I hesitate for a moment to sit down where I stand but look around, look up, pat my own ass for reasons unknown and have a rest nonetheless. The sand is not dry but not too wet and I sink comfortably into it, lay back and flop my whole body down looking up. Fuck it. The air tastes good and the sound of the waves on the incoming tide is soothing and there's nobody around, no people, no cars, no lights and if I just stare up, regulate my breathing and clear my mind, the sky is clear and the stars are visible and illuminated and I can imagine my existence as something else entirely. Something I can never understand.
"We're like those two old men. Those two old men from that play."
I think about thinking and try thinking about nothing and neither feels better or worse. This is what the drugs are for.
"Those two old homeless bums who waste their whole life debating nonsense."
Estragon.
"Who?"
Estragon and Vladimir.
"We'll be doing this shit until we die, talking and talking and talking shit and never doing anything about anything!"
I do enough.
"But it's not!"
It works for me.
"Nothing ever changes."
I think about the water and what is going on in there right now that I can never see. Life and death and birth and fucking and eating and hunting and feasting and killing and nonsense. Big fish, little fish, bigger fish. What do they do and what is their purpose and are they afraid of anything, ever? Not an instinctual, automatic response to danger but fear. Honest to god fear of what's happening on the land, whose doing what, fucking and eating and hunting and feasting and killing and shit. Do they question their life and their god?
I wish on a star that mermaids were real, that something imaginary, mythological, impossible would crawl slowly from the surf and stand upright, breath, howl, moan, shout something I don't understand and look me in the eyes, hungrily, violently. Blow my mind wide open.
"Fifty years from now, it will be just like this."
Not for me.
"Especially for you. More so for you. This is all about you."
If I fall asleep and I don't move and I don't become afraid and don't react at all, could I allow myself to drown in the surf? If i'm ready for it, expecting it. Properly prepared. Will I still have an instinctual response I can't control and run away instead? Could I let it carry me from the sand into the dark abyss so I can see once and for all what everybody is doing down there, out there, all the way to the most desolate and lonely, deepest fucking chasm. The fish and the non fish and the creatures I know nothing about. Everybody moving on without me, living their lives and surviving or not, going on, moving forward, onward and upward, unaware, unafraid.
I don't hesitate to stand and don't think about my decision to dig, begin digging with my hands. The sand is soft enough that I don't require tools and I dig and I scrape and I poke my fingers into the wetness and pull handfuls and handfuls of granules and grit and minerals and pebbles and marbles like things on my mind. A few feet down the sand gets harder and I loosen it with a rock. I bash and I poke and I scrape and I dig. My finger tips hurting now from scraping and scraping and scraping but I pull, more handfuls of sand, more and more and more and I dig deep and wide, keep digging until I can fit, my legs and my arms and my torso and I climb in, reach toward the pile and pull the sand back into the hole, onto my legs and my torso and with one arm I bury the other.
“You'll scream.”
I suppose that's just how it is.
“I won't save you.”
Derelict. Six days at the bottom of the ocean. Water flowing underground. Same as it ever was.
"We're like those two old men. Those two old men from that play."
I think about thinking and try thinking about nothing and neither feels better or worse. This is what the drugs are for.
"Those two old homeless bums who waste their whole life debating nonsense."
Estragon.
"Who?"
Estragon and Vladimir.
"We'll be doing this shit until we die, talking and talking and talking shit and never doing anything about anything!"
I do enough.
"But it's not!"
It works for me.
"Nothing ever changes."
I think about the water and what is going on in there right now that I can never see. Life and death and birth and fucking and eating and hunting and feasting and killing and nonsense. Big fish, little fish, bigger fish. What do they do and what is their purpose and are they afraid of anything, ever? Not an instinctual, automatic response to danger but fear. Honest to god fear of what's happening on the land, whose doing what, fucking and eating and hunting and feasting and killing and shit. Do they question their life and their god?
I wish on a star that mermaids were real, that something imaginary, mythological, impossible would crawl slowly from the surf and stand upright, breath, howl, moan, shout something I don't understand and look me in the eyes, hungrily, violently. Blow my mind wide open.
"Fifty years from now, it will be just like this."
Not for me.
"Especially for you. More so for you. This is all about you."
If I fall asleep and I don't move and I don't become afraid and don't react at all, could I allow myself to drown in the surf? If i'm ready for it, expecting it. Properly prepared. Will I still have an instinctual response I can't control and run away instead? Could I let it carry me from the sand into the dark abyss so I can see once and for all what everybody is doing down there, out there, all the way to the most desolate and lonely, deepest fucking chasm. The fish and the non fish and the creatures I know nothing about. Everybody moving on without me, living their lives and surviving or not, going on, moving forward, onward and upward, unaware, unafraid.
I don't hesitate to stand and don't think about my decision to dig, begin digging with my hands. The sand is soft enough that I don't require tools and I dig and I scrape and I poke my fingers into the wetness and pull handfuls and handfuls of granules and grit and minerals and pebbles and marbles like things on my mind. A few feet down the sand gets harder and I loosen it with a rock. I bash and I poke and I scrape and I dig. My finger tips hurting now from scraping and scraping and scraping but I pull, more handfuls of sand, more and more and more and I dig deep and wide, keep digging until I can fit, my legs and my arms and my torso and I climb in, reach toward the pile and pull the sand back into the hole, onto my legs and my torso and with one arm I bury the other.
“You'll scream.”
I suppose that's just how it is.
“I won't save you.”
Derelict. Six days at the bottom of the ocean. Water flowing underground. Same as it ever was.
