beach thoughts, part I

I'm on South Padre Island with my brother. Today while lying on the beach I recorded the following boozily meditative thoughts. Or perhaps meditatively boozy. Or maybe just drunk and sun-soaked. (Most likely the latter.)

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Before you get old enough to know better, you might consider it a good thing to be strange; I know I did. "Why be like everyone else?" I might have said, and then I might've sucked down another mustard packet and insisted everyone join me for a fifth shot of Jager. 

But I'm 28 years old (only three weeks away from 29), and I just mistakenly stuck my hand in a coil of seagull shit thinking it was a auger shell. Lemme tell ya: Slowly becoming strange is not for the faint of heart. 

I'm cooking in the sun while visiting South Padre Island with my brother, who is enjoying the waves and is the most relaxed I've seen him in years. It's 2 p.m., and despite having vowed never to drink again a mere 24 hours ago, I'm already half a bottle of pinot grigio in. Lacking a corkscrew, I was smart enough to make sure it was screw-top.

And every day I can feel myself growing stranger. At times I think personal choices have fucked me out of the status quo; at times I think it's bad luck; at times genetics. It's most likely a combination of the three. And there is not a day I don't wish I could sear it right the fuck out of me.

To be stupid and happy; oh, to be stupid and happy.

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An older couple playing in the water. And yes, they are playing, splashing and riding the waves and all. I like to think they're here as a last resort because she's a drunk and he's a pervert: "Honey, if this doesn't save us, nothing will." And I think it just might save them. It just might.

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Out in the water my foot came down on something unnaturally squishy and smooth, the same between-the-toes squish as the wad of used toilet paper I smashed with my bare foot in a bathroom stall while camping one time (or maybe it was St. Patrick's Day). I don't know what the ocean squish was, not even a little bit. It didn't move enough to be a fish. Then again, I don't know what most of the food at Korma Sutra is either, but I still love it. Sometimes it's best just to go with things.