l i f e
vociferator
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
I always go East.
From where I sit I can drive directly East for about three hours until I run into the Atlantic Ocean. Right at old Johnny's Pier. At least it used to be. Now there's nothing there. Hurricanes took it away and left some barnacle covered piles sticking up out of the surf like bad broken teeth. Used to be in three hours time I could be at the end of that pier drinking a horrible cheap beer from a can talking shop with the local fishermen who never catch anything but small sharks which they immediately cut up and use for bait to catch more small sharks, and so on. But no more. Used to be if you were lucky, and I was often, that you could see sea turtles swimming just below the dark green water's surface. I suppose they're still there, I just can't see them anymore.
But I can see the dunes. Touch them. Roll in them. Scratch my arms on the sea oats blowing back toward the waterway. Last time I was there I took a six pack of the cheap stuff and my guitar out into the dunes. Left my shoes on the hood of the car and set out. It doesn't take long to feel isolated in the dunes, just a couple of rows in and everything fades away. No noise but the gulls and the crashing waves somewhere to my right. I keep in that direction until I hit the last row before the vast stretch of sand preceeding the water. That's my perch.
The sun is just going down and the first two beers go to it. When the moon takes its place I pop the top on number three and start to play. The chords flow freely and I don't feel bad about singing. Anything. Words flow as freely as the chords and before long I'm lost, reciting pure stream of consciousness.
Whatever falls out of my slack-jawed mouth. Whatever I feel at the moment, that pure unmolested moment.
It's a very redoubtable moment. Everything has a second chance within the strings and sound hole. Everything has a place and a function.
But...the world is huge here and I'm so small beer number four only makes me want to be louder. I am louder. I stand. I cry. Yet the wind carries all the sound I make away on a thin shear fabric of air. Over my back. Behind me to the past where I choke it up again in my throat like bait for the sharks. They're out there in the dark, just beyond my line of site. Just beyond.
I hear a voice cutting through the breeze but I keep playing. It feels good not to be alone. I know I'm invisible. But the voice is calling, "Hey...!"
I shake the swill in the bottom of number four and answer, Yeah...!"
Soon there are two of us. Number five and six. Skoal. Sand in our toes. Telling stories we don't really care if they're true or not. Laughing at the darkness and enjoying the world that belongs to only us two.
Trying to find something profound and instead just saying goodbye.
That's only three hours away or, just outside my door...
goodnight 12.15.97
