The Study: Better Times

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The sand was course and dustless, it allowed me to pick it up, but didn't stick to my hands. It was black and warm and the closer I moved to the water, the warmer it got. A hundred yards away I saw red and white signs with rigid letters painted on them warning me about something. I couldn't read them, but the sharp angles and erratic lines that outlined them in rusted and bubbled red paint suggested I not pass beyond them. I walked closer still and heard the water rush up onto the tiny grains and sizzle as it made contact with the air cooled shore and backed out. I took a seat against the sign and felt the earth burn through my jeans. It warmed the rivets around my pockets and they began to sting my skin. I liked this, I liked the sensation of pain, I liked to feel it balance on the brink of bearable and not. The sand wouldn’t falter in its intensity,  unlike the morning shower that stings and then settles, the sand pushed, and then pushed some more, deeper into my skin. My bones warmed, and my fingertips warmed and the heels of my feet that sat an inch or two deeper than the rest of me warmed as well. I remained still here, in the center of this land, and thought back on my journey thus far. I was twenty-two, I was monetarily empty, I had loved, lost, overcome, seen, heard, listened, experienced life on a new level and I had changed. I found myself to be most content while on the fringes and viewed the sequence of life in the core as utterly manic. While reminiscing I made sand piles with the ridges of my hands. Starting at an arms length apart I'd plow the sand as tractors plow snow and push the growing piles together. Closer they'd get and as they grew the mounds began to slide into one another and created an essentially cohesive unit of sand in the center. I continued to push, and as the mounds met in the middle they grew larger and wider and more obtrusive until I forced my palms together and the sand empire began to crumble. The grains fell rapidly, some to the left, others to the right, and the inertia sent them back to the peripheries of the sand canyon before loneliness urged them to roll back towards the middle once more, recreating a structure larger, more chaotic and more oblivious than the rest. It was in this moment that I stepped outside of myself for the first time. Everything up until this point, even things I coined as spontaneity, had been planned, had been a conscious act. Yet, here I was, unintentionally expressing myself through sculptures in the sand, an act in reins and guided astutely by the subconscious. I stepped out of myself and I saw my thoughts. In the middle, this stout, compact mass made of millions of tiny grains all supporting one another in their quest to remain dense. Some grains would escape though, run for more tolerable areas only slightly further from the core of it all. And others, individuals who felt the need to be away from it dispersed themselves near the ends of the island. It was beautiful. I laughed through my nose and swept the sand flat once more.

There was chatter in the background, over my shoulder voices jolted amongst other voices. I became in tune with the change of sound and pitch, as the voices would look towards each other and then project out to me. Like the sign, I understood them without understanding. "Kiken", they yelled with concern in their voices. I didn't look back.  "Abunai", others began to shout, "Abunai!" I raised my hand to let them know everything was fine, but they pursued me nonetheless. One man came towards me with towels wrapped around his feet and I could see him grimace with every step that took him closer to the water. I stood up, apologizing for enticing him out here, letting him know I didn't speak English well, but thanked him for his concern. "Gomen-nasai. Nihongo yoku hanasemasen. Dōmo arigatō." I had pretty much exhausted my foreign language abilities at that point; it wasn't until I removed myself from this land that the desire to speak in a different tongue enthralled me.

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