The sun was bleeding leisurely down the purple sky through slender trails of smoke rising from the blaze. Adrian and Angelia were being dreamy in disgusting harmony as usual. Jaime had wandered off to phone his girl in Mississippi. I was resting on my back fighting a battle I couldn’t win with the sandman, high on Southern Comfort; dreaming of tanned skin in cut-off jeans on sun-drenched pool banks.
I remember thinking that life could not possibly get better than it was at that very moment – the beach at dusk soothes a person, you know? The world seemed so far away then. The starting pistol had not yet sounded: the race had not yet begun (I was blissfully unaware that there was going to be a race [I was still convinced I’d moved out west to become a rock star!]). There are a few moments in one’s life that you cannot forget, that no matter what happens, you can go back to that singular moment and find some peace. Touchstone moments, I think they’re called. I have had a few, two of the most profound on L.A.’s beaches. One you’ve just heard: one you never will.
I stop short of saying life changing. Honestly, I still don’t comprehend why this memory has been wedged in my psyche for all these years at all. But this is the place I find myself going to more and more often these days; these never-ending days with their increasingly, maddening pace and prolific confusion. It means nothing really does it? I have watched a million sunsets across a campfire. I have spent countless hours with people I know as friends. I’ve had more than a handful of “unforgettable” moments. If you break this particular moment down, I am alone in paradise being beaten over the head with the very thing that I have never been able to get a handle on in my life. I should have felt as alone and lonely as a man can feel, right?
I did not. I was at peace.
I was at peace that night under Huntington Pier and I have never known exactly why. Given the next 20+ in my life I guess that moment was the celebrated calm before the storm. It was the first time that I can recall having ever thought about my life as having been (or even having the ability to be) a “life”, as having potential to be anything other than a disjointed series of unfortunate random happenings (punctuated by chaotic joy). I actually felt for the first time that there might be a bit of meaning to some of the bullshit that was my everyday. That is powerful, no? It's a concept that I struggle with daily and have yet to fully reconcile.
I was eighteen years that night. I had an unfamiliar wisdom that I wouldn’t see again for many years to follow.
It crossed my mind today, that maybe life isn’t as confounding as I’ve always insisted that it must be. (maybe it is…or even more so.)
Maybe those tiny, quiet moments and memories are the ones that are the most profound.
Maybe this is all only as complicated as I choose to make it.
Maybe I still have a helluva lot to learn.
Maybe I don’t.
It crossed my mind today that my story hasn’t yet been fully written.
That’s my new peace.
(I just found out that a friend of mine will have his first born son “first thing in the morning”. That’s actual touchstone. Everything I’ve just written seems ridiculous now. Congrats Ben and Whit!!)
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