ABSTRACT
The Naiad pulls out of Quay 41, past the sea lions that have colonised this alone of San Francisco’s many wharves, out into the bay on a still, foggy August morning, uneventfully until under the Golden Gate Bridge the skipper has difficulty keeping the 50-foot motor yacht on a straight course. Eight thousand miles of ocean seem to want to get through this mile-wide opening, and the turbulence announces the purpose for which we have come-to discharge our cargo of six pounds of ashes into the boundless ocean beyond. A few minutes later the bridge has disappeared in the fog, and we are at the officially designated scattering area. A mere couple of miles from the edge of megalopolis, all we can see is the hint of grey cliffs through the mist. Gerry puts the yacht ever so slowly into reverse, and Alice goes for’d with the half dozen relatives-children, husband, sisters —of the 53-year-old deceased and hands them the container. Memories are shared, tears shed, arms placed around one another, as each scatters a little of the ashes over the bow. Then each flings overboard the roses they have brought, one by one floating away in front of the boat for a second or two before slowly sinking. Alice, drained by the intensity of another unique yet universal farewell that it is her job to facilitate, day in day out, with two more to come this morning, retires aft for a smoke. The party stay on the fore-deck, talking and pondering, as we head back, once more through the turbulence and there suddenly comes the sun and ahead the human world, of city and skyscraper, shining in the morning sunlight, meditation turning to laughter and photography as once again the antics of the sea lions mark our return to Quay 41.1
A liminal ritual if ever there was one (Turner 1974): out of the ordinary world and into a ritual world that is immense, mysterious, boundless, unfathomable, with the threshold between the two clearly marked and the return to the ordinary world safe and reassuring. But it is also a distinctly postmodern ritual: a private family group sharing memories
that take the place of religious dogma, enriched by an ocean whose symbolism is both ancient and specific to the modern urban culture of West Coast America, Alice the Naiad company employee not directing but facilitating the family, the whole a commercial operation in which an intensely personal experience is bought, at a price.
