the softest sand

Closed my eyes, for a moment, imagined some years back on the beach, living there, sun burning through my eyelids, water washing into sand, barefeet, jeans rolled up, sand in every nook and cranny. I hear the faint noise of children playing in water, splashing in the distant, sandcastles being made, they will fall to the tide soon enough. Walked to this spot a million times, a million years ago, flat streets, straight shot. Palm trees are making sounds like metal blinds closing on a window.

I have this notebook in my hand, and i've scribbled every thought on it. There is sand in between pages, and everywhere. I make little holes with my feet, feel the water fill them up, then the suction plant my feet to the ground. Back then it felt like the only foundation I had. Funny how we look for rocks to rest on, and sometimes all we can find is sand.

And then I go farther back, further in to a picture I have of me as a child, pale, blonde, smiling, my dad is holding me on the beach, his hair so long for the longest time I thought it was my mom. You can't see his face, he is staring at me. It's my first time at the beach, I am a baby and I look so happy. All the struggles and scars and scrapes and loves and failures and successes so far ahead of me. I was just there, existing, water running over small feet and baby toes. I wish I could remember that picture, instead of only having a copy of a third party memory.

the last memory of the beach: boat in the distance, almost slipping off the horizon, sun is burning down behind it, almost catching that boat on fire it seems. Friends around me, I walk down the beach by myself, feeling the sand shift and sigh with every step. I bend down, touch the water, it's always colder than I think it will be, but I don't mind it much anymore. The world seems colder all the time, and people talk of global warming?

Why does the beach, seeing the ocean, all those visuals just put us at awe? To think that most of the earth is water and somehow the waves are held back, somehow I am not capsized everyday. We look for miracles and signs and great and tremendous things all the time, for untouched fleeces and burning bushes, but miracles are everywhere. In the eyes of someone, their little worlds for eyes, the lines in their skin, their crows feet and furrowed eyebrows. Miracles are in the smiles of little children and in old people kissing each other's cheeks. There are signs in the waves when the tides change, not swallowing us whole and erasing us from existence.

So with my eyes closed I see the ocean and the sand, feel the softest sand between my toes, hear the water crashing, the children playing. I open my eyes to an apartment that should be warmer than it is, with a dog making puppy dog eyes at me and a tv telling me to do something that I do not want to do.

But there are miracles even here, in the calmness of a once wild animal. And I am not talking about the dog.

a year

Funny how i have not posted anything in a year, over a year. So much happens, and stories to be told, but life happens so fast, it's hard to stop and pause and write and elaborate on hours and weeks and months in a matter of sentences. Suppose that's the trick, really. Figure out the best parts, craft a story from that, and that's where heroes come from.

I suppose the last months have taught me that there are people still out there that i can find, that are worth something, that are equals. I thought it all but lost for years, for years and years, that no one would be worthy or good or what I wanted. But my heart softened like warm clay and some great Artist slowly crafts it. And it's troublesome and good and hard and painful and everything ever said.

I suppose it's the cold months when it's the hardest. The need for warmth beside you, the need to feel like someone else somewhere can touch you. But needs and wants are two different things and I refuse to settle for the needs when only wants will suffice, will only wants will fill. It's tough knowing you are and what you want, and finding it, and then having to wait. So tough, but I reckon it's that part of patience we don't get. Why not now? Why can't I feel the way I need to? How much longer must I wait? Is the art of patience in the painting of it, or in the fact that the painting might not ever get done?

We are impatient patients, really. All sick and dying in a world full of hospitals and cures that prolong the inevitable. But it's going to be okay. It's always going to be okay. If the last year has taught me anything, it's that heaven help us and that the sun might still rise tomorrow, and it will fall tonight. And to appreciate and bask in every second in between. To love for just a day, or to live for just a day, just one day, is better than a thousand lifetimes of loneliness and nothingness. And that is where I take hope in my patience, and where I find refuge in my emotions.

We take our moments in amber, our snapshots of perfect lives, the moments where all the positions are right, and we soak it in like exposed film. And I keep it, store it in a box and bring it out on rainy days when I feel like G-d is far away and he doesn't want to hear my prayers anymore.

So we wait for the pause and we wait for the answer and we wait for the dawn and we wait for the yes' and we wait for waiting's sake. And one day those things we won't have to wait on anymore. Amen and the end.