ach Love Story
Paul Mount
Copyright 2011 Paul Mount
Acknowledgments
For Susan, who loved in me enough to let me go.
For Glenda, my guardian angel, who guided me to my new home.
For Amy, who saved the day when I most needed it.
For Lynn, who tried to warn me about the hot stove.
For Jim and the gang at East Bay Meeting House, who clapped even when I wasn't very good.
For Lowcountry Creative Writing Forum, who patted me on the back and gave me permission to stink.
For Zara, editor, confidante, friend, and muse, who held my hand and kicked my ass.
Contents
Introductions
Driving Into Winter
Zombie Town
Nautilus
Submission
Campfire
Mood
Mornings at the Beach
Folly Beach Christmas, 2010
Heliotropism
Spring
Sun Rising Behind Clouds
Whorls and Eddies
The Sporting Life
Hard-packed Sand
Advice for New Runners
Religious Girl
Just Got Home
Hypertrophy
Break-up Girl
Kudu
Wading in January
The Third Point
Coup de Gras
Synesthesia
Transition Girl
About Her
Mystery Achievement
Early
The One I Broke
High Wind Advisory
Separation
Roanoke…Morning
When I Return
Reunion
Lessons Learned
Portrait of the Poet’s Folly Beach Shack
The Magic Day
Introductions
Driving Into Winter(contents)
When you drive south from Pennsylvania, all the mile markers on the interstates count down. You always know exactly how far until the next state, and the milestones tick by. The trip feels inexorable, and gravity pulls you down the road.
When you are driving north, the miles count up from one to infinity. You are lost at every step, never knowing what progress you've made toward the next phase. Sure, you know you've gone 100 miles; but out of how many? 120? 200?
And all the while that the miles are counting up, the temperature outside is counting down, until eventually you reach the place where winter still clings, and snow is on the ground, and the chill of the wind is stronger than the warmth of love. In those northern climes, Spring is timid and cowardly, delicate as the first crocus. Unlike the Winter, which asserts itself with swagger and bravado and take charge. Spring slips into those spaces winter vacates, but retreats at the first hint of reaction from winter.
The sun in that latitude is at a lower angle, as if sulking that I have driven away from it. It refuses to shine as brightly as it does on my beach. The sunrise is murky and hidden, as if it can only be revealed when the work is completed. Soon, my love, soon, the miles will count down again, and I will be with you, to watch each earnest brushstroke of the sunrise at the beach.
Zombie Town(contents)
The off-season of a beach town is like the start of a zombie movie. The streets of the town are deserted. The only shadow on the sand is your own. It's utterly quiet and still. You go out in the day and see no people. You walk into a bar and you're the only one there. The wait staff is in the back, conspiring. Always floating about, like the scent of danger, is the knowledge that at some point this place is going to be overrun with sandy, sunburned throngs, smelling of sunblock and the gin that's soaking through their pores.
I arrived in Folly Beach in November, fleeing a marriage that was no longer going as planned in a suffocating, remote little college town. In the transience a town like that generates, the locals tend to form tight circles. It's not so much different from the beach towns, really, except that the zombies which the locals are fighting are different.
Within the confines of this war, you have these tight circles of your fellow humans, and you have your roles.
There is something worse than having everyone knowing your business: having constantly to explain yourself to people when you want to do something outside of their expectations of you. The tiniest stretch is scrutinized, and up for debate. In order to make changes in my life, I started living in shadows, everything surreptitious, and there were spies everywhere. It is not a life for those who are solar powered.
I found my identity shifting, shapeless, flowing like beach sand in ever-changing wind, and never finding form. I was a figment of my own imagination, a construct of the stories I told myself and the stories others told about me.
My thoughts and experiences could not fill in all the blanks. I could extrapolate from known data, but it was still something of a guess. Somehow the imaginary image of me that others held became a part of my own imaginary image of me. And there was fear of trying to uncover the truth about myself, because what if the truth was scary and disappointing? What if once found I didn't want to admit it to myself?
The good news that was that I could fill in those blanks with rainbows and puppies and happy things, paint myself with the rosiest possible hues, and then behave as if that idea was true. That delusion swathed me in bubble wrap, safe from the bumps of the world, and numb to anything that I might wish to touch.
I came to a point where if I really wanted to learn about myself, I had to leave the things I knew:
The comfortable life.
Low-drama marriage.
Numbness.
Mistress or two on the side.
Tacit agreement to hide from possible discomfort and avoid unpleasant conversations.
Charade of fighting against the zombies.
Safety and warmth in the house.
The internet's illusion of the world.
Nautilus (Version 2) (contents)
I had come here, to the beach, seeking inspiration, and none was forthcoming. And after a long and dismal day of concepts feigning and teasing just out of my mind's grasp, I decided to take a walk down humorless sand. It had rained most of the day, but the sun, while dying, was fighting it's way out, and the sky was a lumpy patchwork quilt of colors. There is a special melancholy to wet sand and overcast skies: it is a world of grays, except where the fading rays of the sun ignited the clouds into reds and oranges and hues I can't name.
I came to a tidal pool: still, forgotten waters, left behind in the waves hasty retreat. I recalled when I was a child at the Jersey shore, how fishermen would place baby sharks into the tidal pools. Their bodies so lithe and graceful moving through the shallow water – tiny miracles with vicious teeth.
There was nothing so interesting here. Night was claiming the sky, and I turned to go back to my rented rooms, and the merciless blank pages.
As I trudged through the mid-November surf, a flash of shiny peach caught my eye. A shell in the sand.
The word Nautilus came to mind. It wasn't a nautilus at all: Just a shell, although perfectly intact in its spirals and condyles. But the word moved me, as only the right word can. It echoed through my thoughts, resonating through bone and hardened flesh, thinning the blood to make it flow faster, bringing light into the dark reaches.
I picked up the shell, reeling with the possibilities of what this shell
could be. Awed by the gift the beach had given me: a talisman, a center, a muse. The mental picture of the shell beside my desk, always, ready to inspire me when I falter, calling me to my task when I stray. I had to get started, right away, and my feet floated over sand and surf as if I was walking on sea foam. I felt connected to the world, I knew the beach was here for me, eager to help me any way it could.
On the way back, I saw a family, forcing themselves to enjoy the chilly surf, trying to make the most of perhaps an ill-timed vacation. There was a little girl, 7, maybe 8, standing apart from them, tears in her eyes from the ferocity of her shivering. I asked her if she was alright, and through sniffles and tears and trembling she lied that she was. I looked at her delicate wet frame, quaking in the evening air, and before I knew what I was doing, without another word spoken, I pressed the shell into her tiny hands, and walked home.
My beach had spoken to me, and I knew the story it wanted me to tell.
Submission(contents)
My brave little poem!
Sent out into the world
To find your way.
With a primitive timeline
I will hear nothing of you.
I have booked you passage on the Mayflower
And as you plod your way across the sea
No news can travel back.
Find your new life, in the new world
And when you get settled
Send word for me
That I might know that you arrived safely.
As the mast dips beneath