Here Ye, Hear Ye!

I WANT TO GO TO THE BEACH!!! ANYONE--ANYONE WHO HAS A DAY OFF BEFORE THURSDAY (but not Monday) AND WANTS TO GO WITH ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE--LET'S GO!!!!

Now I know I've been saying this basically everyday since Spring Break, but I REALLY want to go. I want it--the beach is like oxygen, the beach lifts us up where we belong, all you need is the beach!

I want the planning to go early, but waking up the day of and just wanting to sleep in instead...and having all of the plans get foiled, but it all works out okay in the end. I want to drive for an excessive amount of time...and that first smell of the salt water as you're driving down A1A, and that transition from highway to Every-Beach-Town-USA, where everyone drives without shoes or shirts with the windows of their old clunker cars flung open but with no radio blaring (mostly because everyone’s speakers are old and busted)--just the feel of the wind and the smell of the sea. I want to be intimidated by that. And the people that give you weird looks, but the greater number of people who ignore your existence entirely, too thoroughly absorbed and self conscious of their own.

I want all independent thought to leave me the moment the car turns off. I want to walk timidly through the sand with a clumsy cooler and stare blankly out at the ocean painfully, gloriously, and fully aware that the Mediterranean is directly across the way--the same body of water Odysseus got lost in, that the Count of Monte Cristo was written about, and that my little brother kayaked in going on four years ago. I want to re-awaken the hopeless romantic in me. I want to see Kennedy Space Center across the way and know in the back of my mind that my childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut are not that far away, or completely unreachable…if I want them…if I choose them.

I want the sticky skin, and the gross hair, and the sand between my teeth and in my..shoes. I want to debate about going in the water, doubt why I came at all, and then spend hours upon hours riding and jumping and dodging and diving and treading wave after wave after wave until I can barely stand. Until I stagger back to shore, board staggering along behind me, and collapse in a heap of exhaustion--but ready for ten more hours of exactly the same thing…Until there is nothing else. Until every other thought, every other memory, all other knowledge of existence drifts away and it’s just wave after wave after wave…and I don’t have to trust it, and I don’t have to doubt it, and I don’t have to rely on it, and I don’t have to fear it. I can just be in it. And it will exist, regardless and independent of me. And no one else matters. And I exist, regardless and independent of them and of everything. And in that I can discover that I can trust, and doubt, and rely, and fear, and be—if I choose. And I realize that all things are possible, and dependent solely on choice. And I can stare bleary eyed up at the sky and feel—“I choose.”

And I want to sit at an odd angle in the car—covered in an akward combination of towels and strangely fastened clothes, too tired to care, skin to dry and strangely coated to feel. And listen as the rain falls softly on the roof of the car and dribbles slowly down the windows…making music of its own device independent of and far superior to any radio or cd player known to man…and bask in that…choice.

And take that first good After-The-Beach shower, where it feels like you scrap off and good inch and a half of grime and sea muck and every dust particle that you encountered between here and the beach...and your hair can move again and your skin has that weird overly sensitive, underly aware feel to it…and you sit and stare in a chair for hours until you finally fall deeply asleep still rocking to the soft lullaby of waver after wave after wave…and nothing else exists except wave after wave after wave…

Anyone—anyone at all care to join me? The invitation’s on the table—reservations not required.