Life's a beach, and then you die...

I wish.

Right now life is a cold, rainy, dreary day in a traffic-ensnared megalopolis without a soul -- well, without much of a Southern soul anyway. Everything here is hurry-hurry, gimme-gimme, outta-my-way-sucker.

There is also money to be made here. I, however, am not making any of it. Instead, I am contributing to other people making it. People I don't know, people I don't like. Where's the fun in that? And that, I just realized, is the issue here: it ain't fun.

I am in serious need of some fun.

Decades ago (ouch), fun was a lot of go-go, gimme-gimme -- things, experiences, people out of the ordinary. On some level, that kind of "fun" always exhausted me, left me hungry for more; perhaps because it was actually created out of the need for excitement. Then there was another kind of fun -- this one totally based in the ordinary. And that is what I am craving now, effortless, everyday fun spontaneously arising out of a serene and slow-motion life -- maybe along a river or a beach somewhere.

When did this happen, this abandonment of my lifelong infatuation with all things Appalachian for the pull of ancient waters? I have not seen the ocean in almost seven years, not since I left Florida. What's up with that? Why have I denied myself something that I love? I have done that for a while now -- denied myself spiritual nourishment in exchange for... what? I think I may be suffering from dehydration of the soul, and maybe the heart as well.

Whatever it is, I am running from thirst, running from cold, running from noise. What am I running toward? I have no idea. But I do have memories that rise above the angst:

-- sunrises on the 'Hooch with spirals of mist rising from the coolness of the river's depths into the inevitable heat of day, evaporating into the morning like dissipating ghosts caught outside the safety of darkness

-- sunsets on that old, slow river where the teasing breezes of evening were no real competition for the sultry richness of all that sun-warmed water filling the night air with its voluptuous sensuality (mix that with the scents of night-blooming jasmine and then talk to me about pheremones...)

-- sunrises on the beach at Fort Desoto as hundreds of seabirds gather in a great cacophony of welcome for the blazing star that suddenly springs from the darkness behind me and slashes open the sky from treeline to horizon with the bloody purples and magentas that precede the dawn

-- sunsets on Pass a Grille, waiting for the sun to slip into the watery horizon, listening for the hiss, straining to catch a glimpse of that infamous green flash, the whisper of sea oats along the dunes behind me, the pearlescent strands of moonlit foam along the water's edge

-- and that blazing afternoon along the Atlantic shore of Shackleford bank, surrounded by mountains of imported Bahamian sea shells delivered by hurricane the week before, when I stood watching the dolphins watching me and was voyeur to the most sacred dance of the sea, unable to move, to speak, as two dolphins circled lazily just offshore, circling, weaving, moving together in the laziest of spirals before disappearing beneath the undulating surface of the waves, suddenly rising again like a rocket in free-flight, exploding high above the surface of the water as one, joined together in an ancient mating dance, exulting in the openness and breath of light and sky and life ongoing, their songs shrilling the yellow-hot air before the splash, and the silence, and the awe...

What a gift the sea gave me that day! Even now my heart stirs from its hibernation, humming with the remembrance of life affirmed, and my body inhales the memory of sand, and salt, and sea, and I remember to sink into the sameness, the eternal repetitions of life's tides, the rise and fall of the journey, the connections of water to my soul.

It is sameness that I seek, a watery vista with a horizon, the assurance of tides and dawns and glorious sunsets, the smell of life itself carried by seabreezes, a return to the watery soup from which I was created.

I want to go home again and know when I am there.