There is no stopping when I'm ahead. And I don't want to stop because I like how it feels when I'm going. I can tear through these like candy now compared to a couple of years ago. Have you ever seen a time machine's fuel cells? They are a pale yellow, salty and golden and of the sea. A telescope to distant shores over miles of bay. And I like the sea. In my head, I've written all about the ocean. All of those that I've seen: Shoreline, Maritime Park, that lovely day in January when I thought the gray clouds might actually come down. If I'm lucky, maybe even the Pacific one day. I'm drifting right now, rocking back and forth in what feels like a ship's cabin. There is no time to think about unmapped waters when I am so curious about looking back most of all. And what I am after most is Gulf Shores. A long drive then, but there is neither time nor space here. Just endless water all around...
...
Driving in the downpour felt something like a rite of passage. Years ago, I'd usually sleep in the backseat when I'd hear the droplets first starting to pound against the roof, but now, I was in control. No mother, no father, just me, fearlessly toeing a yellow line between nervousness and Zen-like absence. But I'm doing it, I thought. I'm doing so many firsts: driving alone, driving in a storm, and driving this far. Indeed, I was well beyond state lines, and I'd turned the radio up so loud against the torrents much as one would do to drown out a dying engine. And the summer heat was boiling the rain against my thumping windshield. So great was my focus that the wiper blades didn't even look like motion in my mind. The crystalized red lights in front of me were something of a beacon, a glowing lighthouse on a foggy shore. Thoughts like these compelled my time traveling; the parallels oft screamed so loud that I'd hear them in empty rooms.
I never got the chance to ruminate these things as they happened. My destination then as much as it is now was Orange Beach: family stuff. Even as the storm began to wane right off that bridge, I kept my mind steady. This drive, that peaceful disembodiment -- these compulsions I'd forever chase, and surely they started here. The peace of a lonely highway is no less a vestige of our collective unconscious. Something similar to the rolling green pastures still romanticized in lucid pockets out of our modernity. And still I glide these hypnotic roads in pursuit of just that: hypnosis. A warrior's ritual.
And a warrior I really was. Those skinny wrists, that loose watchband, the wispy beginnings of a beard. It tells me that this ride, this journey is an earmark, the cracked spine of a novel. That makes me the reader, frantically flipping to the middle for an illuminating annotation or scribble in the margins. These scenic roads and the falling action are alike, giving way to stopping points and forever homes. The map is not the territory, Google Maps is not my vacation, and memory lane is a mirage or a one-way street.
There are details from this drive still fresh behind closed eyes. Sweaty skin in a summer's storm. Owl City's blaring limericks on a 2004 subwoofer. Where were my golden dreams? My glasses were fogged up on that drive. I took them off periodically and drove with a funny face. At other times, I wiped the condensation off the inside of the car windows with an old t-shirt. But other details escape me. What do I see now? What road am I on? Then I was young and with few options for which I'd been granted leave that summer; now, I felt distant, averse, numb with cold in winter's bite. So I'll soar, a pelican in these summer skies, still searching, still a time traveler.
When I arrived in Gulf Shores, I must've looked tired, and gravely so, but no sooner than one step in that sandy driveway did I eagerly swallow that first glimmer of the coast. How immediately captivating the call of the sea! Always demanding one's undivided attention, enjoying total control of all senses. But I'd save a closer look until that evening. For now: people to see, things to unpack. A latecomer, I'd need to fight for a couch.
Sleeping arrangements is a perfectly suitable descriptor. The term connotes the tug-of-warring and bickering that comprise the negotiations, a rocky armistice always following. The implied impermanence can be misleading. When I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my brother. He got the bed, and I got its adjective: the trundle. That "arrangement" felt more like a fixture, though. My back stayed good friends with the box spring for those grueling years. And on childhood vacations, there seemed to be an unspoken rule to always give my sister the room with a balcony view. This is all saying nothing of shotgun.
For what it's worth, my arrangement at the rental place in Gulf Shores elicited no complaints from me. The tiles were a light rose, the décor a maritime spin on baby blue, but the view out the back stole the show. The white sands and the waning gray clouds evoked imagery of marble sculptures or wedding cake frosting; the distant cries of seagulls created a haunting beauty. And the water...
My feet were already in the sand; I couldn't wait. The rest of my family was already outside, too - uncles, the disembodied voices of playing children. I stood on the shore and felt strangely lightheaded. Was this exhaustion? I'd sooner think peace, a gift from the water. Peace of mind, of safety and security. And underneath these steady waves of the after-storm glow, the sinking weight of a black anchor turned red with an awful taste, sinking and disappearing and passing beyond.
I slept so peacefully that night, moon and sun and steam around me.
...
There is a running sink in my apartment. I am watching old watercolors swirl down a clogged kitchen sink. In the vintage orange lighting, a hue that comes pre-smoked in, the running tap looks almost like beer. And so I am bartender and patron alike, and more, I am a painter. And if I cannot go back to the beach, I will paint with it.
There are no dogs around to bother me while I paint; no roommate either, so technically I am watching The Sopranos outside of our agreed viewing order. But I'm not really watching. I am making a mess on the coffee table, blotting colors together on this 8x11 canvas. A pink cube in the middle, and a green void behind it. I could stare into these colors forever. The sink is still running.
But elsewhere, I am ashore. When I'd woken up in the morning, the faintest hint of sunrise peaking in through the pastel pink blinds, I had no urge to scroll on my phone as had already been established that summer in all the monotony. I joined the early risers in the kitchen for coffee, taking note of the exact number of scoops and cups of water being used as input variables. But it wasn't long before I was back outside and back in the water. The air felt crisp on my shoulders, and in the bright blue sky, one would've never known about yesterday's storm but for all the wet sand.
At my feet, I'd found about 95 cents of a sand dollar, just about the whole thing. No good with a missing peace, I knew. I tossed it back into the ocean, watching it sink between waves.
Outside and inside, our cast was starting to expand. Dad, still a Harley man, and his brother, who was always sitting down no matter the occasion. Someone was making an omelet in the kitchen, and through the open door, the kids were running back and forth in one constant blur. Another uncle was helping me cast a fishing rod, and my aunt asked if he even had a saltwater license.
I spent the turn of the morning stumbling into new activities. Some Duck Dynasty reading on the couch, crawfish in the kitchen. Plans were being made all around me, each one as tentative as the waves outside. Some were doomed to fail from the start -- who still played crochet? But in the end, some won out. The boardwalk first and foremost. The more seasoned vacation veterans in the group wanted to shop, and soon.
At Build-a-Bear, my grandfather held an empty turtle off the first rack by its foot. "There's no juice in this thing," he complained. My little sister went straight for the cats on the shelf. I helped her with the stuffing and let her pick out the accessories. We left, a few dollars lighter and some amount of ounces heavier according to its birth certificate. Its heart beat with a wish. For what would I have wished at that age, and what now? Onward to a pirate ship for lunch, Grandfather and his turtle among the crowd. The rest of the afternoon proceeded with the pleasure of getting sidetracked by all the fun. I was repaid for an earlier favor with an arcade prize.
We were back at the rental before sundown. Our dock was kept aglow by a shade of orange sherbet. There was some bickering by all the dark smoke around the grill as I donated my years of experience to a sandcastle. These are part of one's responsibilities as a modern-day shaman; I was a village elder. Others had skills more befitting their age, and someone had added decorations: seashells, a cork, a slice of sand dollar. Shortly thereafter, and our brightest minds tackled the standard operating procedures for the cable TV remote. I could still hear the waves when I drifted off on the futon.
...
My painting is nearly dry now. A still life, resting on a newspaper pallet by the TV. I am not going to clean the living room tonight. Everything feels black and white, and so I paint with all these colors. I scratch at my face. What time is it? Now I'm up by the heater, my head crooked. It's so cold in here.
In my head, somewhere outside of time, I've been at these waters before, my arms folded behind my back. Sometimes I'm sitting down, but it's always nighttime. The tide is a kind of white noise, and these waters are lovely, dark and deep. And I am always alone. There is often an alien sense about the sand, and I feel out of place. Further down the shore, there's a feeling that I'm being watched. From the depths, seaweed and drift are brought to the shore by the midnight waves. Sometimes, a sand dollar comes up, too. No, not like this. I must go back. I think I've had too much now. Focus, focus. Drive back through the rain, past Perdido Key and hydroplaning into a concrete gray blur. I am dreaming I am young; I am young and I am dreaming. The moon is full and glowing and moving but there aren't any clouds around like when I was small and I thought the moon was moving and going to crash into the Earth and we were going to die and my older sister said shut up stupid. Lucy was small once. I remember when Lucy was small. When Lucy was small, I didn't understand her, and I thought she was annoying. But now she's big, and she's so well-behaved and intelligent, and she never barks. We get along so well. And when I think of her as a puppy, I want to weep.
. . .
I woke up, and the early morning fog had rolled in. Those who had risen before me crept around looking for missing socks or burning pancakes for the last time. I couldn't wait to go home and see my dog, though my mind soon became misty with thoughts of his solitude as a new school season lumbered forward. And on that lonely drive home from Gulf Shores, Alabama, I'd forever recall a distinct silence as I drove into the forever blue, yellow sun so high.
I am a time traveler, immobilized in all dimensions but one. Even on my luckiest voyages, I've nothing to say of the phenomenal: summertime salt is a phrase, the decayed exoskeleton of a feeling. If we are our memories, then we are blurs upon blurs, each more fragmented than the last. Our memories are a cruel simulacra, faded images whose reflections of reality are a dementia patient's self-portrait.
I sit alone in the dark, painting with watercolors.