Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight

And I Stood Upon The Sand Of The Sea

Whew. The last few days have been. . . different. Anyway, needless to say I have been far away from the interwebs, for the most part; utterly removed from any facility that might enable me to add to the literary masterpiece this accretion of mental outpourings is fast becoming. And I don’t have a Blackberry, nor have I learned how to post to this blog from a mobile device of some sort. Which is probably just as well.

Where have I been, and what have I been up to? The details are irrelevant to anyone but myself, and largely uninteresting; I see no real point in recounting them here. I would like to be able to say I was on a spiritual quest in the Himalayas, followed by a week on the beaches of Ibiza, just to chill out. But, that would be a lie.

Although, if I were looking for spiritual sustenance and/or renewal, i.e., major chilling out-ness, the beach would probably be where I would go.

For nearly all of my life, “the beach” has been synonymous with the Bolivar Peninsula. Which, by the way, was blown off the map and literally washed off of the face of the earth last September. Gone. There has been a hole in my soul ever since.

The beach was always my safety valve. Whenever I got folded, spindled, and/or mutilated by the vagaries of my 20th/21st century existence, I would either head for the shoreline literally, or at least be comforted in knowing it was there, waiting for me if I needed it. If I did go physically, I would sit out on the sand in a lawn chair for hours, oiled up, stereo playing, big surf fishing rod in a holder next to me for an excuse/distraction. Sometimes I'd be drinking beer religiously, sometimes not. Either way, I'd sit there, just staring at the waves and the horizon for hours, utterly at peace, in an existential bliss.

Now it is all gone. The places I hung out, mostly around Crystal Beach and Gilchrist, were obliterated. Take the most bombed-out village in Iraq you can think of, add some water, and that is what my former paradise, my Valhalla, looked like, after Hurricane Ike was done with it.

This has been in the back of my mind for awhile now, just a vague nagging feeling of emptiness. There is currently an effort to rebuild things down on the peninsula, including the beaches; but, aah, I will believe it when I see it. Until then, I am Moses wandering around the desert. I am Siddhartha living out samsāra, gone off track in the quest for spiritual enlightenment. I am Gilligan, lost on the other side of the island, just trying to find my way back to Mary Ann and her big, tasty coconut-cream pies (Gilligan and I, we always knew Mary Ann was actually “hotter” than Ginger.)

None of this has much at all to do with why I haven’t been keeping up with this blog the last few days; it is just me going off on a tangent. As I have been sometimes known to do.

*****

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

-- e. e. cummings, "maggie and millie and molly and may"

*****