It’s been sprinkling/misting and the humidity has been sitting between 80 and 90 % for a week. The bedding inside the tiny house feels like that of an old run down beachfront hotel i used to stay at in Florida. They had window units in the room and it kept the place freezing. They asked that you run the window units 24/7 even when the weather was nice in order to prevent mold but with or without the window unit on that moisture came in and got into the carpet, the walls, and the sheets on the bed. Everything felt damp. Every counter was covered in condensation. Every wall was sticky. I didnt care. I was living my best life at that hotel. There was no room service. Nobody bothered you. There was a little kitchenette, a toilet, and a bed. I had everything i needed. Of course i didnt need it very much with the amount of time i spent in that hotel room. I spent a week at the ocean. The Texas gulf is not ocean. Now i know that’s an unpopular opinion because everyone likes to go down to the gulf coast in their truck and do night time fishing and its supposed to be the best thing ever and all that ****. Power to you. I deny no-one their favorite past time. If brown oil slick water and flying roaches the size of your hand is what you’re looking for knock yourself out. But i was after Florida beaches. I wanted blue water. I wanted sandy beaches, no oil or sewage smells, and shells. Thousands of thousands of shells. The whole point of the trip was shells. I brought an empty suit case to put them all in. It was just beyond interesting to me that i could collect, sort, and categorize something completely for free. They were just in the ocean, and when they washed up absolutely anyone could find and take them, as long as they were empty. I did not shower. I mean, i swam in the ocean daily. It was salt water. What was the point of a bath? Who was going to see me? Where was i going? Back to the beach to shell. It just didnt make sense to keep bathing and dressing. I went in the ocean and wore a bathing suit and various t-shirts for a week. I would track the tide so that i could be there right as it was beginning to go out up until the moment it was covering the last mounds of shells and pulling them back into the vastness of the sea. I spent so much time there that the salt spray scratched my eyeballs and it became a medical problem. I had to cool it and stay indoors on the last day so i sat on the floor in the damp hotel room on the green carpet and arranged and examined my hundreds of specimens, my prizes. They were all beautiful and each one had been created by a sea creature, something once living, as a home to inhabit.
Occasionally i needed a break from the tedious task of searching through all the colors and shapes to find a whole shell before a wave took it…usually as the tide was coming in and i was feeling like there was always one more i could be rescuing from the wet sand before the waves took their treasure back. i would wade into the ocean and float there. The wildlife didnt seem to mind me. There were pelicans that would swoop in and land on the water, folding their expansive wings and dunking their big orange beaks into the water, temporarily sticking their butts up in the air. They had round yellow eyes. They would catch fish and then flip them into their sack like apparatuses hanging from their hard beaks and then flap their beaks open and closed repeatedly before going down to get another. The birds were huge! They dont tell you pelicans are that big when you read about them. I spent my time with pelicans, dolphins, one unwelcome shark, and some little birds with pointy beaks that seemed to be looking for insects and crabs amongst the piles of shells that were washing up. There wasnt any talking here. Hours of silence. The pelicans were silent except for the clapping of their beaks. The dolphins were too far away to hear. The little birds with pointy beaks were silent except for the noise of their little feet running across the shells as they chased after escaping prey. There was no use for words here. A week of silence, shells, animals, sand, salt, and water. And a daily afternoon storm with lightning, thunder, wind, and a rainbow.
The storms built off the ocean and came in around mid afternoon. I would use the opportunity to take a nap and when i woke up i could go to the beach and shell again. It was almost as if i didnt need food. The weather, the ocean, the animals, and the shells seemed to be plenty enough to sustain me. I ate a couple times a day but it was more for ritualistic reasons than hunger. My hunger was for the beach and every second that i wasnt there i was thinking about getting back there. I brought home ziploc bags full of smaller ziploc bags of sorted, washed, dried, and categorized sea shells.
It would be very hard for me to go back to florida again at this point in my life. Someone would have to sit the homestead and id have to drive both ways due to a crippling fear of flying which has only gotten worse over the years with each new story about boeing. It began with the assessment that if something goes wrong thats an unsurvivable height to fall from. There is no parachute. I mean im not sure why…there should be some sort of plan to survive the thing in case of emergency…like how big boats have smaller boats to evacuate in if the big one is going down. But if something goes wrong on a plane you’re just supposed to ride the thing down and the destination is certain death. Well then the news gave me a **** ton of evidence that i was right about planes being dangerous and to top it off my grandfather died in a plane crash. So…yeah, i dont trust those things. I’d have to drive. It’d be a long time off from work. I dont think i could afford to do it before i turn 50 anyways (20 year mortgage). But, i have dreams about the ocean sometimes. I dream about the rundown hotel in front of the empty beach (the expensive hotels have stretches of beach that are more inhabited by people) and the giant pelicans floating up and down on the waves mere feet from me. I dream about the storms and the rainbows and the ducks that would come up to the hotel to hide under the awning until the rain was over. The green carpet and the beige tub and the hundreds and hundreds of shells that i washed there. Lining them all up on the carpet and admiring the work of past sea creatures that had come into my possession.
The bedding, the bath towel, all of my clothes…they are all sticky like Florida. You dont know if you’re sleeping in cotton or the ocean itself. All the blankets are wet, cold and crinkly. The window unit does not remove moisture from the air it pulls in. How it is out there is how it is in here, and it bothers me none. It reminds me of the week i didnt have to say anything, where nobody needed me, nobody knew where i was, and i didnt need to be anywhere doing anything. I just ceased to exist for a time. I went somewhere else. Somewhere where the company was giant floating birds with yellow eyes and the only task i need worry about was shelling…where the schedule was determined by the weather and the tide. If someone told me i had a month to live i’d book a three week stay at that rundown empty hotel and walk the deserted beach and swim until i dropped and God took me home. (Someone would have to drive me there). If im ever terminal, st petersburg florida is where i want to be. Not at the fancy places with the sun chairs and tiki bars with the guys making brightly colored drinks with paper umbrellas in them…when im old or ill find me a less frequented empty part of beach and leave me there with the pelicans and the shells. The absolute zero need of communicative language for days is like salve to my soul, the clockwork afternoon storm fills my need for routine, and the ground is literally littered with treasure 2 times a day. Why dont i live in Florida? Because i’d never go to work.