I walk the beach.
The northern shore of the Bay.
I stare at my feet plodding in the sand, and I try to imagine the tracks they are leaving.
My hands are hanging behind me.
I am not depressed.
And yet I am not ecstatic.
I simply… …am…
There's a song in my head.
Cutting Crew… …Laura Branigan… …(?)
Whatever.
I'm not all that keen on having songs stuck in my head.
All they ever do is tempt me to try humming or singing.
And in my case… … …well… …
I walk the beach… …
The night has fallen.
There is a gust of wind over the waves.
The surf crashes. The sand shifts. The world changes and changes back again.
I tilt my head up.
Narrow black eyes to the cosmos.
Every night is a pinprick that blinds me.
A fire in its own individual right.
What is the past?
Some of us burn bridges because we want to.
Others because we have to.
Me?
I burn because I am.
I am because of that which has been burnt.
Burnt to ashes.
I am neither happy nor sad about it.
But I am… …lonely… …
Everytime I think about it.
I know better than to be here.
But I… ….
I exhale and tilt my head down.
I walk the beach.
"… …. …. …."
I hear something.
I hear something and my eyebrow rises.
I blink my black eyes and jolt them up and over.
There is another starlit pinprick before me. But this time it is on the beach. On the soil.
And the pinprick is singing. With guitar twang and gentlemanly drawl.
Rhythmic poetry.
About lost loves.
Manly martyrs.
Loners who must venture away from a holocaust and into a strange world.
Like 'smoke rings in the dark', he sings… ….
And I understand it about as much as he surely does.
Even if the two of us are understanding two completely different things.
I smile gently and wander over to where he sits with his guitar.
I crouch down without so much as making a sound.
I don't want to interrupt him.
Bard sits before the bonfire, gently strumming with his guitar.
The words vibrate and froth forth from his lips.
There is a dusty, ancient honesty draped all about him.
Like he is as young as a wildflower and yet as old as the North American continent itself.
I suppose what I find in him… …what I have always found in him.. ….
Is something so infinitely older and wiser than the confusing surface world that I've been dropped into.
I do not belong here… …but Bard reminds me that none of us truly do.
We are all remnants of an archaic flame. Desperados on the run from one inferno or another. Smoke rings in the dark, we evaporate into the obsidian soup with more or less grace. All we bandits have to lean on is the fumes of each other.
He knows this. He sings it. And I listen.
When he ends, he lets out a breath and leans back in the sand with a soft smile. He tilts his head over towards me ad casually speaks as if he had expected me to stumble upon him from millennia in advance:
"I reckon there's no harm in… … ..in a flame that knows when and where to stay put… …."
I brave a blinding stare into the flickering bonfire and nod with numb acceptance.
Bard half-hugs his guitar and stares blankly into the amber heat-dance. "… … …I have been many a thing in my young life, Noirry. Many a heap of good things. Many a load of bad. But in the end, I think I can get around the whole bunch and just say one thing… …ONE thing about my life…."
I tilt my head to the side. I listen and wait.
"I'm a nobody," he murmurs into the distant flame. "And it ain't so bad a thing when you think about it. Because a real nobody is free. Free to float with the wind… …free to fall like a rock… …and maybe even free like a fish who just…. …just hugs his fins to himself and lets himself drift down the river any way he feels like."
I inhale deeply. I glance towards the dark line of Ocean beyond the night. The thunderous roar announcing the deep black on black on black…
"Heh…'course, we're all just fish dropped into a pond… …if you think about it with all the whicker parts of your homemade noggin, right?"
I can't help but smirk. A thin effort at best, but instinctive.
"Only… …We must be in here for a reason… ….," the cowboy murmurs. He strums once. He strums twice. He pauses. He murmurs again. "We must have a second chance for a reason… …."
I am silent.
He is silent.
We are nobodies.
That night, we stay there.
Serenaded by the alien tunes of the pounding surf and Bard's guitar string fingers.
We watch the flame die out.
Mutually blind.
But happy… …blessed… …
Together, alone.
