even realise I wasn’t scared anymore. It passed by me slowly without making a sound. I reached out to touch it, but it was too far away. Maybe it had seemed closer because of how great it was. I could feel how vast it was, and it overwhelmed everything I had previously thought I knew about whales. The power hurt. To see something so much more. Something that just by existing confronted me with the true scale of the ocean, and of myself. It was a miracle. Its greatness was beyond any attempt to measure or imitate, I was baffled by how evocative the slow, silent beast was. It was a beautiful gift which I could not understand or deserve. I felt an oppressive gratitude for it. I didn’t know how long whales lived, but it seemed to me to be ancient and I hoped it remained to my everlasting awe, in its limitless expression for long after I was alive. Just to know it was somewhere out here would be enough. I was running out of breath, but I stayed underwater for a while longer just to look at it as it continued on its way. Too long. The whale hadn’t even noticed me, and when its great tail passed its stroke disturbed the water around me and sent me swirling and spinning to the surface. I gasped for breath amid the waves. I was too far out. Once the whale had passed I started to feel an ache in my muscles and I was breathing hard before I even realised I was panicking. I did not belong out there. The only thing I knew was that all I could do was swim. I looked up and saw seabirds high overhead and hoping they would be going towards land, and started to swim in the same direction.
When I came to the shoreline I was far down the beach, but I knew where my grandfather’s apartment was. Even though I had nearly lost myself and I was exhausted, once again I could only think of one thing. I wished he could have seen the whale. I told myself that I would have to explain what I saw to the poor old blind man, but the same thought troubled me because I knew I wouldn’t be able to describe it well enough to make him see. It made me sad, how deprived my grandfather was, but I would try. I sat on the beach panting and looking at the ocean. The waves still came ashore one after the other, the sun still reflected off its surface, but everything seemed different, new. After I caught my breath from the exertion of the swim I walked home slowly. I climbed the short flight of stairs and entered my grandfather’s apartment quietly. The music was still playing. I sat dripping wet at the kitchen table for a few minutes just listening. It sounded different, not fake and scratchy and dampened like it was being played from behind closed doors. It sounded close, full, real.
“Do you hear it?” my grandfather said suddenly. I was surprised he knew I was there, but I didn’t say anything. I had heard this record many times before, but this time the music wasn’t just playing. It was emanating from the source of all of nature. The sound had an enormous weight, it gathered and moved in churning eddies in the air around me. I was suspended in this new atmosphere that seemed even heavier than me. All I did, all I could do, was listen for I didn’t know how long. Maybe just for a moment in my life, maybe for the whole summer. I was floating in the sound of the cosmos in turbulence. It was irresistible and could not be fought or reasoned with, but I knew it meant that no one ever had to be lonely.
“You know when this music was made, if you were like me, you were lucky to hear a piece like this once in your life. Do you hear it? Just to hear it once and then to know that in us there’s something like that would be enough,” he said, and then, “Stay out of the deep water.” Restating the warning he had given me before and carrying on the conversation we were having earlier. I wondered if he was confused. If he was too old, and had been blind for too long. I sat in silence in the next room and listened to the music. It did not need my attention, it demanded it because it was not trying to say anything, it was the thing itself. It rose and then fell, swelled and then subsided, and then finished. I entered the living room and looked out the open window facing the town, I could see the terrace where the party was still going and where people were still dancing. I closed the window, put the record back into its sleeve and placed another one on the player. After lowering the needle I turned the volume up slowly and sat on the floor next to my grandfather for a long while. I listened to the music and my arrogant, selfish boredom was gone. Nothing ever felt as intense as when I was young and unready. Now, only by trying to remember as best I can in the stillness of old age I have made sense of it, but then maybe not. When I was young my heart was stronger than my mind, but I did not know it. How could I? I never forgot about the summer I lived with my grandfather, but I didn’t tell him about the whale.
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