“Like Willie Dixon said, ‘God, I need someplace to clear my head.’” — Tom Cochrane
I have this thing I do, for years now, when at the beach. Not always, but often. It is ritual. It’s a thing, yes.
So I say to the old dude (the even-older-than-me dude, that is), him of the khaki ball cap, the khaki everything, really, who’s just then collecting shells, or at least shambling about and staring in concentration down at the edgewater sand, as I come up alongside him, preparing, as I do, for the dumb moments to come:
“Don’t wanna startle you, so you should know that me and my lousy hips are about to run screaming into the ocean, until I suddenly fall down.”
At first there he says nothing. He just looks me up and down, and then:
“Well, good luck to ya.”
I mean, what the hell else is there to say?
“Oh,” I respond, as I have, as I will, “it won’t go well. It never does.”
And as before, as certainly again, indeed it does not. It didn’t. It won’t.
“Aieeeeeee!” (That’s me.) Flail, flail, flail … fall. (That’s also me.)
Then the sudden shock of frigid water. I’m down. Oh, yeah, campers, I’m down. But am I staying there? I mean, I could stay there.
I’m not staying there, at least not this time. There are more oceans ahead. More screaming, surely. More flailing. No doubt more falling.
Hallelujah, I suppose.
And anyway, my knees. As in fuck my lousy hips that have been so up in arms lately. Cuz my knees, my knees, my creaky knees are now skint all up. The fall. The sand. Ouch.
Resurfacing, badly, I lumber back to my feet, a lone figure above the froth, a whale of a guy washed out so close to shore. I am turning then to wave to the older-than-me fella, who was no doubt watching this idiocy unfold before him, from my tenuous spot out there in the foamy drink.
Damn if he doesn’t wave back.
I will likely see my job, already only part-time, phased out entirely in these months ahead. Nothing official yet, but experience says, hey. It became apparent to me only today, while on vacation, just a few weeks shy of my turning 60. And here again, not ready yet to quit. Except, come on, some brutal honesty here:
Who gets hired for something new at 60?
We ain’t wealthy. We’re a long ways from wealthy. There may be trickier times ahead.
But there is always this, y’know? Some vast and swirling ocean, some tempestuous crashing of unfiltered life, of brine and simply being, to vault your screaming ass into, to remind yourself, ever again, of what’s important. Of what’s ultimately what.
As in it’s cold out there, folks. It’s cold, and we all do fall down sometimes. We all fall down. Yet things may get a little warmer ahead, emerging screaming from the cold. They have before. So fuck it, might as well plan that they might do so again. Because what else, I suppose?
There is nothing to gain in what else.
So on again you go, right? On again I go.
