Going solo. Going on my own. A long time ago I learned to look over a situation before opening my mouth. Walking alone. Covered in emotions. Rain falls. Talking to myself. Talking to my dogs. They look up at me but don’t make a sound.
The background up ahead looks fuzzy. Seems like a dream. Days like this, they come and go. I go days without speaking a word. After years of talking to people that I didn’t give a shit about, and talking to women just to get in their pants, it’s a relief not to say a word. But I have always been comfortable with silence. Never found it awkward at all. Sit in a room and stare out the window. Sit in the woods and listen. Nothing. Nothing. Words exhaust me. Words exhaust me more than anything else. Run all day. Lift weights all day. Hunt all day. Never speak.Feelings that come on those rainy days; all of them upset me. Feelings, and thoughts that I welcome, though. Like an old friend returning. I once heard a new age “guru” talk about how people are comfortable with their “pain body” and they like it. These thoughts are my pain body, I guess. The place I go to is almost an excuse, but it is a comfortable place.
The beach has always done me good, especially when I am alone.
I take the dogs to a secluded national seashore in Delaware and walk and drink beer and start a fire on the beach and go swimming, even in wintertime. We just rush into the surf. Fuck it, it’s like electric shock therapy and calms my head down from the thoughts that I can’t get rid of, and of course, the dogs love it. And then we go back to a pet-friendly hotel and I shower and put on jeans and a flannel and my Buck knife in my boot and walk the half mile to eat at a dive bar where watermen and hunters and locals hang out. I eat oysters and get drunk as hell and play Kris Kristofferson on the jukebox and when I get back into the room, the dogs are happy to see me. I grab a pint of Evan Williams from the truck and we all go for a walk on the beach. I take pulls from the bottle and the dogs romp and chase each other and I am very happy during these moments.
It’s dark, man, dark as hell and the buoy lights blink from far off in the sea and I can see the amusement park lights from the resort town a few miles down the road. It’s like we are in our little world and what else is there? What else should there be? Nothing. No humans are allowed during these moments. They just fuck everything up with their useless talk about nothing. I will take these moments for my dogs, for myself, and for no one else.
