Okee Dokee

By Chris Link

Ok, I joined but does that mean that I have to write? Because I think it would be unreasonable to make me write . . . but then this is "voices of unreason" so perhaps it would be reasonable for an unreasonable site to be unreasonable. Not that it matters 'cause I do have something to say, but it's not really an essay, but it sure as heck ain't poetry or fiction. It's real. Not that poetry or fiction can't be real. Sometimes poetry is really real. Not that I'm much of a judge on what is real. I can't even figure out why I do what I do. For example:

I traveled to Florida last month, staying for several days on one of the Atlantic beaches. The first morning I was there, I got up at 5:30 a.m., walked along the sandy street, feeling my way along the sandy boardwalk across the dune, out onto the sandy beach. (I had a girlfriend named Sandy many years ago and if you are out there Sandy, I have a few things I'd like to say. I digress). [Should I have put the period before the ending quote or after? Or should I have not put a period there at all?] Meanwhile, back at the beach, I walked along sticking my toes in the water, trying to make out the faint paleness of stranded shells, feeling the sand and salt water between my toes, keeping an eye peeled to the east, waiting for the sun to come up.

The sun was aware that I was aware and so it put off its appearance hoping for me to fall back into that comfortably numb unawareness (or should that be nonawareness, with a hyphen? and where does the comma go?). But I was aware that the sun was aware that I was aware and so I girded my awareness loins and remained most assuredly aware. Except that I must have slipped for just the most infintessimal (is that a word?) fraction of a second because the sun was suddenly peeking out over the horizon and I couldn't point out, couldn't objectively speak of, just couldn't tell you about the moment when it wasn't there and then the moment that it was.

And I couldn't even think about that at the time because well, the sun was strutting her red self, tap dancing on my beauty sensors, messssssmerrrrising me. I stood there in rapture or enraptured until I finally heard muscles and joints shouting over the visual nature symphony. MOVE! So I turned around and there was a young lady standing at an odd angle, still in the throws of her own mesmerization. I started to speak, then swallowed the inappropriateness and walked on down the beach, giving the sun dirty looks for tricking me so.

Over the next few days, the sun and the wind and the salty waves and a hundred other spirits of that place conspired against me and they are still conspiring against me because every morning I wake up and you know what's one of the first things I do? I log onto a web cam of that same little stretch of beach and just sit there, watching the waves come rolling in.

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