Highway stretches out to the ocean, goes straight across the water beyond the horizon. Ships pass. Cranes rise up, out of the sea. Smoke trails the barge. Light from the sun, the surface… the sand is too hot to sleep.

//

Moon above, another tent pitched today, snakes along the beach grass and cactus. Beard and hair coated in salt and sand from the ocean. The water is warmer down here, and more clear. The sun is disappearing over the sea pines and the air is finally cooling off. There’s a slight breeze that every so often enters the tent, I hear a few birds begin their night song, and the cicadas are quieting down. Every minute or so she turns a page of her book. Besides this all, just the scratching of this pen on this notebook. When I look up from what I’m writing I see the last gleam of the sunset reflect off the blades of grass just outside the tent. They dance slowly in the coming of night. The blankets are soft, our breathing quiet.

//

After we set up camp we walked to the waterfront and ran into the water.

//

Driving through these towns I imagine myself living different lives.

//

The sky is a deep purple. By nightfall we might walk down to the beach, to feel the water and to see the stars. We are so far away from the rest of the world, from the mainland, from the country and everything that may have still been there for us, that we may have escaped during this week. I have a return journey still, that I will be making alone. She’ll have flown back a week ago by then. I wonder where I’ll stay and what I’ll be thinking of, and if this all will have felt like a dream. Or another past life. 

//

Our world changed so suddenly. I worry that the coming absence will be just as strong as what we’re experiencing so fully. If I may be someone who only helped get her through a moment, where I am afraid that there might not be anything left for me after the longer tomorrow. Maybe the time away will feel fleeting. For now, just here, and the coming of the night, and the song of a few birds in the cooling air.

//

The first star is out, the grass still dancing around. I’m sure the sand is cool to touch now, and the wind carries the sound of the ocean to the top of this hill where our tent is staked. Her hand strokes my back as I write, and my neck, the back of my head. It’s getting a little dark, hardly enough light to write or read.

//

My eyes burn from staying open through these highway hours, and the sea salt, sand and sweat. Ears ringing from the windows down, skin finally starting to burn, to tan, for the hair to begin to blonde. She smiles. We didn’t talk much today, though there is comfort. Time and distance burns a heart and lives can waver, but I know right now she’s where she wants to be, as am I.

//

Who is to say if two people ever experience anything in unison, or to understand something in the same way. If anyone were, I’m not sure that there would be a way to tell, but I don’t think anyone should ever really ask for that. I’m not sure that I’d ask for that either.  I don’t think there’s actually any way to distinguish or differentiate what we all know, language is flawed, and we all live only in comparison to others and our own pasts.

//

Privacy to intimacy, or to carry both in some way, as needed, as the times come and go, and what we hold on to and connect to each other with and through…

//

Four hours or so on the ocean tomorrow, passing through on a short ferry trip, back to the highway on down, might catch a sunrise in the water, turn what I am knowing into something that I can share with others.

//

Morning breeze really shakes the tent here. It never got cold enough to bring us together last night. After the moon went away it seemed as though all the stars came out. When I opened my eyes again, a pale blue, spotted with little white and grey clouds straight above. I’m not sure when the cicadas started again. The sun hasn’t yet crested the brush, so we’re still resting in the shade. She sleeps. I know I have been doing too much to try to ensure her some kind of trip of experience. I’m not necessarily pressured by this, but I think she can tell it weighs on me to a degree.

//

I have a few bites on my leg, hands, and arm. Otherwise all clean.

//

It feels good to be settled for a few hours at a time. I’d stay here longer if I could. All these places I’ve never been, and that’s not something I’ve experienced since I lived on the highway with the corps on those buses. I’m much older now than that first summer, and there’s a sense of independence that is a part of this journey that was never a part of that world before.

//

I need to not apologize when things go “wrong”. There is no wrong. It is true I am not the best driver and I’m fine with that.

//

On a ferry to an island, a ton of cars here, all stacked together. Dolphins on the outside following us as we go. Talked through some of my insecurities, happy we’re able to get there and just relax, like we originally planned before the week had to get circumstantially shifted around a little bit. We woke up slow, tried to find a place on the route that sold fresh fruit, eventually found a little sandwich shack along the way back. Overhear someone talk about rip-tides and rip-currents so decided not to go back into the water to swim. Gotta figure out where the fuck we’re going to stay next.

//

Normally we’re not getting to where we’re supposed to be until late afternoon, tired, unable to really just sit back. This ferry ride is only an hour or so now, and the island is only a twenty minute drive from one end to the other, so we’ll be set up in no time, and actually be able to relax a little bit. Big waves now, it’s a funny sensation getting rocked by the ocean from the inside of your car. Just the rumble of the ferry engine, the turning pages of her book, and the gentle fan from the AC.

//

Windy as hell on the water, first tropical storm watch of my life - the wind really wrestles the paper while I’m trying to write, throws sand on me at high speeds, like I’m getting cut, maybe 50 mph by the evening, not sure about right now. Sitting here on the shore, on a literal island. I can see a rip current, it seems to flow like a river.

//

Getting caught in a rip tide is not quite idyllic, but I do think it’s a classic experience. Every now and again you hear it sourced as a metaphor for some kind of love song, but I don’t suppose many of those singers have actually been there - done that. Maybe some of the listeners have, but in any case, the experience may not have ever been given due justice, nor proper description. I doubt that the first thing I would think of while being pulled out into the ocean would be love. Wrath.

//

I’m not quite alone out here, though if I turn to my right, I see no one, shaded by some small beach-pine brush. Secluded, but I would love some privacy for a little while.

//

I am standing at the edge of the shore, with the ocean behind me, the sun coming down on the notebook in front of me, resting on my thigh, in a braced position to fight off the wind as well as the waves, all in the name of writing, I suppose. I haven’t written in years. The effect is currently “writing about writing”. There is something poetic about this whole gesture though. I am writing about writing for the sake of the experience of writing while standing in the ocean a few feet from a rip tide in only god-knows-where.

//

I see a dead tree or something on the shore. I am going to return with a camera to photograph it, and to photograph the ocean, now so different than last October, and I, so different now, than when I was here at the end of the world last. My life is different now. Almost completely. That can be a terrifying notion to accept.

//

EPILOGUE

//

Living in a little bit of a fiction right now, or maybe just a recurring daydream. I’m sitting on the back porch back home watching a storm come in. Thunder cracks and rolls across the sky like giant crashing boulders. It may not even rain down here, but I can see where it is and I can smell it too. The birds still sing, a motorcycle rides by, trying to make it back somewhere on time. I just got here today, but it reminds me of when I was younger, the weeks where it would dry up the country, the creek would lower, and the grass would brown and crunch under your feet. Dust bowl building in the backyard. The car is as packed as it can get for tonight. The road tomorrow is long and dull. Always about to leave.

//

Lightning flashes in the distance, seen only between the pine boughs and the edge of the little mountain around the bend. The beer is cold. I wanted this moment for a long time, but I’m going back inside. It’s not keeping me here.