On the Beach

We were on the beach one night in 1982, year of The Buried Child. Ashleigh and I. It was cool and breezy, as was usual for any time of year on Cape Cod, but we were dressed for it. I was smoking a cigarette. Ashleigh smelled of strawberry shampoo. That’s how close we were sitting.

Not talking. Just sitting in a little bundle, watching the waves and the gulls. We had been talking, and we would talk again. Just not for this moment. I can’t hear the waves, or the gulls, not any more. Too long ago for sound. But I can see most of it.

The lights of Martha’s Vineyard across the Sound beginning to twinkle. The white caps of the darkening water. The sun had dropped a few minutes before, leaving a red glow above the outline of the island. Like an aura. Not orange, but crimson red.

I don’t know why I looked back behind us, but I did. The telephone poles and their wires glowed red. As did the rose hips under them, and the trees behind them. It was as if all of it was alive, which I guess it was, but I mean more like it was all one giant organism. The land, the water, the poles, the trees, and the sand. I wondered if what I was seeing was real, or if it was just a trick of the light and my eyes.

I looked back at the Vineyard and squinted. Then I opened my eyes wide. The aura was real, as far as I could tell. It was as if I was seeing the electricity that animates the world. As if my eyes could see the electromagnetic radiation waves that are always pulsing over us unseen. Then…

Something happened. I remembered something. All at once. I became aware of something like… eternity. I would say it washed over me, but it came from inside. It felt like a wave… of remembering… this exact moment.

Not like deja vu… it was bigger than that. Harder to describe. And it was crystal clear. I have been here before. And I will be again. Everything that has ever happened to me, every thought I have ever had, every thing I have ever done is repeating. My life is a loop. Time is circular. Time is an illusion. Time is a metaphor. And nothing can stop it. Time, or my life. Not even death.

All those times I considered suicide, it would have been pointless. Killing myself won’t stop the loop. It can’t stop the loop. I have always been here, and I always will be, in this exact moment. The past will always be memory, and the future imagination. This life I’m living is my destiny, and there is no escape. I have to play it out.

Like I said, it’s hard to describe.