What the fuck was I doing in a swamp?  I don't know, but the rough sea-grass was a bitch.

I started out chasing a sunset.  Well, let me back up. I started awhile ago with a pseudo-not-really-a-resolution-new-year's-resolution to watch more sunsets.  One a month to be exact, for a grand total, and minimum of twelve.  And here it was July and I hadn't even watched one.  I'd come close a couple of times, but never really watched the fucker all the way into the ground, and that's the most important part.  Or is it?  I suppose that's something I have to come to terms with.  Perhaps its the attempt that's important.  Or, that's what everyone wants the losers to tell themselves, while the super-rich lead cloudless lives, sign contracts worth a quarter of a billion dollars, smack home runs, date super models and fuck the extrememly beautiful women on the side.  Sorry, A-ROD, but whatever happened to you early on in existance, this has to be a balancing out of karma from another life.

I went to a former haunt.  Audrey and I watched a sunset out there two nights prior and it was eerie.  The water used to lap upon the dike.  The waves would crash.  To the left and to the right was a voluminious field of swaying brown and green sea-oats.  And there was the bay, in all its soiled glory.

But still, not a bad place to watch the sunset.  Water, sun.  Benches, no bugs.  Not a bad deal

Instead, I found a vista completely absorbed and surrounded by sea oats, and in bad neglect.  Weeds were overgrown, and the water was nowhere to be seen, as the swampy shore had grown by several football fields at least, obliterating any coastal view.  And the bugs hovered around with a furious intensity.  You couldn't see them, but you could hear them, a high pitched hum in the air.  Disturbing in its way, and I am responsive to sound.  I'd almost rather hear a girl orgasm than see a girl orgasm.

So that spot is dutch.  Horrible.  Bugs.  You can see the sunset, though.

And I resolved to watch the sunset tonight.  But when I pulled into the parking lot of the dyke, I just couldn't go out there.  Instead, I turned around and went to another old haunt.  A place where I smoked tons of reefer, the end of a road near me, with the terminus again at the water.  I used to sit there many a time and bake down as the sun sank low in the sky.  This would work.  This would be good.  There was a little path at the end of the road, by a boat launch, to the bay.  I could walk to the end, and watch the sunset there, on a small sandy beach.

I got out at the spot, only to find they'd civilized it.  Porta-johns.   Parking lots.  The whole nine, so to speak.  It wasn't just a gravel spot anymore at the end of the road, sheltered by trees.  They ripped out the trees.

Still, I got out and walked.  The path was still there!

And I walked.  And I walked.  And I walked.  FUCKS SAKE!

The walls of ten foot tall sea oats closed in around me, swaying like hindis chanting in opiate trances.  Animals bolted at my presence, crashing loudly through the brush.  It was claustrophobic.

I came through to a sort of clearing.  The sea oats pitched and rolled around me.  I couldn't see the sunset, only colors in the sky.

Out of the brush came a dorky looking white guy and a retarded looking black guy.  The white guy nodded.

"Hey." I said.

"Hi."

"How's it going?"  I eyed them up.  Were they trouble?  Were they the duo responsible for the serial killer looking mobile I had seen in the parking lot?

Always as a youth, I had come to these places, often times at a full moon, in part because I had this unreasonable fear that a serial killer might lurk there, ready to snatch the unwary and weak.  I would rationalize and hem and haw, but in the end, it was simply to confront my fear that I went there.  That, and to smoke copious amounts of the killer sensimilla.  But I always thought I'd encounter some kind of malevolence, and I would force myself out in the dark of night, alone, to face my fear.  To face whatever (nothing) that was out there. 

So, was this the time?  They had that run-down, white-trashy, stupid sort of look.  Glasses out of style, old hats and clothes.  No socks.  I was ready.  I think I could have taken them, if this was my time.

But it wasn't.  In reality, they were probably afraid of me.  Me, crashing about with no visible reason for being there, bottle of water under my arm. Who was THIS asshole?  Why the fuck was he out here by himself?

Well, it was me. 

I walked along the trails in the tall, towering grass as the sky turned magenta.  I found a spot and quited myself, watching the sky change color. 

Silence.  The wind stirred the grass, the ground made quiet bubbling sounds.

In the distance, a boat engine bleated powerfully, quickly taking its captain home.  Bugs flitted about.  On the ground was the tiniest deer tracks I've ever seen.  So small as to not even seem real, a true fawn, and not too long ago, they were there.

I quieted myself again.  In the distance, I heard the waves pound on a shore I could not see. 

I never really did see the sun sink into the earth.  But I wondered if that counted.  Does it count as one of the twelve?  I don't know.

It wasn't a place I'd take a girl.  Not most girls, anyway.  Audrey would go with me, but that's only because she's used to an extrinsic payoff on one of my quixotic journeys.  A scenic vista, a great place to eat, orlando bloom, something.

And this reward was entirely intrinsic.  I did not see the sun go down.  But in the process, I claimed a small little adventure for myself.  The type of thing that was for me, about me and by me.  That piece of me that I had thought I lost, somewhere in the conventions I have designed, created, and achieved, that somehow dominate my life.  These goals and jobs that dictate to me my actions, seemingly, unless I have the gall to kick up the traces once again and say its not for me.

No, part of myself at the start of the year knew where I was going, and allowed me a method, if I was brave enough or intuitive enough to seize it, that me that I love, and have something again for myself.

Which, yeah, it sucks to say that maybe I found myself once again, in a swamp.  Maybe that makes me a swamp-billy, instead of a hill-billy, or redneck, or white trash.  Whatever.

But there's other sunsets.  And I understand the commitment needed to chase it.

And, maybe, in a sense, I understand how to stay in touch with me, as the world tries to fuck me over and suck out my soul, make me a cog in the great machine.

Did I mention that when I went on the hike to pictured rocks I got pulled over twice by the man that weekend?  And let go?

No?

Well, whatever.  Fuck them.  Fuck work, too, for that matter.

They'll only get what I give them.