{"id":266,"date":"2006-05-10T01:39:40","date_gmt":"2006-05-10T05:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/?p=266"},"modified":"2006-05-10T01:40:45","modified_gmt":"2006-05-10T05:40:45","slug":"lifes-a-beach-and-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"Life&#8217;s a beach, and then&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><br \/>\nEinstein&#8217;s down on the beach staring into the sand<br \/>\nCause everything he believes in is shattered<br \/>\nWhat you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway-ay<br \/>\nWe all get burned as one more sun comes sliding down the sky<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/images\/rents.jpg\">My folks<\/a> came out to Boston-land this weekend; dragged me out to Cape Cod and kind of spoiled me for a while. It was good fun mostly &#8211; a bit of sightseeing in this place I live in but never really find the time \/ inclination to go exploring by myself, and even the simple joy of a small stream so saturated with fish at one spot (trying to make their way up a fast-moving fish ladder) that a person could almost walk across it on their backs.<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>Night had fallen, and the folks were cooped up in their room watching TV. I couldn&#8217;t be there any longer, I was crawling-out-of-my-skin restless; I went for a long walk on the beach. More specifically, I started walking and wondered what would happen if I didn&#8217;t stop. But I did stop, at the occasional breakwater, standing atop a row of rocks extending out into the ocean, not caring if at any moment a wave on the far end of the bell curve would soak my shoes. At the moment there wasn&#8217;t much I cared about indeed. Just stood and looked at the half-moon and the ocean fog around me, dense enough that I could almost, but not quite, pretend that the rest of humanity didn&#8217;t exist. Eventually I ran into a canal of some sort and had to stop because there was no more beach, and if it went all the way through to the other side, I&#8217;d end up walking all the way around the end of the Cape and back to where I started, but not until far later than the next morning.<\/p>\n<p>The beach at night was void of life except for a handful of couples in love, a couple drunken revelers, some kind of little jumping bug, and a pair of <a href=\"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/images\/crab2.jpg\">crabs<\/a>. The crabs were both in various states of near-death, missing eyes, missing legs; thoroughly exhausted, possibly as the result of a fight and\/or copulation; with some primitive creatures one can sometimes hardly tell the difference. I gave up on the crabs and kept walking&#8230; I had a lot to occupy my mind; a lot that I thought I would be over by now &#8211; or at least not grinding on so much; a long-term, low-level grind. Sometimes I do wish I could just break down completely, and at least get it over with*.<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>Just recently I was talking to an older woman who confided in me &#8220;I need a man.&#8221; Her specifications were, basically, someone to massage sore shoulders, fix things around the house, handle the financial fiddlybits, take the car in when it needed service, check tire pressure, etc. (&#8220;Hell, <i>I<\/i> could do <i>that<\/i>&#8220;, I almost said, but didn&#8217;t want to get five across the face.) Due to the non-in-depth nature of this talk I must assume these were not the <i>only<\/i> specifications; there are usually all those unspoken tall-dark-handsome-brilliant-but-not-crazy-fascinating-talkative-romantic-funny-knight-in-shining-armor qualifications that conspire to keep guys like me single. But it did get me thinking, as things always do. (Oh, to have a brain with an off switch**.) For my biggest worry to be caring for an internal combustion engine would be a refreshing change.<\/p>\n<p>* but I kind of believe nothing is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lyricsdir.com\/john-denver-falling-out-of-love-lyrics.html\">ever really &#8220;over with&#8221;<\/a>; it may roll off, e^(-t), until it sinks beneath the noise floor of consciousness, lying effectively out-of-mind until randomly retriggered by a particular unique smell, or a song on the radio, or some obscure association. But that&#8217;s not exactly the same as nonexistence.<\/p>\n<p>** looking around, most people seem to have this, with the switch permanently stuck at &#8220;off&#8221;. I don&#8217;t envy that. But to <i>stop thinking<\/i> once in a while would be nice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Einstein&#8217;s down on the beach staring into the sand Cause everything he believes in is shattered What you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway-ay We all get burned as one more sun comes sliding down the sky My folks came out to Boston-land this weekend; dragged me out to Cape [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-rants-rambles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}