Excerpt from the silence

I am envious of those healthy girls with their swooping clavicles and tide-smoothed jaw lines. My skin is weathered, pale, pocked and grey from years of substance abuse, from the prison warehouse where, a single book at a time, I attempt to make a dream come true. Only four months, nearly five, and I hate the commitment, the exhaustion, the bartering and bargaining to keep everyone satisfied. I want to tell them I was wrong. That this wasn't what I envisioned at all. There are days when I want to give it up, throw it all away and stay in Berkeley, which contains enough pompous seclusion to ignore the rest of the world. I want to nest in a cozy apartment, paint the walls, hang glass windchimes and quilt. I tell Ryan to keep pushing, keep trying to make time for both art and a paycheck. But the truth is I'd burn down the city and never again rely on my social security number for any guarantee of the freedom to write and read and travel.

The sun is radiant on this makeshift beach, a hollowed out inland, concrete remnant dump on the edges of various yacht clubs. Prepubescent boys struggle to impress their windsurfing instructor who is amplified by a bullhorn from the dock. Children stroll up, over and around these cement-chunk symbols of an industrial revolution, collecting the few rocks that drift into the bay from the beaches (far more magnificent) 60 miles up the coast. It's a free adventure, a chance to darken my women's suffrage, Virginia Woolfe complexion. I am slouching on nature's loveseat, allowing the fog-stenched mud/water to shock my toes with its perpetual frigidness. I've got the time but haven't the money to push father north where I could heave myself into the waves and feel the burn of being neither young or old, but alive.

Children with popsicles dyed brilliant colors, floppy hats, soggy sandals, puppies on strings and me with my full bladder and impatient desire to glow from something other than love or intoxication-- frequently one in the same. Older siblings lead sticky infants over the inconsiderate terrain, guiding with soothing tones of various Asian and Latino dialects. A ponytailed teenager with the stance and confidence of a squall survivor pushes his sailboat down a path through the trees, fishes his synthetic sail up hollow black poles and eases into the Bay as sure as Hemingway himself.

The park surrounding me is littered with perfectly curvacious girls, fertile but not yet women. No exposure to trial and error. Finely groomed preschoolers building symmetrical sandcastles on the safety-rated plastic playground from which the homeless are banned. Long gone are the swing chains that callous young hands, play clothes, thigh scorching metal slides and pebbles that bury themselves in your knees until nighttime scrub down. These children are poised, guided, expected-of, their grass stains replaced by designer labels. I consider lighting a cigarette but am despaired by the absence of a ruthless merry-go-round and travel west to the tourist dock, a watchful eye darting around in search of starfish and tarantulas. I nestle into a parking lot seawall. My only company is a lone stork and a brave kayaker in the distance. Men in basketball shorts and golf visors stroll past with etched walking canes, enjoying, as I, the peace and quiet of an afternoon without e-mail access.

A small black crab is tiptoeing his way across a shoreline rock as not to attract the attention of the looming seagulls. I hate seagulls, with their whorish greediness and insatiable hunger. I wonder just how long it took this crab to reach the warmth of the seawall? The two foot drop back into the choppy bay must seem like miles to a creature of such trivial stature although I am impressed by his ability to withstand the demanding waves and flatten to blend with rocks as predators sail by overhead. In a blink, a single reposition, I look down again and he is gone...my Saturday friend.

I haven't made many friends here yet and I am beginning to acknowledge the negative repercussions of my isolation. I'm going crazy from the inside out, picking fights with my darling lover over subjects so trivial. I am simply lonely. Unvalidated. Disconnected. None of it her fault. Stroller wheels, fishing poles, bad fashion, mundane conversation, handcrafted sun-colored sari's, parents fussing at boys who abandoned their shoes and inhibitions to flip large rocks and marvel at the ocean life burrowed beneath, scooping up their finds in a ball cap, filtering the clouded water from the treasure. I've moved three times now in search of silence and privacy to smoke and write but children venture curiously close and parents follow. There is no escaping mankind, despite how I try. The napping gulls express a similar disdain as me, flustered that their tired wings must drag full bellies to warm surfaces out of reach of unruly hands. Another gaggle of girls with bodies formed overnight bare all but the restricted, annoyed by the rays of sun blurring out their cell phone screens. I'd rather be fat and lonely and hung over than socially blinded from appreciating this view.

Oh my darlin', oh my darlin'

I've been lost, doing things I'll only slightly recreate in my not-so-fictitious fiction novel. My silence isn't purposeful, isn't forced...just, necessary right now.
Until I find the words, the most I can say is Ani's spot on.