Sunday (part two)

It occurred to me as I stood marveling at the wild craggy shores that were so similar to the beaches of Greece and Italy I had seen that winter, that my life since college had been a perpetual vacation. Or had it been? I feel with more and more certainty as time goes on that my true job in life is to take in and experience as much as possible, and then spin it back outward into the world through stories, songs, art, or simple conversation. To remain the fool; stripped of my old pretenses, expectations, and judgments every time I walk off a new cliff into the unknown. If the ego is a creation based on the need for comfort and security, then perhaps amidst the chaos, the messy uncertainty, is where we may paradoxically find our true center.

Trying to explain this to the corporate lawyer as we lolled on the beach was less than effective.

"Everybody needs stability," she insisted. "Look at our vagabond friends from France. Even they all have careers now. It's just taking you a while to get it out of your system, that's all. But wait 'til you get your own apartment. And learn to COOK!"

Her eyes gleamed, and soon she was proposing an itinerary of all the simple dishes I should learn to make for myself, with accompanying grocery lists, and I zoned out and thought about the narrative for my first music video, and what I wanted to see in India, and that transpired for about ten minutes before one of us looked over to the right, and then punched the other one to look, too.

"Is that a butt?" Was the question.

"It looks like a lot of butts. And.... oh boy." Was the answer.

And then there was silence as we contemplated what apparently turned into a nudist beach once you passed a certain stretch of rocks. The chief frequenters of the beach seemed to be old men, and other than the very fit dark-featured surfer who we had followed down earlier, there shouldn't have been much to hold our attention. But it was like a bad car-wreck; we couldn't turn away.

The nudists didn't seem to care much for lying down or sunning themselves; instead they were up and about, promenading the beach, picking up seashells, and seeking each other out for conversation. It was fascinating. I thought we should go join them for the sake of a good story, but Courtney, predictably, refused.

Later, after we had taken a little doze, we looked over to see clothes where other things had once been.

"Maybe it's only nude during certain hours?" Courtney ventured as we packed up our picnic.

"I'll bet it's some kind of of meet-up group," I said.

And as we ascended the hill and passed quite a number of tanned and disarmingly handsome surfers on their way down, I made a mental note to find this meet-up group and join it. After all, this was practically my new neighborhood. Thank God!