Full panic mode is not all it's cracked up to be except that it often allowed me to don some of my shirts that clashed with every pair of pants I owned and have it somehow fit the occasion. No extreme anxiety at the moment, just slight nervousness and a bit of cold sweating - how and why am I on the beach and why am I not at home wearing my comfy slippers that I purchased for the express purpose of making my feet warm. I had tried to think of a number of other reasons to justify the purchase of the slippers as I believe that I should have a minimum of 5 reasons for buying anything. I determined this years ago when I felt a large amount of buyer's remorse when I spent at least $300 too much on blubber and could only think of art as the sole initial reason for the expenditure with food for my as-yet-unacquired-baby-sea-otter as the second. I remember the day I purchased that I'll-thought-through blubber as I had just spent hours forcing myself to paint only pictures of forests of tree trunks knowing how painful those images were for me to paint. It is true, I hate the idea of old-growth forests being chopped down but I also have a nervous twitch when I paint those sort of pictures which usually ends up with accidentally scratching myself around my face and neck.
I decide to calm down by standing and stretching and giving the appearance of fitting in. I've seen so many movies where someone has lost their memory and they almost always get it all back in a series of awesomely filmed, dramatic flashbacks and I am excited all of a sudden as I can't wait for my flashbacks to begin. I look at the seagull in front of me and can almost imagine him speaking to me and helping guide me through the events, but he just gives me the strong impression that he either doesn't speak English or just can't be bothered to get involved with a strange human at this point in his life as he has way too many of his own issues to deal with including finding a meal for his high-maintenance wife that does not involve worms or insects as she has had enough of those to last a lifetime and trying to think up the best way to advertise his new accounting firm that he started with his two best friends considering that most of his potential clients were not socially media-savvy. "I don't need the bird's help!" I said to myself aloud and quite loudly as well, startling my feathered companion so much that he squawked and flew off which was exactly how I thought our friendship would end when I first laid eyes on him five minutes ago except that I wasn't quite sure which of us would be doing the squawking and fleeing as I am well aware of my avian and scaredy-cat tendencies. As I felt a twinge of guilt at lashing out at my only friend on this foreign beach, it hit me that using the term friend is probably a bit too early in the developing relationship and that we were only mere acquaintances and that is how it often is with birds for at least the first few social activities.
All of a sudden it hit me - I remember that I awoke shortly after midnight and got dressed and that, at some point, I was in the forest.
I love the forest. The trees that rise so high almost showing off, the bushes that are either more satisfied with a "rounder" appearance than the trees or are doing a fairly good job of not appearing to care, the stumps which act both as a reminder to all trees of what could happen to them if they get a little too full of themselves and as a more appropriately-sized companion for the bushes, and the wildlife which is either cute, wanting to detach my nose from my face, or falling somewhere between those two extremes. I often don't know why I am in the forest, but I have tried to stop focussing on the question "why" so often as the answers are long and convoluted and eating up much valuable eating time. No, I choose to allow my body, mind and feet to select the activities and the site for those activities and if they want me to be in the forest, then in the forest I will be even if there is a game on that evening or it looks like rain.
That reminds me of that amazing 5-hour excursion to the forest I took last summer with my friends Dave and Steve as well as my imaginary friend Beth who seems to accompany me to lots of places especially when her other imaginary friends are busy. It is actually quite confusing that my imaginary friend has other imaginary friends and then me, who is quite real. Can you imagine how I feel as the only real person at the sushi restaurant, that is also imaginary? I've tried broaching the topic with Beth, but she pretends that she can't hear me, which is a typical ploy by imaginary beings - the whole "I can't hear you, because I don't actually have functional ears" thing - it is boringly predictable after a while - it does make sense on some level, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. How I love Beth and when the laws are more permissive, I may ask for her hand in marriage as long as she doesn't claim that her hands are too imaginary thus making the offer moot.
So we were in the forest, walking the trails, trying to be one with nature and getting quite close. The best estimation Steve came up with was somewhere between 1.25 and 1.5. And then the rains came and we were forced to either retreat quickly to our modern homes with central heating and slightly-redundant wall-to-wall carpeting or to tough it out proving to ours moms that we could survive in the woods. For some odd reason all three of our moms really want to toughen us up and they even got together and spent three successive Thursday evenings eating praline, drinking peppermint tea out of mugs that were intended for coffee and devising a set of tasks for their sons to make us real men as they were admittedly fairly stuck on having real men as sons for reasons that they were debating going to see someone about. Beth does not have a mom, because I haven't gotten around to mentally creating that for her yet and believe you me, she is getting quite impatient as she really wants to call her mom, once she has one, to ask for her apple pie crust recipe so she can stop using store-bought crusts that are lackluster at best. I keep telling her that my schedule is quite full and it takes more effort and mental-wherewithal to create a fictitious mom than it seems, but in reality I just can't be bothered.
Spending a day in the forest with no supplies aside from allowing Dave to wear glasses was step one in our mother's plans. It was all fine and good until the torrential downpour began, soaking us from head to toe in minutes. Initially it was sort of like a cool shower and was slightly refreshing. I compared it to drinking a glass of cool water after a hard workout, except that I hadn't just worked out and instead of drinking the cool water and having it refresh me, the water was being continuously dumped on me with force instead. After the initial period of joy had worn off, we started to panic - Dave was trying to get directions from a bunch of not-so-helpful squirrels; Steve, for some reason, began to tear off his shirt and replace it with a haphazardly bunched together pile of leaves and me, I made noises with my lips that usually made babies giggle, only there were no babies present so they went largely unappreciated. We spent the rest of the day huddled together, under a small canopy of large, low-hanging branches, sharing stories of love and computer software nightmares and the more powerful love that often came out of those computer software nightmares until the nightmares got worse and no amount of love could cheer us up. We shared those stories all the time, being in the forest in the rain was quite secondary. Finally, the rains cleared and we strode out of the forest, the four of us, three back to our moms and one of us, Beth, decided to go catch a movie.
I closed my eyes and tried imagining the previous evening to determine how I got to the beach. I knew I'd remember as long as I really focused and since I figured there had to be a reason I was on the beach and that that reason may, in fact, be time-sensitive, I got right to it. I remembered that I woke up in bed with a start, preemptively ending an amazing dream where I was some sort of representative speaker for the humans and I was attempting to meet with a selection of specifically-chosen marine life who were very hard to schedule meetings with as they have very busy schedules what with the holidays just around the corner. I urgently wanted to meet with them to investigate the options for a shared currency and a human-marine life exchange program where a bunch of underprivileged youths and at-risk marine life can trade places for a three-month period in order to gain more employability and transferable skills and just when I was about to storm into the head shark's office to demand some face time, I woke up.
I don't recall hurriedly getting dressed, but based on my outfit, I not only didn't avoid any clashes with colours and patterns but I seemed to go out of my way to clash as much as possible with the only limitations being my limited wardrobe and the current abilities of my eyes. I noticed my quite regular-looking socks and surmised that my socks with pompoms, that I can only guess were left at my place as some sort of subliminal message by the cleaning lady who cleans the last Wednesday of each month, were at the dry-cleaners. I can only guess that I dressed in a hurry, with the lights off, and with my eyes closed, which was becoming more and more commonplace with men of my age and socio-economic status, and then I left the house in a rush after locking the door, quickly dusting the window sills and arranging the dried decorative flowers just so and then making a beeline for the forest. I had wished in this attempt of mine to piece together the events that I didn't choose to take an unnecessarily meandering beeline for the forest as I just wanted to get there already and this bee of mine was taking his sweet time and stopping off at every single flower along the way almost as if he was either searching for his long lost friend whom he had heard rumours was hanging out at local pollen salons or he doing some really smart comparison shopping looking for the best price for antique wall hangings.
As I'm standing there on the beach remembering the details of the early morning, I open my eyes as an image hits me not unlike a ton of bricks, but not at all like that as well. I distinctly remember brushing my teeth before I left the house and remarking "my teeth are so white, so white my teeth are, how I love you my white teeth" right before commenting "but you'd think that being so perfect and white that you would either have earned me a higher social standing, some sort of government grant for an enamel-inspired set of monolithic sculptures or at a minimum a date with that cute dental hygienist who just moved in next door and is always wearing her hair up showing off that slender and deeply tanned neckline of hers that shows off both her beauty and her lack of respect for the power of the sun even in the early spring, but no, you are just so selfishly interested in maintaining your own gleaming whiteness leaving the rest of us in your wake and making us so jealous that I can't even make eye contact with you anymore not like before ,and no, I don't need you to remind me that you don't have eyes- I know that now!" before falling in love with their whiteness all over again. If I didn't know better I would think that I had never been in the forest and that instead it was my excuse that I was giving myself to avoid revealing the depths of a transgression or something, but there was no mistaking the scent of pine and I had given up using pine fresheners as a cheap replacement for deodorant the previous week.
So, I was in the forest and aside from the fact that it was pitch dark and I couldn't see where I was going or what sort of object I was conversing with - it was a fence - I had a great time. I have had so many great times in the dark, especially that one time when my friends invited me to a blindfolded dinner party they were having in their basement last winter. I came over, was blindfolded and then I thought I heard snickering, the sound of a number of shoes on the steps leading upstairs and the door closing followed by sounds that were eerily similar to celebratory high-fives only to have them cut off by a van starting and driving off. I sat there in the basement, awaiting the dinner, for hours, with the anticipation building to a point where I just couldn't take it any longer and I decided to take a nap only to realize that they had tied me to the chair, as a prank, or maybe so I wouldn't get any ideas and either remove the blindfold or sneak a peak at the surprise dinner that I still couldn't wait to try. What an elaborately planned evening of fun, I remember thinking before I accidentally nodded off only to be woken the next day by one of my friends who was shocked that I hadn't "gone home already" and "got the hint" and "my share of the dinner came to $24.75 but that they would be okay with $24".
I loved the smell of the forest and once my eyes got used to the light, I quite enjoyed being with the trees because, as my mom always said, "trees never judge except for cedars. Stay away from cedars with your secrets, they are like sieves." My mom always had an issue involving cedars almost definitely dating back to when her father left her mother with a cedar and continuing when a cedar was responsible for her failing math back in grade 9. I stood at the start of a trail. As a child I had always been consumed with the names of trails and what they could mean and I sometimes felt that the names were part of a large government conspiracy of which I wanted to be the intrepid young whippersnapper who unearthed the plot by the government. I had narrowed the potential details of the plot down to three possibilities: the systematic elimination of all lower case letters, the banning of all dental floss or the staging of a sham election where the people would fall in love with this amazing candidate only to have it revealed at the inauguration that we were all on the moon the entire time and while we were all engrossed in the amazing lead-up to the election with the well-placed and timed ads and well-constructed campaigns, we were all air-lifted to the moon as part of a government plan to rezone the land our houses are on just for laughs and giggles. It was a fairly bizarre plot for a 12-year old boy to come up with and that made me quite proud, as I was that 12-year old boy - if it had been someone else's idea, I would have been fairly jealous and concerned especially because it was in my head and how would the other 12 year old boy with ideas eerily similar to my own, get his ideas in my head.
The final trail that caught my eye was one called Wildberry Trail which got me quite excited as I am a sucker for wildberries which is interesting only in that I am also a sucker for almost everything else that is wild: feral pigs, wild hair, out-of-control neighbours who yell and scream and need police attention every other Friday evening, wantonly scooped Vanilla-flavoured Greek yogurt, and of course, wild applications of lipstick that cause others to feign concern. But wildberries were my favourite! I especially loved that they taste good and also that they don't criticize me and jump on my every mistake and make me sit in the corner while they pop all of my balloons that were also doubling as my friends. I had always been under the belief that we didn't pop our friends or balloons that were doubling as our friends because I had once mistook my friends shrieking and recoiling from the long, pointy needle I was lurking suspiciously around with as a desire to be popped with a needle that I carried around for those specific situations that almost never came up and I was quite excited.
I would have walked down this trail but it was pitch black and at least a few hours until sunrise and I would have no idea whether I was staying on the path or veering towards something poisonous or something sharp or even something resembling my roommate-lawyer. I have randomly bumped into him in the dark on many occasions and have had the chance, the fortune to touch him, to caress the nape of his neck, to briefly lick some part of his leg in a dark, dark room and wonder why I hadn't studied to be a lawyer. I often walk around in the dark simulating licking an ice cream for reasons that I will carry to my grave. I have also requested that my grave be within 250 steps of an upscale ice cream parlour and that the burial occur on a hot day so that everyone walks to the ice cream parlour licking as they go and that the proceeds of the sales go towards improving the lives of chickens as I have always wanted to select an animal at random and to donate money that is not mine towards improving their lives. It is both the most and the least that I can do as I will be buried at the time.
I remember distinctly leaving the woods quite unceremoniously, and infinitely disappointed, as I was expecting at least a small ceremony, and walking straight towards the beach. The sun was now slowly starting to light up the sky and for some reason I needed to be on the beach when the sun came up. And here I was, sitting on a log on the beach. "Always sitting," I think to myself mostly to make conversation and to enjoy a brief respite from the silence that almost engulfs me. Not the most comfortable spot ever, but with all the expected tranquility and postcard-like scenery I expected. "Tranquility is very under-rated" I murmur knowingly, although I'm not sure if it has been rated much at all - thankfully no one is around to refute me...this time. Later on I plan to make a list and post it online, rating it low so that this all makes sense in retrospect. If I could somehow make a living doing it, I would alternate days between murmuring knowingly for show and rating things online also for show. I smile at this thought - always talking about doing things for show, but never having the guts to follow through.
I would love to sit in the most comfortable spot ever, at least for a moment - seems like I owe myself that. But I wonder if that spot would be so comfortable and famous for being so comfortable that it would eventually be either worn out making it less comfortable or inspire others to create new spots in its likeness that would also be comfortable, maybe not quite as comfortable but so close that it would be really really hard to judge and would lead to much debate and discussion at local coffee shops over mugs of scalding coffee. I once bought a series of mugs, drew a wide variety of comical faces on them, filled them with scalding liquid and provided all of the voice work for a really moving version of the hit Broadway show Hair only this time performed by inanimate coffee cups sitting motionless on my kitchen table. I believed that the show was "out-of-this-world funny" and "a show that should not be missed as long as you didn't mind the occasional splash of scalding liquid and if you did, just show up near the end of the first act as the liquid would have cooled down considerably by then" and "quite possibly the best coffee-cup-filled-with-liquid rendition of the hit Broadway show Hair that has been produced in someone's kitchen in this area of town in the past year". I had briefly considered taking the show on the road until somehow the mugs all got smashed to bits when they suggested holding out for more money unless either their dressing rooms were always stocked with chilled European spring water, they received a higher percentage of the gate and their names be printed on all posters and promotional materials in a minimum of 32 point font and I countered by smashing them with a hammer that I always kept on hand for inevitable moments just like this. I did regret what I did the next morning when I had nowhere to pour all of my scalding hot liquid and I felt a lot of remorse and even briefly thought about travelling down to the store in the mall where I had purchased those mugs and asking the sales lady to smash me, but I remembered that the last time I did that she threatened to call my mom. What did she think, that I was 13? I was 14.
It is early on a summer morning well before the heat of the day, and I am mostly alone aside from a few dog-walkers and joggers. These particular dog-walkers seem really boisterous and enthusiastic almost like this is their calling in life - to walk dogs. I am pleased for them and for their dogs as it seems to be win-win, but I remind myself that things are rarely as they seem and behind closed doors the walkers may be sadistic taskmasters only serving average dog food when they are fully aware that the dogs prefer deluxe and insisting that they clean their rooms before getting a treat when everyone is quite aware that their ability to keep their rooms clean is severely hampered by not having hands. Or the dogs may be just putting on a show while in public and at home they may be loud-barking, couch-tearing, and overly-selfish-to-the-point-where-at-least-some-of-the-humans-are-both-jealous-and-rendered-to-tears. Regardless, I don't wish to own a dog - I'm scared of them what with their loud barking, their sharp teeth and the unshakable feeling that I would be a mere stepping stone owner-wise for them and that they would always be on the lookout for an upgrade to someone taller.
Compared to the dog-walkers, the joggers never seem that happy. Aside from the exercise, which is obviously good for you, they just seem to be in a lot of discomfort. Each step they take is met with a grimace or look of boredom almost as if others should take pity on them. I would be first in line to take pity on them, but I feel like my figurative pity jar is all empty as I just spent a lot of time talking to people waiting in line at the passport office. What a sad, sorry bunch of people all suspiciously wanting passports almost as if receiving a passport would pick them up and make them instantly less pitiable. All of a sudden it hits me - while I am not in the mood to show pity for the joggers, I could plan to jog tomorrow with a look of extreme pleasure and happiness on my face and a vibrancy in my body almost as if I had been recently plugged in and charged. Yes, people may wonder what is wrong with that sort of insane looking jogger who was either really pleased before he started running and is having the pleasure slowly drawn out of him by the running or the jogging is actually giving him pleasure, which would be even more confusing to all.
Maybe the jogging is some sort of cord that is plugging me in and sending me electricity not completely like that time when I actually tried to receive electricity through a cord which was both totally dangerous and ultimately quite fruitless as the power company refused to send me any electricity in the mail when it didn't work at home after I wrapped a cord around my torso, plugged it in and waited to either feel brighter, hot or just charged up. They claimed, when I asked for them to mail it to me, that I "had obvious gaps in my understanding of how electricity really works" and "could I please refraining from calling, emailing or standing outside their windows and yelling while flipping through a series of placards adorned with well-illustrated and quite graphic messages" and "they could offer me a yearly calender" which I gladly accepted and came away from the whole experience feeling like I had "won". I wave to one jogger in particular, initially chosen totally randomly, but with the intent to make it look quite the opposite. I wanted him to think that I had chosen him, of all the joggers on the beach that morning, to be the one that I went out of my way to cheer for, to send a message of courage and of empowerment, to make him question what my motives really were before realizing that I was an example of all that was right with humanity and that we had a deeper connection than either of us realized at the moment and that he should also watch where he is going so he doesn't bump into anything which I am fortunately able to relay quite quickly with a series of rapid hand motions thus saving the day.
I move to sit on the sand and enjoy the coolness of it on my bare feet. I had just removed my shoes and socks in an attempt to feel the sand directly on my feet, and it had worked splendidly. I ran my fingers through the sand the same way I used to run my fingers through my girlfriend's hair - smoothly at first, until I got to the ends which were snarled with tangles and knots. It was quite hard to mimic the entanglement my fingers felt in that situation with the sand that was much easier to move through. I'm glad my old girlfriend wasn't here on the beach with me witnessing my joy at the ease of finger movement in comparison as it surely would have led to some discomfort on her part followed by her launching into a long lecture on my not being sensitive enough to her feelings, especially those that were related to her easily-tangled hair, which she usually presented in her unique, slam-poetry-esque sort of fashion that was riveting, hurtful and so effective that she met her future husband, who was not only far more sensitive than I was as he lost both of his parents to tangled hair as a youth, but, ironically, he was also a sand erosion specialist who was raised never to run his fingers through anything sand-like. I learned from the experience to never date anyone again who was so adept at slam poetry that they may meet someone more suitable for them as a result of being so adept at slam poetry. It was a small lesson and quite a random one that almost definitely would never come up again, but it was a lesson and I learned it.
As I played with the sand I remembered that on multiple occasions in my past I have thought about being a grain of sand and what my life would be like. First off, I'd have to get used to being really small. Now, I am not the tallest person in the first place, but going from being slightly-less-than-average to ridiculously tiny would at least need a period of adjustment. I also figured that it would be hard to get used to the feeling that I didn't amount to anything and that no one would miss me if I was gone, not because I wouldn't be one special grain of sand, but because there would be millions and millions of other grains that would be so much like me physically, and that they could probably learn my role and whatever differences there were in personality or abilities could be gotten used to by the other grains. But, I imagined my day as a little piece of sand - waking up on the beach with millions of my friends and family all nestled together, feeling a bit dry and badly in needed of some ointment, but even if one of us magically procured some of it, we have no hands or feet and it would be more of a tease, a point of frustration to have it there, so close and us unable to apply it. I'd look around and notice that some of my friends were gone - probably washed out to sea and, although I'd miss them, with the size of my brain being severely reduced in size and scope, I probably wouldn't miss them for long and even if I did I probably wouldn't totally comprehend where they had gone and what this sea thing really was as I would lack the perspective to see past my little spot on the beach.
I used to imagine that I would be the one grain of sand who understood the world and had been given special powers and knowledge for a reason - I was the grain that would free us all and lead us towards a brave new existence. All other grains would see me as the chosen grain, the grain who would helps us all out of a long period of darkness and feeling stuck on a beach or in a playground or occasionally in an unfinished backyard because the topsoil hadn't been delivered yet and they were closed for the weekend, the grain who could actually talk, which was no small accomplishment in and of itself and shouldn't get downplayed - I'm just mentioning that as I'm sure some wouldn't feel that it was worth mentioning - but I ask, can any other grains talk? Exactly. Anyways, the dream usually ended with me high on a hill filling the other grains with motivation to overthrown the human savages and turn the beaches into prisons while also turning our focus towards new methods of storing data, preserving food and refereeing tennis matches. We had some random goals, but we didn't mind. We believed we could accomplish anything, so they may as well be random things. The dream usually left me feeling alone and quite confused and with a desire to rent a large blowing tool from the local hardware store and go to the beach and just blow the sand around for a while before dropping to my knees weeping and trying to hold them all.
There is a light breeze in the air that feels more of fall or spring, and I look up, shivering, sort of mentally begging the sun's heat to kick in any time now. Nothing happens. I have had a long-standing, mostly imagined, adversarial relationship with the weather. Now that I think of it I also have a long-standing, mostly imagined, adversarial relationship with my dentist and I wonder if there is any connection between my dentist and the lack of heat right now. Probably not, but I make a mental note to put aside some time for some detailed research on the topic. I chose September.
A set of ducks swim by in a nearly perfect V shape, but not quite. One duck must either be a little sick or in need of reassigning to a different, slower group, almost like a development team until he gets his stuff together. I mean if you are aiming to create a V, then anything less is fairly disappointing - for the other ducks I mean - it's not like I really care. I come from a long line of people who actually prefer misshaped Vs and we often spent at least part of our winter holiday season in the shape of something sort of resembling a V to the amusement of all present.
Male ducks are so stunningly beautiful. I'm sure female ducks have a hard time thinking about anything else with these ultra-distracting, super-hot male ducks just swimming around them. Not sure what else they have to think about aside from eating and possibly what route to take through the reeds today. I wonder if I should be concerned with how much I am drawn to the male ducks I see. I settled on "probably" and then decide to forget about it just like I have done with some of my other strange attractions including, but not limited to, maple syrup containers mostly for their ability to hold and contain syrup that just wants to drip; sample highlighters, but not actual for sale highlighters, just the ones that everyone can pick up, hold in their warm hands and try out for a brief moment before having to leave; loose change and, of course, sideways glances, partially blocked by the throngs of people at the function, across a dim smoky room that makes me cough and recoil due to the overpowering aroma of the smoke and, as I turn to dash out of the room I look back, sideways of course, and catch her eye and melt to the ground, inside my mind of course. Those female ducks seem like pretty cool customers and I envy them as much as a human male, on the beach first thing in the morning without his shoes and socks on can envy a bird of any sorts, which I realize is quite a lot. I say goodbye to the ducks and wonder if I will ever see these particular ducks again. I feel sad that I probably won't unless I happen to go to the right restaurant on the correct night someday.
I still have this nagging feeling that I wish I knew why I was so compelled to come to the beach today and then....I see her and I remember everything. Today was the day and even if I had wanted to somehow restrain myself, which I didn't, a huge smile broke out on my face. I saw her from a distance as she walked towards me and my first thought was "wow" and my second thought hadn't even formed yet when I started trying to list and catalog and even rank my thoughts in order from best to worst as they were forming which is really really hard to do, so I stopped. "Enjoy the moment" the piece of paper in my pocket said. I had finally settled on that message to myself yesterday morning when I decided that I may feel overwhelmed and need a message to settle myself down and help focus me and I decided that who better to send this message but my sister Lola but she just wouldn't return my calls for much of the afternoon and when she finally did she decided against it as she didn't want to get involved in a conversation that was at least 85% with myself. Finally, I had decided that I would send the message to myself and had originally thought of opening with a joke to lighten the mood or a complex math question to help awaken the brain or a combination of the two and had settled on something so cliched that it made me wish I had chosen a joke or a math question.
And then she was in front of me, holding her sandals over her shoulder and dressed in a very cute summer outfit that looked infinitely better on her and I was glad that I had decided not to buy it for myself and wear it for out meeting as she may have taken it the wrong way. I looked at her and as I was about to speak she said "I thought you wouldn't come."
I love the forest. The trees that rise so high almost showing off, the bushes that are either more satisfied with a "rounder" appearance than the trees or are doing a fairly good job of not appearing to care, the stumps which act both as a reminder to all trees of what could happen to them if they get a little too full of themselves and as a more appropriately-sized companion for the bushes, and the wildlife which is either cute, wanting to detach my nose from my face, or falling somewhere between those two extremes. I often don't know why I am in the forest, but I have tried to stop focussing on the question "why" so often as the answers are long and convoluted and eating up much valuable eating time. No, I choose to allow my body, mind and feet to select the activities and the site for those activities and if they want me to be in the forest, then in the forest I will be even if there is a game on that evening or it looks like rain.
That reminds me of that amazing 5-hour excursion to the forest I took last summer with my friends Dave and Steve as well as my imaginary friend Beth who seems to accompany me to lots of places especially when her other imaginary friends are busy. It is actually quite confusing that my imaginary friend has other imaginary friends and then me, who is quite real. Can you imagine how I feel as the only real person at the sushi restaurant, that is also imaginary? I've tried broaching the topic with Beth, but she pretends that she can't hear me, which is a typical ploy by imaginary beings - the whole "I can't hear you, because I don't actually have functional ears" thing - it is boringly predictable after a while - it does make sense on some level, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. How I love Beth and when the laws are more permissive, I may ask for her hand in marriage as long as she doesn't claim that her hands are too imaginary thus making the offer moot.
So we were in the forest, walking the trails, trying to be one with nature and getting quite close. The best estimation Steve came up with was somewhere between 1.25 and 1.5. And then the rains came and we were forced to either retreat quickly to our modern homes with central heating and slightly-redundant wall-to-wall carpeting or to tough it out proving to ours moms that we could survive in the woods. For some odd reason all three of our moms really want to toughen us up and they even got together and spent three successive Thursday evenings eating praline, drinking peppermint tea out of mugs that were intended for coffee and devising a set of tasks for their sons to make us real men as they were admittedly fairly stuck on having real men as sons for reasons that they were debating going to see someone about. Beth does not have a mom, because I haven't gotten around to mentally creating that for her yet and believe you me, she is getting quite impatient as she really wants to call her mom, once she has one, to ask for her apple pie crust recipe so she can stop using store-bought crusts that are lackluster at best. I keep telling her that my schedule is quite full and it takes more effort and mental-wherewithal to create a fictitious mom than it seems, but in reality I just can't be bothered.
Spending a day in the forest with no supplies aside from allowing Dave to wear glasses was step one in our mother's plans. It was all fine and good until the torrential downpour began, soaking us from head to toe in minutes. Initially it was sort of like a cool shower and was slightly refreshing. I compared it to drinking a glass of cool water after a hard workout, except that I hadn't just worked out and instead of drinking the cool water and having it refresh me, the water was being continuously dumped on me with force instead. After the initial period of joy had worn off, we started to panic - Dave was trying to get directions from a bunch of not-so-helpful squirrels; Steve, for some reason, began to tear off his shirt and replace it with a haphazardly bunched together pile of leaves and me, I made noises with my lips that usually made babies giggle, only there were no babies present so they went largely unappreciated. We spent the rest of the day huddled together, under a small canopy of large, low-hanging branches, sharing stories of love and computer software nightmares and the more powerful love that often came out of those computer software nightmares until the nightmares got worse and no amount of love could cheer us up. We shared those stories all the time, being in the forest in the rain was quite secondary. Finally, the rains cleared and we strode out of the forest, the four of us, three back to our moms and one of us, Beth, decided to go catch a movie.
I closed my eyes and tried imagining the previous evening to determine how I got to the beach. I knew I'd remember as long as I really focused and since I figured there had to be a reason I was on the beach and that that reason may, in fact, be time-sensitive, I got right to it. I remembered that I woke up in bed with a start, preemptively ending an amazing dream where I was some sort of representative speaker for the humans and I was attempting to meet with a selection of specifically-chosen marine life who were very hard to schedule meetings with as they have very busy schedules what with the holidays just around the corner. I urgently wanted to meet with them to investigate the options for a shared currency and a human-marine life exchange program where a bunch of underprivileged youths and at-risk marine life can trade places for a three-month period in order to gain more employability and transferable skills and just when I was about to storm into the head shark's office to demand some face time, I woke up.
I don't recall hurriedly getting dressed, but based on my outfit, I not only didn't avoid any clashes with colours and patterns but I seemed to go out of my way to clash as much as possible with the only limitations being my limited wardrobe and the current abilities of my eyes. I noticed my quite regular-looking socks and surmised that my socks with pompoms, that I can only guess were left at my place as some sort of subliminal message by the cleaning lady who cleans the last Wednesday of each month, were at the dry-cleaners. I can only guess that I dressed in a hurry, with the lights off, and with my eyes closed, which was becoming more and more commonplace with men of my age and socio-economic status, and then I left the house in a rush after locking the door, quickly dusting the window sills and arranging the dried decorative flowers just so and then making a beeline for the forest. I had wished in this attempt of mine to piece together the events that I didn't choose to take an unnecessarily meandering beeline for the forest as I just wanted to get there already and this bee of mine was taking his sweet time and stopping off at every single flower along the way almost as if he was either searching for his long lost friend whom he had heard rumours was hanging out at local pollen salons or he doing some really smart comparison shopping looking for the best price for antique wall hangings.
As I'm standing there on the beach remembering the details of the early morning, I open my eyes as an image hits me not unlike a ton of bricks, but not at all like that as well. I distinctly remember brushing my teeth before I left the house and remarking "my teeth are so white, so white my teeth are, how I love you my white teeth" right before commenting "but you'd think that being so perfect and white that you would either have earned me a higher social standing, some sort of government grant for an enamel-inspired set of monolithic sculptures or at a minimum a date with that cute dental hygienist who just moved in next door and is always wearing her hair up showing off that slender and deeply tanned neckline of hers that shows off both her beauty and her lack of respect for the power of the sun even in the early spring, but no, you are just so selfishly interested in maintaining your own gleaming whiteness leaving the rest of us in your wake and making us so jealous that I can't even make eye contact with you anymore not like before ,and no, I don't need you to remind me that you don't have eyes- I know that now!" before falling in love with their whiteness all over again. If I didn't know better I would think that I had never been in the forest and that instead it was my excuse that I was giving myself to avoid revealing the depths of a transgression or something, but there was no mistaking the scent of pine and I had given up using pine fresheners as a cheap replacement for deodorant the previous week.
So, I was in the forest and aside from the fact that it was pitch dark and I couldn't see where I was going or what sort of object I was conversing with - it was a fence - I had a great time. I have had so many great times in the dark, especially that one time when my friends invited me to a blindfolded dinner party they were having in their basement last winter. I came over, was blindfolded and then I thought I heard snickering, the sound of a number of shoes on the steps leading upstairs and the door closing followed by sounds that were eerily similar to celebratory high-fives only to have them cut off by a van starting and driving off. I sat there in the basement, awaiting the dinner, for hours, with the anticipation building to a point where I just couldn't take it any longer and I decided to take a nap only to realize that they had tied me to the chair, as a prank, or maybe so I wouldn't get any ideas and either remove the blindfold or sneak a peak at the surprise dinner that I still couldn't wait to try. What an elaborately planned evening of fun, I remember thinking before I accidentally nodded off only to be woken the next day by one of my friends who was shocked that I hadn't "gone home already" and "got the hint" and "my share of the dinner came to $24.75 but that they would be okay with $24".
I loved the smell of the forest and once my eyes got used to the light, I quite enjoyed being with the trees because, as my mom always said, "trees never judge except for cedars. Stay away from cedars with your secrets, they are like sieves." My mom always had an issue involving cedars almost definitely dating back to when her father left her mother with a cedar and continuing when a cedar was responsible for her failing math back in grade 9. I stood at the start of a trail. As a child I had always been consumed with the names of trails and what they could mean and I sometimes felt that the names were part of a large government conspiracy of which I wanted to be the intrepid young whippersnapper who unearthed the plot by the government. I had narrowed the potential details of the plot down to three possibilities: the systematic elimination of all lower case letters, the banning of all dental floss or the staging of a sham election where the people would fall in love with this amazing candidate only to have it revealed at the inauguration that we were all on the moon the entire time and while we were all engrossed in the amazing lead-up to the election with the well-placed and timed ads and well-constructed campaigns, we were all air-lifted to the moon as part of a government plan to rezone the land our houses are on just for laughs and giggles. It was a fairly bizarre plot for a 12-year old boy to come up with and that made me quite proud, as I was that 12-year old boy - if it had been someone else's idea, I would have been fairly jealous and concerned especially because it was in my head and how would the other 12 year old boy with ideas eerily similar to my own, get his ideas in my head.
I stood there, in the moonlight and looked at the trail map and thought about the names of the trails and what they could possibly indicate or mean.
There was one called Inspiration Trail and I imagined the first people walking on it and being so inspired by the surroundings and leaving the trail to not only return to their loved ones oozing with inspiration and going on to lead infinitely more productive and happy lives, but also using the experience of being on the trail as their main motivation for everything else in their lives. I just hope that they were that inspired, because if they weren't then I have a huge problem with the naming of the trail unless they were meaning it to be somewhat sarcastic and the person who fielded the new name of the trail on the phone didn't quite hear or understand the quotation marks around the word inspiration that would have made the sarcasm more obvious to the reader. Maybe it is extremely un-inspirational and those that go on it literally feel inspiration being sucked out of them, so much so, that many people don't even finish the trail and set up camp and just stay and over time a nice little community of similar-minded, not-so-easily-inspired-by-fairly-commonplace-trails people would work together growing crops, raising farm animals and living off the pretty regular land. I briefly consider how my life would potentially change if I went down that "road" and I decide against it as either way I have plans for the weekend that would almost definitely have to be changed if I came back overly inspired or not at all. My guidance counsellor once warned me that I was easily susceptible to groups of very warm people who lived off the land after only setting off to walk on a trail and be inspired. It seemed like a very random thing for me and my parents to be worried about and I generally forgot about it until this moment. I'd have to remember to mail her a card with a cute kitten on it as she always had a thing for cute kittens - on her sweaters, on photographs on her walls and even in the hairstyle she used for much of the time I was in school.
Next to that trail was a hike to Dog Lake. Most likely a popular destination for dog-owners when accompanied by their dogs or by people without dogs who own leashes as a first step in a 12-step process towards owning a dog and they just want to try out the experience of owning a dog by frequenting places that dog-owners and dogs may go. The next step is buying a bag of dog food and pouring it into a dog dish and seeing how that makes you feel on a spiritual level - it is said that if you can't make yourself buy and dish out the food then you most likely will not be able to care for an actual dog unless you can somehow train it to shop and serve itself its own food or train it to at least feed you so things will seem equal in the area of food distribution. It is also possible that the lake is at least partially dog-shaped based on the appearance of dogs in this specific area at the time the first explorers came upon this lake. The explorers may have been paying homage to the great dogs of the day in the hope that the dog gods would look kindly upon them and not have them spayed or neutered or to at least use some anesthetic if it was absolutely necessary. I can only imagine a group of proud dogs convening on this lake for council sessions that usually were accompanied by a wonderful spread, exotic dog dancers and a fortune teller as dogs in that day and age went bonkers for having their fortunes told. Some say that the ancestors of current dogs still haunt the lake not that they are interested in creeping people out, but mostly because they were told to sit and no one ever told them to stop which would drive anyone crazy.
Or I could walk down the Endless Loop. In many ways, I would describe my teenage years as walking down an endless loop and that was partially due to my feeling stuck in a rut and also the endless loop of staircases my parents installed in our house after accidentally ingesting a strong batch of horse tranquilizer after seeing a particularly riveting documentary on M.S, Escher. It took me hours to figure out how to get from my room to the kitchen and I swear to this day that there was no back door any longer as the steps that used to lead to the back door now went a totally new and quite exciting direction, as long I wasn't in a rush to go anywhere that day. I also ran around and around and around a 400 metre track for a girlfriend trying to get back in her good books after I unknowingly insulted her - how was I supposed to know that her uncle left his wife, her favourite aunt, when he fell in love with a librarian who was also due to inherit a massive fortune because her father was the richest glue manufacturer in the local area. I mean who could predict that exact set of events?
My girlfriend had me run and run because she found it mesmerizing and also because she staunchly didn't believe in dog houses. Seriously - she did not believe in a dog house as a physical or mental construct. When I asked her where did she think dogs lived, she said that she preferred to think of dogs as beautiful and mystical vagabonds who could call any place that they chose to lay as their home. It was just one example of what I both loved and found perplexing about her with the perplexing side eventually winning out when she decided to spend the month of July chasing butterflies with cheap chopsticks. I just couldn't convince myself to walk down the Endless Loop because it seemed like a fairly large time commitment and I had promised myself not to make any large time commitments no matter how tempting because I wanted to walk down a slightly-less-than-endlessly-long path that would take slightly-less than an endless amount of time, but also had the same amount of endless pleasure attached to it. I was quite high maintenance when it came to choosing where to walk in general and that led to my taking a few steps in one direction followed by a turn of a seemingly-random degree and then a few steps in a different direction and so on and so on. Some professors from the local university once graphed my walking on a time/distance graph and the results helped them figure out the secret of the mating patterns of koalas. Somehow I didn't benefit financially at all from that study, although I did get a free pass to the koala exhibit at the zoo. However, I was barred from entrance during mating season as they hypothesized that my walking might lead to several miscarriages.
There was one called Inspiration Trail and I imagined the first people walking on it and being so inspired by the surroundings and leaving the trail to not only return to their loved ones oozing with inspiration and going on to lead infinitely more productive and happy lives, but also using the experience of being on the trail as their main motivation for everything else in their lives. I just hope that they were that inspired, because if they weren't then I have a huge problem with the naming of the trail unless they were meaning it to be somewhat sarcastic and the person who fielded the new name of the trail on the phone didn't quite hear or understand the quotation marks around the word inspiration that would have made the sarcasm more obvious to the reader. Maybe it is extremely un-inspirational and those that go on it literally feel inspiration being sucked out of them, so much so, that many people don't even finish the trail and set up camp and just stay and over time a nice little community of similar-minded, not-so-easily-inspired-by-fairly-commonplace-trails people would work together growing crops, raising farm animals and living off the pretty regular land. I briefly consider how my life would potentially change if I went down that "road" and I decide against it as either way I have plans for the weekend that would almost definitely have to be changed if I came back overly inspired or not at all. My guidance counsellor once warned me that I was easily susceptible to groups of very warm people who lived off the land after only setting off to walk on a trail and be inspired. It seemed like a very random thing for me and my parents to be worried about and I generally forgot about it until this moment. I'd have to remember to mail her a card with a cute kitten on it as she always had a thing for cute kittens - on her sweaters, on photographs on her walls and even in the hairstyle she used for much of the time I was in school.
Next to that trail was a hike to Dog Lake. Most likely a popular destination for dog-owners when accompanied by their dogs or by people without dogs who own leashes as a first step in a 12-step process towards owning a dog and they just want to try out the experience of owning a dog by frequenting places that dog-owners and dogs may go. The next step is buying a bag of dog food and pouring it into a dog dish and seeing how that makes you feel on a spiritual level - it is said that if you can't make yourself buy and dish out the food then you most likely will not be able to care for an actual dog unless you can somehow train it to shop and serve itself its own food or train it to at least feed you so things will seem equal in the area of food distribution. It is also possible that the lake is at least partially dog-shaped based on the appearance of dogs in this specific area at the time the first explorers came upon this lake. The explorers may have been paying homage to the great dogs of the day in the hope that the dog gods would look kindly upon them and not have them spayed or neutered or to at least use some anesthetic if it was absolutely necessary. I can only imagine a group of proud dogs convening on this lake for council sessions that usually were accompanied by a wonderful spread, exotic dog dancers and a fortune teller as dogs in that day and age went bonkers for having their fortunes told. Some say that the ancestors of current dogs still haunt the lake not that they are interested in creeping people out, but mostly because they were told to sit and no one ever told them to stop which would drive anyone crazy.
Or I could walk down the Endless Loop. In many ways, I would describe my teenage years as walking down an endless loop and that was partially due to my feeling stuck in a rut and also the endless loop of staircases my parents installed in our house after accidentally ingesting a strong batch of horse tranquilizer after seeing a particularly riveting documentary on M.S, Escher. It took me hours to figure out how to get from my room to the kitchen and I swear to this day that there was no back door any longer as the steps that used to lead to the back door now went a totally new and quite exciting direction, as long I wasn't in a rush to go anywhere that day. I also ran around and around and around a 400 metre track for a girlfriend trying to get back in her good books after I unknowingly insulted her - how was I supposed to know that her uncle left his wife, her favourite aunt, when he fell in love with a librarian who was also due to inherit a massive fortune because her father was the richest glue manufacturer in the local area. I mean who could predict that exact set of events?
My girlfriend had me run and run because she found it mesmerizing and also because she staunchly didn't believe in dog houses. Seriously - she did not believe in a dog house as a physical or mental construct. When I asked her where did she think dogs lived, she said that she preferred to think of dogs as beautiful and mystical vagabonds who could call any place that they chose to lay as their home. It was just one example of what I both loved and found perplexing about her with the perplexing side eventually winning out when she decided to spend the month of July chasing butterflies with cheap chopsticks. I just couldn't convince myself to walk down the Endless Loop because it seemed like a fairly large time commitment and I had promised myself not to make any large time commitments no matter how tempting because I wanted to walk down a slightly-less-than-endlessly-long path that would take slightly-less than an endless amount of time, but also had the same amount of endless pleasure attached to it. I was quite high maintenance when it came to choosing where to walk in general and that led to my taking a few steps in one direction followed by a turn of a seemingly-random degree and then a few steps in a different direction and so on and so on. Some professors from the local university once graphed my walking on a time/distance graph and the results helped them figure out the secret of the mating patterns of koalas. Somehow I didn't benefit financially at all from that study, although I did get a free pass to the koala exhibit at the zoo. However, I was barred from entrance during mating season as they hypothesized that my walking might lead to several miscarriages.
The final trail that caught my eye was one called Wildberry Trail which got me quite excited as I am a sucker for wildberries which is interesting only in that I am also a sucker for almost everything else that is wild: feral pigs, wild hair, out-of-control neighbours who yell and scream and need police attention every other Friday evening, wantonly scooped Vanilla-flavoured Greek yogurt, and of course, wild applications of lipstick that cause others to feign concern. But wildberries were my favourite! I especially loved that they taste good and also that they don't criticize me and jump on my every mistake and make me sit in the corner while they pop all of my balloons that were also doubling as my friends. I had always been under the belief that we didn't pop our friends or balloons that were doubling as our friends because I had once mistook my friends shrieking and recoiling from the long, pointy needle I was lurking suspiciously around with as a desire to be popped with a needle that I carried around for those specific situations that almost never came up and I was quite excited.
I would have walked down this trail but it was pitch black and at least a few hours until sunrise and I would have no idea whether I was staying on the path or veering towards something poisonous or something sharp or even something resembling my roommate-lawyer. I have randomly bumped into him in the dark on many occasions and have had the chance, the fortune to touch him, to caress the nape of his neck, to briefly lick some part of his leg in a dark, dark room and wonder why I hadn't studied to be a lawyer. I often walk around in the dark simulating licking an ice cream for reasons that I will carry to my grave. I have also requested that my grave be within 250 steps of an upscale ice cream parlour and that the burial occur on a hot day so that everyone walks to the ice cream parlour licking as they go and that the proceeds of the sales go towards improving the lives of chickens as I have always wanted to select an animal at random and to donate money that is not mine towards improving their lives. It is both the most and the least that I can do as I will be buried at the time.
I remember distinctly leaving the woods quite unceremoniously, and infinitely disappointed, as I was expecting at least a small ceremony, and walking straight towards the beach. The sun was now slowly starting to light up the sky and for some reason I needed to be on the beach when the sun came up. And here I was, sitting on a log on the beach. "Always sitting," I think to myself mostly to make conversation and to enjoy a brief respite from the silence that almost engulfs me. Not the most comfortable spot ever, but with all the expected tranquility and postcard-like scenery I expected. "Tranquility is very under-rated" I murmur knowingly, although I'm not sure if it has been rated much at all - thankfully no one is around to refute me...this time. Later on I plan to make a list and post it online, rating it low so that this all makes sense in retrospect. If I could somehow make a living doing it, I would alternate days between murmuring knowingly for show and rating things online also for show. I smile at this thought - always talking about doing things for show, but never having the guts to follow through.
I would love to sit in the most comfortable spot ever, at least for a moment - seems like I owe myself that. But I wonder if that spot would be so comfortable and famous for being so comfortable that it would eventually be either worn out making it less comfortable or inspire others to create new spots in its likeness that would also be comfortable, maybe not quite as comfortable but so close that it would be really really hard to judge and would lead to much debate and discussion at local coffee shops over mugs of scalding coffee. I once bought a series of mugs, drew a wide variety of comical faces on them, filled them with scalding liquid and provided all of the voice work for a really moving version of the hit Broadway show Hair only this time performed by inanimate coffee cups sitting motionless on my kitchen table. I believed that the show was "out-of-this-world funny" and "a show that should not be missed as long as you didn't mind the occasional splash of scalding liquid and if you did, just show up near the end of the first act as the liquid would have cooled down considerably by then" and "quite possibly the best coffee-cup-filled-with-liquid rendition of the hit Broadway show Hair that has been produced in someone's kitchen in this area of town in the past year". I had briefly considered taking the show on the road until somehow the mugs all got smashed to bits when they suggested holding out for more money unless either their dressing rooms were always stocked with chilled European spring water, they received a higher percentage of the gate and their names be printed on all posters and promotional materials in a minimum of 32 point font and I countered by smashing them with a hammer that I always kept on hand for inevitable moments just like this. I did regret what I did the next morning when I had nowhere to pour all of my scalding hot liquid and I felt a lot of remorse and even briefly thought about travelling down to the store in the mall where I had purchased those mugs and asking the sales lady to smash me, but I remembered that the last time I did that she threatened to call my mom. What did she think, that I was 13? I was 14.
It is early on a summer morning well before the heat of the day, and I am mostly alone aside from a few dog-walkers and joggers. These particular dog-walkers seem really boisterous and enthusiastic almost like this is their calling in life - to walk dogs. I am pleased for them and for their dogs as it seems to be win-win, but I remind myself that things are rarely as they seem and behind closed doors the walkers may be sadistic taskmasters only serving average dog food when they are fully aware that the dogs prefer deluxe and insisting that they clean their rooms before getting a treat when everyone is quite aware that their ability to keep their rooms clean is severely hampered by not having hands. Or the dogs may be just putting on a show while in public and at home they may be loud-barking, couch-tearing, and overly-selfish-to-the-point-where-at-least-some-of-the-humans-are-both-jealous-and-rendered-to-tears. Regardless, I don't wish to own a dog - I'm scared of them what with their loud barking, their sharp teeth and the unshakable feeling that I would be a mere stepping stone owner-wise for them and that they would always be on the lookout for an upgrade to someone taller.
Compared to the dog-walkers, the joggers never seem that happy. Aside from the exercise, which is obviously good for you, they just seem to be in a lot of discomfort. Each step they take is met with a grimace or look of boredom almost as if others should take pity on them. I would be first in line to take pity on them, but I feel like my figurative pity jar is all empty as I just spent a lot of time talking to people waiting in line at the passport office. What a sad, sorry bunch of people all suspiciously wanting passports almost as if receiving a passport would pick them up and make them instantly less pitiable. All of a sudden it hits me - while I am not in the mood to show pity for the joggers, I could plan to jog tomorrow with a look of extreme pleasure and happiness on my face and a vibrancy in my body almost as if I had been recently plugged in and charged. Yes, people may wonder what is wrong with that sort of insane looking jogger who was either really pleased before he started running and is having the pleasure slowly drawn out of him by the running or the jogging is actually giving him pleasure, which would be even more confusing to all.
Maybe the jogging is some sort of cord that is plugging me in and sending me electricity not completely like that time when I actually tried to receive electricity through a cord which was both totally dangerous and ultimately quite fruitless as the power company refused to send me any electricity in the mail when it didn't work at home after I wrapped a cord around my torso, plugged it in and waited to either feel brighter, hot or just charged up. They claimed, when I asked for them to mail it to me, that I "had obvious gaps in my understanding of how electricity really works" and "could I please refraining from calling, emailing or standing outside their windows and yelling while flipping through a series of placards adorned with well-illustrated and quite graphic messages" and "they could offer me a yearly calender" which I gladly accepted and came away from the whole experience feeling like I had "won". I wave to one jogger in particular, initially chosen totally randomly, but with the intent to make it look quite the opposite. I wanted him to think that I had chosen him, of all the joggers on the beach that morning, to be the one that I went out of my way to cheer for, to send a message of courage and of empowerment, to make him question what my motives really were before realizing that I was an example of all that was right with humanity and that we had a deeper connection than either of us realized at the moment and that he should also watch where he is going so he doesn't bump into anything which I am fortunately able to relay quite quickly with a series of rapid hand motions thus saving the day.
I move to sit on the sand and enjoy the coolness of it on my bare feet. I had just removed my shoes and socks in an attempt to feel the sand directly on my feet, and it had worked splendidly. I ran my fingers through the sand the same way I used to run my fingers through my girlfriend's hair - smoothly at first, until I got to the ends which were snarled with tangles and knots. It was quite hard to mimic the entanglement my fingers felt in that situation with the sand that was much easier to move through. I'm glad my old girlfriend wasn't here on the beach with me witnessing my joy at the ease of finger movement in comparison as it surely would have led to some discomfort on her part followed by her launching into a long lecture on my not being sensitive enough to her feelings, especially those that were related to her easily-tangled hair, which she usually presented in her unique, slam-poetry-esque sort of fashion that was riveting, hurtful and so effective that she met her future husband, who was not only far more sensitive than I was as he lost both of his parents to tangled hair as a youth, but, ironically, he was also a sand erosion specialist who was raised never to run his fingers through anything sand-like. I learned from the experience to never date anyone again who was so adept at slam poetry that they may meet someone more suitable for them as a result of being so adept at slam poetry. It was a small lesson and quite a random one that almost definitely would never come up again, but it was a lesson and I learned it.
As I played with the sand I remembered that on multiple occasions in my past I have thought about being a grain of sand and what my life would be like. First off, I'd have to get used to being really small. Now, I am not the tallest person in the first place, but going from being slightly-less-than-average to ridiculously tiny would at least need a period of adjustment. I also figured that it would be hard to get used to the feeling that I didn't amount to anything and that no one would miss me if I was gone, not because I wouldn't be one special grain of sand, but because there would be millions and millions of other grains that would be so much like me physically, and that they could probably learn my role and whatever differences there were in personality or abilities could be gotten used to by the other grains. But, I imagined my day as a little piece of sand - waking up on the beach with millions of my friends and family all nestled together, feeling a bit dry and badly in needed of some ointment, but even if one of us magically procured some of it, we have no hands or feet and it would be more of a tease, a point of frustration to have it there, so close and us unable to apply it. I'd look around and notice that some of my friends were gone - probably washed out to sea and, although I'd miss them, with the size of my brain being severely reduced in size and scope, I probably wouldn't miss them for long and even if I did I probably wouldn't totally comprehend where they had gone and what this sea thing really was as I would lack the perspective to see past my little spot on the beach.
I used to imagine that I would be the one grain of sand who understood the world and had been given special powers and knowledge for a reason - I was the grain that would free us all and lead us towards a brave new existence. All other grains would see me as the chosen grain, the grain who would helps us all out of a long period of darkness and feeling stuck on a beach or in a playground or occasionally in an unfinished backyard because the topsoil hadn't been delivered yet and they were closed for the weekend, the grain who could actually talk, which was no small accomplishment in and of itself and shouldn't get downplayed - I'm just mentioning that as I'm sure some wouldn't feel that it was worth mentioning - but I ask, can any other grains talk? Exactly. Anyways, the dream usually ended with me high on a hill filling the other grains with motivation to overthrown the human savages and turn the beaches into prisons while also turning our focus towards new methods of storing data, preserving food and refereeing tennis matches. We had some random goals, but we didn't mind. We believed we could accomplish anything, so they may as well be random things. The dream usually left me feeling alone and quite confused and with a desire to rent a large blowing tool from the local hardware store and go to the beach and just blow the sand around for a while before dropping to my knees weeping and trying to hold them all.
A set of ducks swim by in a nearly perfect V shape, but not quite. One duck must either be a little sick or in need of reassigning to a different, slower group, almost like a development team until he gets his stuff together. I mean if you are aiming to create a V, then anything less is fairly disappointing - for the other ducks I mean - it's not like I really care. I come from a long line of people who actually prefer misshaped Vs and we often spent at least part of our winter holiday season in the shape of something sort of resembling a V to the amusement of all present.
Male ducks are so stunningly beautiful. I'm sure female ducks have a hard time thinking about anything else with these ultra-distracting, super-hot male ducks just swimming around them. Not sure what else they have to think about aside from eating and possibly what route to take through the reeds today. I wonder if I should be concerned with how much I am drawn to the male ducks I see. I settled on "probably" and then decide to forget about it just like I have done with some of my other strange attractions including, but not limited to, maple syrup containers mostly for their ability to hold and contain syrup that just wants to drip; sample highlighters, but not actual for sale highlighters, just the ones that everyone can pick up, hold in their warm hands and try out for a brief moment before having to leave; loose change and, of course, sideways glances, partially blocked by the throngs of people at the function, across a dim smoky room that makes me cough and recoil due to the overpowering aroma of the smoke and, as I turn to dash out of the room I look back, sideways of course, and catch her eye and melt to the ground, inside my mind of course. Those female ducks seem like pretty cool customers and I envy them as much as a human male, on the beach first thing in the morning without his shoes and socks on can envy a bird of any sorts, which I realize is quite a lot. I say goodbye to the ducks and wonder if I will ever see these particular ducks again. I feel sad that I probably won't unless I happen to go to the right restaurant on the correct night someday.
I still have this nagging feeling that I wish I knew why I was so compelled to come to the beach today and then....I see her and I remember everything. Today was the day and even if I had wanted to somehow restrain myself, which I didn't, a huge smile broke out on my face. I saw her from a distance as she walked towards me and my first thought was "wow" and my second thought hadn't even formed yet when I started trying to list and catalog and even rank my thoughts in order from best to worst as they were forming which is really really hard to do, so I stopped. "Enjoy the moment" the piece of paper in my pocket said. I had finally settled on that message to myself yesterday morning when I decided that I may feel overwhelmed and need a message to settle myself down and help focus me and I decided that who better to send this message but my sister Lola but she just wouldn't return my calls for much of the afternoon and when she finally did she decided against it as she didn't want to get involved in a conversation that was at least 85% with myself. Finally, I had decided that I would send the message to myself and had originally thought of opening with a joke to lighten the mood or a complex math question to help awaken the brain or a combination of the two and had settled on something so cliched that it made me wish I had chosen a joke or a math question.
And then she was in front of me, holding her sandals over her shoulder and dressed in a very cute summer outfit that looked infinitely better on her and I was glad that I had decided not to buy it for myself and wear it for out meeting as she may have taken it the wrong way. I looked at her and as I was about to speak she said "I thought you wouldn't come."
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