The New Me – A Beach to Walk Upon
6.8.18 by Ryan Masteller
Your pie face radiates misty introspection as you wander the sandy strip of coast, the waves eroding the shore ever so slowly as you contemplate the day that they reach so far inland that evacuations become necessary. Several self-improvement false starts later, and the only thing that makes any sense is the chilly sea, the heavy gray clouds, the mist and salt blowing in the breeze. The taxi you hired several sleepless days ago, and to whose caffeine-jittered driver you are paying a small fortune to for his services (no idea why you don’t just rent a car at this point), waits just beyond the dunes. The belief that “you’ll actually feel better” repeats as if on an endless tape loop in your head, and you still believe it, even though you’re hungry and tired and the gulls are obviously whispering about you among themselves as they rest there on the beach. That sandpiper just flipped you off with a toe.
Mind blank as a fart save for the weird loops that your life has become, your footsteps begin to echo in your ears, which is pretty impossible because you’re walking on the beach. Halting, you stoop to the ground and grasp handfuls of sand and broken shells and seaweed, stuffing the material in your pockets and going back for more. “This – this is the new me,” you determine, your new sand life substitute a richer, fuller experience than anything that’s come before. Your brain tracks like a warbled synthesizer run through a broken reel-to-reel, and you wonder if you can see the taxi from the top of the dune over there. Maybe you can also see the Iberian Peninsula – you MUST be on the same latitude, if your internal compass is to be believed. But, given the state of The New Me, the old me version 8.12 or thereabouts, it would be surprising if you can see your fingers in front of your face anymore. Well, there is a bit of fog. That probably rules out Spain and Portugal.
“Keep off the gott-damned dunes!” a mustachioed gentleman bellows from beside the dinghy he’s repairing. Or is he a pistachioed griddlepen? Words are meaningless now.
Herds are greening test plows, and you can Gorilla Glue your face to this webpage for cassette buying adventures. Irrational Tentent?! I thought it was a mirage!