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6:56 p.m. - 2002-05-15 I went to the beach. Wearing my dress-up slacks from work, a wife beater, so snug and lovely, my brown dress-up shoes, so comfy and worn insulated from my skin by my pair of brown dress-up argyle socks, so fucking brown and argyley. I took my wallet like one who is not accustom to spending minutes with himself alone at the beach, and a pocket full of whatever shit had accumulated since the last time I washed my dress-up pants. Mostly single crumpled dollar bills and receipts. A ten. Some change. Why do I have a million receipts from sandwiches and shit, but no receipt for anything that must be returned? Like the CD I bought and don�t like. Not important. I transferred pocket contents into wallet till bulging and set the set down on a random stump so I could set myself down in the sand. Consistency of brown sugar. Soft and a little warm. Waves crashing. Flies lighting on my triceps, both of them. Over and over I shook them away, but they are more persistent than I am so they won the right to tickle and crawl. Sky, blue. Birds running in and out of the surf looking like mice, or perhaps mice look like them; I don�t know who evolved to scurry like that first. Little kids collecting something and carying the handfuls of something back to their stroller to store them away for later like squirrels, I�m pretty sure the squirrels came first. I did a handstand with my pockets emptied. I sat back down. I walked out into the glass of saturated sand revealed by receding water and noted how the pressure of even my own 135 lbs would squeeze it dryer under my feet-steps. I skipped flat rocks in the shallow stretches. . I felt the intensity of uncomfortable loneliness cramping in my stomach and tried to will it away. It followed the lead of the flies and had its way with me. Not so ticklish though. I found a rut created from the feet prints of a vehicle and lay my teeny self down in it. I looked at the sky and willed the tension away again. It told me to fuck myself. I closed my eyes and felt the sand beneath me. I tried to trick me into believing that I was a part of the sand, forced to stare up at the same section of sky for days and days until a more animate creature opted to disturb my speck of real estate. Me told myself to quit being such a condescending asshole. I told me to go fuck myself back. We argued and struggled and one of us wanted to cry, but neither of us did. I decided that enough was enough and lifted my body to vertical to walk the way my ancestors worked so hard to give me the right to walk right back to my circuit box. Hmm. Well begun is half done.
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