Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
That may sound like a judgment, but it’s not. It’s envy. It’s a hint of jealousy over the fact that these two people, whoever they are, have managed to go through life so unbothered that engaging a stranger in a strange land is something they feel free to do without any thought as to who that stranger might be or if talking to them is a good or bad idea.
I wonder if I was ever like that. I wonder if I ever felt like it was okay to trust people.
Before, I mean. I can do it now. Now, I feel a sense of openness that I didn’t feel for so many years. But it took an awful fucking lot of not feeling that way to arrive here. I wonder if these two have also been through things that have delivered them to this place inside themselves or if it’s just how they are naturally oriented. Did they help each other come to a sense of comfort? Or did they each enter into their relationship—whatever that relationship may be—already grounded in that natural ability to be open and unassuming?
I know I didn’t arrive here without help from a lot of people. A lot of people. Some of them incredibly obvious and some… less so.
Nurtured. By them all.
These two may not have been born with it either. They certainly may have learned to be this way. I’ll probably never know, but there’s such a purity to it that it causes me to think they’ve always been like this. Never really scared or anxious. Life set out in front of them and well taken care of from the start. But, even then, I suppose they had to get their heads around the fact that that was going to be their life.
In any case, however they came to be the way they are, it bubbles up through them when I answer, “Yeah, I’m Christine.”
“That’s our daughter over there,” the woman says, pointing at the freckle-faced girl in the polka-dotted swimsuit playing in the waves. “She says you’re having a bonfire?”
They’re referring to the massive pile of wood and shit stacked on the beach that reaches up well above my head and could not possibly be for anything else other than a bonfire. Which, for some reason, makes me like them more. I wonder how they’d react if I told them, “No, we just lump crap on the beach sometimes, take it down, then build it back up again. Local custom. Our version of a sand mandala.”
“Um, yeah. It is.”
“What time does it start?” the guy wonders aloud.
“No specific time. Just sometime after the sun goes down.” I don’t add, “Because time is an illusion and you would do well to just be here now, my brother.” But it would be kind of funny if I did.
“Cool,” the guy says.
There is an awkward pause. I have no idea why it’s awkward. There’s no reason for it to be, and I don’t feel awkward, but they seem curiously out of comfort. I think they’re waiting for me to volunteer more information. When I don’t, the woman finally asks, “Do they do it every night?”
“No. It’s a special occasion thing.” And requires a lump of payola to the town council, but they also don’t need to hear that part.
“What’s the occasion?” the guy asks. Yet another thing that tips them off as Americans. Unrelenting inquisitiveness. It’s cute.
I could tell them. I could absolutely explain why we’re having a bonfire and what it marks and how we got here and all the whats, whys, and wherefores. I could most certainly do that. But I don’t. Because of course I won’t.
“Feel free to stop by,” I say as I start to make my way back to the house. “We’ll probably be out all evening.”
If the fact that I choose not to answer and am now indicating the conversation is over bothers them at all, they don’t show it. They remain as guileless-seeming and doe-eyed as they likely are most of the time as I turn to head back inside.
“You live here? On the island?” the woman lobs out, almost like a fishing reel, trying to keep me locked in conversation. Not out of any real desire to keep talking, I don’t suppose, but because somewhere along the way in her life, someone who nurtured her to become who she is also taught her that things should get wrapped up in a bow. Have closure. Be cordial, convivial, complete. She wants to end our conversation—if you can refer to it as one—on a polite note. She wants to say something nice. She wants to let me know how she feels.
That’s fine. It’s a tiny kindness I can offer in this moment. A small gift I can give that lets both of them have an experience they don’t even know they want. And gift-giving seems appropriate. So…