…there is a lot to be depressed about. I’m sure you don’t need a list, but we could start with, mostly because surfing is the main thrust of realsurfers, the fact that the surf is one foot ON THE COAST. Oh, it is, like, 17 seconds; due, perhaps, to the hurricane that grew at an astounding and historic rate and slammed the shit out of Acapulco. So, there’s some hope, On the coast, MEANWHILE, it’s 25 degrees and clear at my house, fifty feet above sea level, probably twenty feet under water during the Ice Age. Under ice, rather, in an ancient fjord between the Olympics and the Hood Canal. Not such a big deal except that I am headed to Bremerton to try to finish an exterior paint job.

If I were to allow myself to get depressed by this or the unknowns of approaching winter, it would be because I’m ignoring all the other tragedies and horrors going on in the world: Wars I can’t help but compare (not politicizing, just thinking) to our own western, manifest destiny, expansion. It is Sunday, and there is football, if I turn on the right channel.

Even blocking out the distant wars, it is difficult to not, occasionally, perhaps when trying to pull out of the grocery store, think about how many of us are treading water, trying to pay the rent, trying to keep the heat on, and how many people have given up and gone under.

Despite being somewhat aware of social wrongs and injustices, I freely admit to being quite hypocritical. Thoughts and prayers are no more effective coming from me, a guy who will drive two blocks to avoid eye contact with pretty much anyone holding any sort of sign than from any politician tracked down and compelled to comment on the last or next mass shooting.

I didn’t write the following piece because I was depressed. Or, perhaps, in my sleep, I allowed myself to not ignore, but to follow some twisting dream logic. I have, because I am basically chickenshit, only shared this piece with my friend, Stephen Davis. He says it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. Yeah, so, Steve and I have different opinions on a lot of things, and it isn’t like he’s read that much of my stuff, but…

Like a Hermit Crab, Like Coyotes

It was a found sleeping bag that she spread out and flattened, just out of the rain, on someone’s, a stranger’s, stoop. She wanted this timely gift to be her cocoon; goose down and polyester and cotton; she longed to be wrapped, swaddled, insulated; to wake up as someone else. Someone better.

            Pushing herself in, the smell was of mildew, and urine, and other people’s body odors, other people’s sexual encounters, of that odor of the pores trying to rid the body of poisons: Alcohol, hatred, anger, desperation.

            She took breaths in through her mouth. This didn’t lessen the coldness in her feet and in her face, each breath almost burning, burning the way whiskey can burn, or vodka. She pulled the top over her head and pulled at the zipper, useless, frozen two-thirds of the way up. She was breathing her own breath. Unbearable. She pulled at her hair. Dry, wispy even.

            This wasn’t her. Not the person she believed she was. No. She remembered that person. She remembered why she was no longer that person. Compromises, mistakes, confidently rushing into situations she was warned against, instructed against; stubbornly defending her positions, her choices, as the right positions and choices; angrily striking out at those who questioned her right to make her own mistakes.

            Now she blamed others for not trying harder, for not being more convincing.

            It just couldn’t be all her fault. Not entirely. If she could have another chance. If she could just roll herself down the stairs, across the sidewalk, into the gutter, the water could wash her down. The water, the open water, wasn’t that far away.

She loved the water. Floating, challenging the waters holding her up and laughing at the clouds holding her down.  

            If she could, she thought, yes, now, if she could submit herself to the judges, the preachers and the teachers, the analyzers and the purveyors of the hypothetical, the gatekeepers of the straight and the narrow, the high and the mighty; if she could admit she was wrong and they were right. If she could, she would.

            Yes. Now.

            She heard, at some distance, in the heavy drizzle, in the out-of-focus light from homes and streetlights, in the squish and rumble of passing cars, someone say, “I’m sorry.”

            “I’m sorry, too,” she thought. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry,” she yelled.

            There were responses. Other doorways. Other partial shelters. All of them sounded like “I’m sorry.”

            The rain and another long night let up by sunrise. She was gone. The sleeping bag was still there, pushed into the shrub where she had found it. I crawled out of the back seat of my car on the curb side. I took a whiz into the gutter. I walked across the sidewalk and up the three cement steps, pulled out the bag. I pulled the zipper open as I walked back. I spread it, inside out, over the roof of my car.

            I looked around. “I hope it helped,” I whispered. “I’m sorry,” I said.

THANKS for reading, The long term forecast should bring some relief. On the coast. Look for the latest excerpt from “Swamis” on Wednesday.

Photo from the internet, some real estate outfit. Good luck to them. All original work on realsurfers.net is copyright protected. All right reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. If you really need to contact me, check out Erwin Dence Painting Company. I’m sure there’s a phone number. Checked. Yes.