surrender

51 weeks.  That's how many pass in between here and now, and here and now, and here and now.  I live those weeks in those moments, resolving never to count, nor to wish them by, but then with a final sprint I am released from them to cast my body with equal resolution into the sand, requiring only the eternity of water as it rushes forth and carries away.  I can cite any journal entry from the last thirteen years and they all echo the same state of being:

6/7/2011 

So busy ... eating moonpies, sleeping late, scouring the sand for sharks teeth and other treasure, unaccounted hours lost (or found) considering the relentless advance and retreat of the sea.  I have the best of intentions to make, create, take and translate all this beauty and inspiration into something that lasts, but the surf is the siren's song -- narcotic.   I am content to just sit here, blissed, unmoving.

"Vacation," from Latin freedom from something, related to "vacate" and my preferred definition, to cause to be empty or unoccupied, to withdraw from occupancy; surrender possession...  My conscience (defined by its strong German roots held fast in the heavy soil of the protestant work-ethic) for so many years wants me to feel guilty for all this nothing but I have almost managed to shed it.  To surrender it and and the rest of me -- for a week anyway -- to the tide.

A lost soul, I can offer no resistance to the seductive nature of actions without measure of outcomes.  I am catching up with Jack Reacher and Dave Robicheaux.  Drinking beer from a can.  Eating cheese from a can atop something called Chicken in a Biscuit (and though I feel no need to apologize for tradition professional integrity forces me to mention that on a rainy day I found the vestiges of another self making croissants from scratch while improvising a rolling pin with a non-stick spray can).  Long aimless walks without pace.  Interminable lapses of time spent contemplating the curvature of the earth, the incomprehensible measure of so much water and the lullaby of ocean, ocean, ocean.