Dan FriedmanFiley was a different place. A place where you could taste the sea on the fish and the earth on the chips, where you could play with parental approval on the few slot machines, where, for the first and only time I tried bacon, having a mouthful of Mary's bacon and egg pie, aged maybe 6. Although rules of respect and intimacy were still in place, global principles didn't matter, Filey was a place out of time, a place out of place, a place of respite. Even the few tawdry shops stuffed full of kitsch souvenirs had a certain pathos. In the same way as I imagine early Christian churches were just pagan temples with a makeover, these beachfront shops, of course deserted in March or November, had no belief in the gods of kitsch that they invoked.
On the North West Coast of England 'brigg' is a dialect word for a natural pier. It is a variation on the word 'bridge,' but Filey Brigg is a magnificent bridge to nowhere, made of large black rocks that stretch out Chaucerously through the bleak North Sea to Denmark. In March and November it is warm enough, wrapped in a heavy jumper and a waterproof coat to walk the deserted beach all the way along to Filey Brig. And then to walk the Brig to the edge of the sea and gaze out to Scandinavia.
You should do this with close friends and or family who are also similarly attired. It is time once again to be a child in the face of vast eternal nature. The dark, heavy clouds jag downwards like skyrocks. The wind and the rain and the spray close around you until it feels like the elements are supporting your intimate bubble as you walk along the Brigg surrounded by the black, crashing, granite openness of the sea.
You might have to shout to hear one another, you might have to watch your feet so as not to fall and slip on the sharp black rocks, you might come back with bruised knees or sodden trousers, but the conversation you have out there is holy. Held up by the giant hand of nature and under the scrutiny of a craggy Norse incarnation of the godhead nothing else matters but being together in the moment. That elemental Brig is one of two places where heaven and earth meet in North Yorkshire, and the connections that are made at that junction are elect and special.
In a cosy snug tea place along the front, in the ground floor café of a weathered victorian resort hotel you can begin to warm up and wind down. Over scones, jam and daubs of clotted cream you can begin to re-enter the mundane world of everyday adult life. Looking out of the window at the beach already frames your walk at a distance, and you might even venture to discuss the headlines of the newspaper lying on the windowsill, left there by the owner as she got up to make your tea.
And then to Bernard Bosomworths for fish and chips, with more tea, and mushy peas.
The soft borders between Jewish particularism and universalism
February, 2003
What my grandmother's suffering teaches
January, 2003
Pierre Bonnard at the Phillips Collection
November, 2002
Summer days, summer nights are gone...
September, 2002
New York, full of life, a cure for loneliness.
June, 2002
The rich are ripping us off! What are you gonna do about it?
April, 2002
Frederick Wiseman takes us inside the pervasive, sinister institution of
domestic violence.
March, 2002
Zeek in Print
Spring 03 issue available here
Shtupping in the Shadow
of the Bomb
Marissa Pareles
The Mall Balloon-Man Moment of the Spirit
Dan Friedman
Beats, Rhymes & Nigguns
Matthue Roth & Juez
Fish Rain
Susan H. Case
Anti-fada Paratrooper
Michael Kuratin
Josh Gets his Checkup
Josh Ring
Plague Cookies
Mica Scalin
The Ritual of Family Photography
Amy Datsko
about zeek
archive
links