"He was alone. Not in the way of the Arctic terns and golden eagles that circled low over the island, but in a way that transcended mere geography and dwelled more in the esoteric regions of the mind. The escape from Los Angeles has been necessary and impulsive, spurned by nothing more consequential than the metallic sheen of a toilet stall door, which, in his drunken brilliance, had reflected all the self-loathing and material filth of the city into something sharp and tangible. That something sharp and absurd had pierced the veil of feigned happiness was only one piece of the puzzle. That alone was not the reason he was here. Ralph was here simply because this place was home, home of the conscious moment; yet also of something real and inherited, a cabin from his grandfather on an island in the Puget Sound.
On clear evenings, the hazy lights of Seattle filtered in over the jagged pine tree horizon, onto the gray pebble beach where the cabin was perched; an eye over the placid sound. Life now had attained a new clarity, not only of simple routine, but also of understanding that everything henceforth could only go forward, caught in the pull of the impossible. At night, under the dark green blanket of the sea, the shifting forest and steady sky, he hugged himself like there was no one else left in the world, squirming under the covers with indecision. It was not physical discomfort, or even mental angst to be honest, but something like the excited, half-irritable unrest of a child, forever kicking and fussing under the blankets.
Even when he had company in bed, which seemed increasingly rare in his last year in L.A, he was forever distracted and restless, to the discontent of friends and lovers. It was a neurotic impatience coupled with the need to be constantly experiencing something novel and surreal; a piece of seaweed in the tide. This was such a blessing and a curse; the high standards for nature and even higher standards for people. Every awkward part of his soul seemed to stand naked for the world to see.
Tomorrow he was contemplating a temporary respite from the wild amongst the concrete jungle of Seattle, a 30 minute boat ride through the fog and drizzle to Pike Place piers. There, he could oogle and judge the cool kids and the commoners alike; a number in the urban grid of the city. He almost wanted something spontaneous and beautiful to happen, another handsome and distracted soul to happen on him wandering around downtown, and he pictured them making love in the cabin after after the chilly, anxious boat ride home.
Life was best viewed as a progression of still frames through all the perfect moments; maybe not perfect but real and crystalline, with all the mud and sand of everyday routine sieved out. He might be picky with people, but the kelp and starfish that filled tidepools and the hilly green flanks of the island pleased him immensely, and their entertainment was novel and sincere. He did not romanticize the old, damp facts of rural life in the Pacific Northwest, however, and enjoyed the stoic resolve of everyday chores. Work was so necessary and beautiful, a welcome reprieve from the weary motions of school. Education was happening all the time he thought, without reason or consent, while chopping wood and catching fish, mending clothes and tinkering with diesel engines. Experience bred knowledge in the shadowy edges of life here, it seemed.
It was late October, and though the perpetually damp and green maritime climate encouraged year round fleece and flannel, the layers of warmth around his body has become more substantial lately as the cold nip of winter moved south from Canada. He thought with detached posterity of the well-paying job at the museum he'd passed up, or the chance to buy into the family business and slowly climb the New York blueblood power ladder. The most intense and joyous moments of his life were always alone though, and as lost yet prophetic adventurer Everett Ruess had said once, "I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?" The Starry black sky and warm firelight triumphed over the discontent bred by cities, he thought. Here he would learn to love himself amongst the sea otters and watchful gulls; an alien in a place that one day might be called home.
It was easy in this relatively cozy outpost on the fringes of luxuriant American wealth to become an idle romantic, yet somehow he resisted this urge. All the types of people he saw on an everyday basis in Los Angeles, the bums, the movie stars, the small army's of 5'4" blonde sorority clones, they all coalesced into the outgoing tide and left his conscious when he first took the little whitewashed motorboat out to the island, a refugee from excess. Everything in LA was excessive, yet somehow life there required this sensory over-stimulation he had removed himself from. Ralph was always craving recognition, a self-obsessed impulse that haunted the clarity he saw his life in now.
The purity he wished to attained, plugged in perhaps by the occasional trip to Seattle to sip Americano's and check his email at some trendy corner spot, yet also live removed from the clusters of people who tormented him. His standards for people never wavered, and though he was the first to admit his own flaws, somehow these things were less excusable in others, and he knew this was wrong. In a world of Fox News and MTV, he wanted to find another NPR; another reason to trust someone beyond immediate physical satisfaction. It was mid-morning now and the sun had peeked out over the distant, brooding shadow of Mt. Rainier, dissipating the last wispy bits of fog over the still water. The fog was a familiar comfort, a concession of his youth in coastal Maine, he liked to think. It lacked form and predictability, and he remembered the damp, cool August mornings sailing on Merrymeeting Bay, the silver shards of low angle sun filtering in over the stained wood deck of the little catboat.
Light was oblique and full of strange shadows here in the Northwest, shades of gray and green that played with rock and water differently every day. Here in the inner reaches of the Puget Sound, sheltered from the full brunt of the North Pacific, it was easy to fall into the illusion of security, but the distant clouds always boiling over Mount Rainier served as a reminder that this was not quaint, pedestrian New England. He walked barefoot on the smooth, algae covered pebbles of the beach, and deftly slid the old motorboat into the water, as the tide sighed and started back in to land. The crab traps he has set out last week should yield a nice dinner, he hoped, and he idled the motor as the boat slid past a gaudy neon green buoy. The viens on his sinewy arms bulged as he hauled in the 20-some odd meters of line attached to the trap, and in a cloud of mud and seaweed, he pulled the heavy wire trap over the deck. A half dozen ugly, reddish-white Dungeness crabs writhed and angrily snapped their claws in the trap, and he dumped them into an old 5-gallon pail, smiling and singing the last few lines of some song whose where and why escaped him. The rest of the traps didn't yield much, but he loved the purposeful simplicity of the exercise, re-baiting the traps with smelly old fish heads, watching the birds hover and otters swim nearby, curious and watchful. He revved the little 40 Hp Honda outboard, and the boat planed up with a low whoooosh, the wind whipping his tangled blonde hair back, and the cold nip of the morning air breathing fresh life into his lungs.
People were kind of like those crabs in the bucket, he thought; willing to crawl into a trap for a bit of food and shared space, unwilling to look beyond their immediate confines for a greater reality. One on one interaction was so predictable and polite, he wanted a human network that worked on spontaneous gestures with strangers, misunderstood signals sent across a harbor, a bar, maybe even a bedroom.
It was better to be seen out of context, with complete objective reason and blind faith, that to be studied and deduced with cold logic, he thought in absent-minded passing. The pebbled of the beach squeaked under his weight, walking to the cabin. 'Where we're going, we don't need roads', he mused, and thought of the steel and concrete edges of the American Dream closing in on the island until all the power brokers and schemers and clones crumpled like tinfoil, and a handful of fellow crazies held out here in the inner reaches of the Pacific.
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