It’s positively jungle. I am swimming in air and my sweat might be Amazon dew. All the creatures of the night writhe where my eyes can’t peer; there is a night-swarming of slick beings who profess dark music with their strange organs. The tent went up with little trouble, though I’ll laugh at the job when I can actually see it. The stars are tipsy in the heat, and my flashlight gives only an idea of illumination. Just like a religion. I cannot be a night creature so I must surrender to the diminishing of human vision and stumble about while the Earth turns its back to Sun to see for itself the vastness, yet another whirl in its ceaseless dance.

I rest in this thick air tonight. I’ve come for the sake of Sacred Folly, and to behold it I shall sweat out the dark and await sultry, salty dreams.

(30 June, Primitive Area)

Morning. I’m watching a dragonfly decide where to survey the next minute, and wonder if it actually thinks “Whereupon shall I alight?” Sweat. I sweat with all these wonderful creatures, most of which were biblically smitten. Psalms somewhere incites us to “rebuke the beasts of the wild reeds.” Pshaw. This is the province of the giant moth, the dexterous toad, the blue-tailed skink, which skulks about as a fox, and these are true scripture. My tea is perfect, as if I needed anything hot to drink. I’ll run a few logistical errands, and make great haste to the sea. There, I’ll truly dissolve into the romance of sand and wave, particle and flux, the lust of the sailor and the physicist.

Evening. I’ve just toasted those hoary, heroic old gods with warm wine in this dark tent. The ocean and I ran away with each other today, she kissed me all over and despite my predilections, I didn’t resist or hold back, for it’s not often that one can cavort so sensually with an elemental of such varied forces. She sent forth such a fabulous party; dolphin, pelican, crustaceans of a million kinds, and endless names of the wild. We had a grand time, and I continually delight in the ample metaphor of sand. Perhaps we play with it so childlike because it’s the closest thing we can come to sculpting atoms raw. And when we dig and dig, we hope for the abyss that lies beyond all molecular bonds. I’m thirty-two but could’ve been eight in those waves. Perhaps even transformed to that younger frame who knew such passion at the beach. It was an inkling of what I know now; such margins are the stage where we are in theatre with the Divine.

A little girl asked me as I walked to meet the dolphins, “what are you doing?” All I could do was smile, as she doesn’t know that I continually must ask myself the same query. It framed my walk there… what am I doing today? What I am doing, of course.

A little boy who was digging a hole turned to me in great joy to say, “it’s finally going away!” Yes, the tide recedes for now, and to the good of your purposes. But it will surely come to swamp us all, eventually, and we can await with nothing more than holy emptiness for that raging swell.

I did take in a mindless movie in hope for a cool place, but it was warm, barely hot. Enough to stop time in an illusory way. I received a message, upon the drive back to camp, that my father is in the hospital with pneumonia and fluid around the heart. I called and he was feisty and, as usual, diminutive of my concern. Alas, but not alack. The man has vexed me, both parents have, but that has only helped to write my story. I am choiceless but to acknowledge, with gratitude, their presence which daily abides. More wine to them!

It’s time to slip into quiet now, though the children nearby still intone their wants and needs by shadow of citronella candle, in that sing-songy inflection that, like birdsong, marks it’s turf and spills out in wonder of the self.

(July 1, Primitive Area)

Morning. Slipping into quiet, so easily written, did not easily happen. I had wondered whether the flashes of light on the horizon were lightening bolts or fireworks, and by the Great Law of Murphy it was indeed the former. I had hoped to wait it out, but there was some sort of waterproofing flaw in the tent and soon, random drops began to wet the interior. In a hasty decision, I bundled all of my clothes and other water retaining items and made for the car. The backseat, for future reference, does not make the best of beds.

I awoke again in the faint grey light of early morning, and, halleluiah, the great storm was over. The inside was only barely wet and easy to crawl back into, so I resumed sleep, and regained myself later with the usual chorus of loud children, whose sing-songy statements of need had by now turned into a screaming torrent of high-pitched demands. Dogs yelped incessantly, and in this soggy after-storm world I have out into question my remaining days. “What are you doing here?”

What, indeed. I think I may be a little let down by the lack of company which, only a few days ago, had been promised. I cannot deny loneliness, nor a strong need to overcome it, be it with affirming my known commodity of friendship, or a strength inside, a resilient self-reliance, that must burst up through the crust of weariness. Thank all Gods that, despite the unknowns, I can be assured of beauty everywhere in sight, curving along the ocean’s horizon and in every green leaf what radiates so purely in this light.

Evening. I found myself, perhaps stuck in some sort of silly analogy, at the other end of Folly, to a place I’d never been before. I rounded bend after bend of beach, until I finally found one of my quarry; the Lighthouse. I’d seen it for years only from a distance, and it appeared so ancient, as if some Grecian artist had sculpted it directly from mythic stone a millennia ago. The distance between it and I was minor in swimming terms, but I could see strong current. The question of my backpack was another question, which ultimately, and begrudgingly, left me on the other side of the channel. Still, I stood in awe of its stand against darkness, rough seas, and time. Seen: a child had caught a three foot shark, and the best I could remark was that it was an obvious sign of what lay beneath the surface… a girl’s phone number on the back of a receipt for a Jagermeister, Jello-shots, and a Killian’s… a shell so gloriously opalescent that I almost fell in.

I made for Charleston, and spent a few minutes getting the news on my father and connecting with my mother. The beach meant so much to all three of us, and it seemed about right.

Dinner was fine, and I wrote a half-baked poem called No Lament for the Lone Traveler. I wandered around the old city, barefoot on cobblestone, running my fingers through fountains and becoming hypnotic with intoxicating forms. I toyed with a visit to the theoretically-gay bar, but doubled back for the tent. I’m quite literally too chafed to risk a chance encounter with some golden Cariopolan god, and now am spread eagled on the air mattress to air out my pained nethers. This scene is played out mere feet away from a tent of jocks that ‘dude’ each other every three minutes. Dude.

I found today that freedom, the kind I’d like to emulate, comes with no strings attached. I must let fly, radically and utterly free. My longing for companionship tied a string to my freedom. This is my time, time to think and introspect. Fireworks. What matters now is that I do for me, none but. Should that include another human, fine, but being strong in the center means that I must allow the me bowed in subservience to artifice to rise up, and call what’s real real. It’s a little bravado for a lot of freedom.

(2 July, Primitive Area)

Morning. Finally, a peaceful night’s sleep. The tea’s on, and I’m trying not to make plans. Thankfully, this trip has been dictated by my own whims rather than any real pressures to do this or that. I don’t know what I’m going to do today, maybe another amble through C’town, maybe an aimless exploration between here and there. Who knows? Not I, said the goose. My allergies are causing me to tear. It’s amazing just how many organs we have, and all the uses for them, including crossover reactions. We are more adequately suited to this world than we care to know.

...

It’s the next day, and I’m home now, sunburned to medium-well and spraying myself every few minutes with aloe. I spent the day at the beach, exploring the margins of low-tide, watching a small shark stalk the shoreline, sinking in mud as I observe the teeming crabs skitter along in some unknown commerce. With childlike glee, I floundered pointlessly in the ocean, and placed my chair in the surf and allowed the ocean to slowly envelop me, and knock me down. I realized, after dragging my chair from the breakers, that with a painful sunburn and dark clouds impinging on the coastline, that I really ought to call it a vacation and head for the mountains. In a blink, through the dark and the rain, I’m here.

If it weren’t for the sand in the car and my rather painfully flambéed chest, it would be hard to tell that I actually went anywhere. Yet, I’ve been to the borderland which shall always stir the human heart and the lust for adventure, and deeply bowed honor to the mystery... the ocean.