Every Time I Blink

There was something so odd about walking the beach in November. The shore is empty, save for occasional little clumps of fishermen, their legs covered in rubber waders and their hands full of beer. Without the sounds of the summer beachgoers the ocean was free to be as soothing or as surly as it liked. The first day I walked along an ocean calm, the water the color of oxygenated avocado, the sky a crayola blue. The waves rolled and bounced shells toward shore, the broken bits sounding like shards of glass laughing. I'd never heard that sound.

The second day the ocean looked furious. As far out as I could see was white foam and water the color gray one use to describe old love gone old. The wind whipped everything it could, the sky built gray atop gray, like painting with only two colors. Tumbleweeds of seafoam skipped and rolled down the shore. The fishermen were gone. There was no one. The seashells kept coming but didn't laugh like the day before.

Not surprisingly, I thought of an Ani DiFranco song:

“The sky is gray, the sand is gray, and the ocean is gray
And I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome
Alone in my way
I smoke and I drink and every time I blink I have a tiny dream
And as bad as I am, I'm proud of the fact that I'm worse than I seem.”

I didn't get to write at the beach. I let every sort of distraction get the best of me.