Sitting in bare feet, jeans and a jacket on the spray-dampened beach, a thrill of gooseflesh trembles through me at the warmth of the moist wind coming in off the agitated ocean. Jeans and a jacket because it is winter, and the cold is biting. Bare feet because it's the beach, damn it. Tiny drops and grains bourne on the gusts encourage me to close my eyes lightly, blurring away the grey of the clouds, the blue-green of the waves, the white of the foam, the taupe of the sand. The sound is all motion, moving water and moving air, organic liquids and sibilants in the voice of the beach, with scattered explosions of gull screams ripping through it all.
Out in the rocking waves, farther out than I can see now, a bottle is bobbing. It contains my message to the world. I littered the ocean with it, my anonymous cry for attention, because I've never found an effective voice for asking things of the world, and I've never found the grace to accept the gifts given in reply.
The ocean rarely tells our secrets. The floor, far below, is littered with our vessels. Usually the corks come loose or the lids are not fast. Then the bottles fill and sink, the secrets disintegrating into the salty depths. Once in a while, though, a bottle washes up onto the curious shore. Once in a while our secrets are seen by loners or lovers or excited young girls, soon to be disappointed or confused by our clandestine hope or despair, our message to no one at all.
I'm alone on the beach as far as I can see in every direction. My feet are cold and my nose is beginning to run. My jeans are soaked through. Suddenly I am overcome with the obsessive compulsion to attack the waves and take back what I have said. It's too cold, though, and my message is too small and the ocean is too big. The feeling passes and, shaking forgetfulness into my head, I stand and turn my back on the sea where, unbeknownst to me, the bottle is already almost half full, optimistically, and the ink is blurred and illegible, and the paper beginning to decay.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Later. Love.
