Epistle. To: Wolstonecraft

   Something funny's going on. Woke up with headphones still around my ears. The surf crashing off the dune from my campsite in the woods. It's illegal to sleep here but nobody's caught me yet. I'll probably die from tick bites and poison ivy before that happens and I spend a night in jail. I guess I plead guilty to successful vagabonding! But it's such a place to sleep out in the open. Pine trees and oak trees bent and twisted like old ink drawings. Some low crawling bush that I can't identify on my phone. Aren't phones like god? Don't phones know everything? Whatever lives here gets its due from the weather. Atlantic winds. Piercing salt. A coast shifting whenever the winds howl. Hey so far it's been great!
  But did have a nightmare.
  No matter what happened - all night long - a face kept appearing across the clouds in my head. Like having a threat for a name almost.
   Glad I woke up.
   But. Remember the monsters we used to draw in school? Remember the time we snuck back into school and drew monsters across the blackboard and never got caught but everyone knew that it was us?
   I've always felt that I would turn into a monster. And what do you do with that? Like some character made from spare parts?
   Must be the drugs. How to think about the peculiars. The confusion of samsara as belonging on a grid with drugged birds and drugged trees. Or drug induced nonchalance when faced with the sweep of life. Were you scratching your chin while sleeping or not? Maybe it's the way a page doesn't focus. What do we do with this gift of electronics? Or not. Clouds rolling over. Maybe it's just hanging out doors all day. Maybe it gets odd and you think all nature loves me. The air keeps dropping. The air keeps rising. Wait for thunder. Wait for a single hand. Children in bright orange jerseys run along the beach. Do you want to go for a bike ride? Watch out for the thunder that hasn't happened yet. Must be the drugs when something tells you to believe in everything you see. Refreshing snap off a crisp apple. The old in/out. Union of opposites. Keep searching. Get to Friday and turn in another phony script. Look helpless so strangers turn into big hearted neighbors. Too bad about the weather. A slice of pie left. If someone else were around we could have a party. There's a party in my head. All kinds of bands. Monologue winters  in the coming sky of the eyes. Reflections from central casting. Great amounts of waiting. Waiting about on drugs. Maybe it's the drugs but it feels ridiculous to doubt. Cooler air. Clouds moving the heavens like romantic balloonamania. Lighter than air. Crows seagulls the usual suspects. Huge military planes like infected enthusiasms. Need a shower. Radically. What have we done? Can we turn this back. Take a pill and you just have to wait and see. When did focus shift to the long trailing shot? Can't stay still any longer. Need another sleep. Deep tranquil movie from the day bed of the woods. Messages from other humans moving about on the phone. Yea. Bring food. Information. How we're doing. You gotta see the dancing troupes.
  Anyway yesterday bay side I ran into this guy. He stood in the water like he owned the place and was catching blue fish on a fly rod like he knew how a fish thought and he was just an extension, like how the ocean worked. And as he hauled them in -  hand over fist - yea I'll be among those using shop worn cliches in an attempt to describe things - but hey when imagination fails! -  but that's what he was doing! - he shouted out to anyone passing -  take a fish! who wants dinner! It was almost like watching a murder.
   Afterwards - after I took my fish to cook up later - I said hey that's kind of amazing.
   No he said they're just after the little shits that run in on the tide and then they throw themselves up crazy.
   Yea I said but you still have to catch them.
   Any fool he said can fish in a frenzy.
   Been here long I asked?
   Over two hundred years was his reply.
   You look pretty young for that I said. You know I thought trying to be friendly and not make it sound like age was a category. Or even something to fucking endure while you got on with life. But over two hundred years? Was this guy a vampire?
   He shook his head at me and laughed. A little three step cough of a laugh that was barely recordable and that seemed to suggest there were bigger things in the world to laugh at than at me. He rigged up his line and secured it in the fishing eyes of his pole. My family he said. We've been here for over two hundred years. Settled this place actually.
   Holy fuck I said. First thought was to search it on my phone but then thought whoa this was instinct instead. Roll with it and check it later with verifiable means. I think I got it. Mayflower and all that I asked?
   Don't let the heritage fool you he said.
   Right I thought. If you can't fish then fuck them all because you're fucking dead if you can't. But you know I said there was this one time I was reading something and got it all wrong. It was a book on Greek philosophy and there was this chapter about a goddess who offers the narrator two paths. I read it wrong. I thought the narrator was offered two baths by the goddess. And you know who would't want a couple of baths with a goddess? I mean I'd take one. One bath. One goddess. But two? You know what I mean?
   No he said. I don't.
   Maybe he was right. Maybe it's just another kind of ladder leading up to nowhere to care about except where you are and that's it. The washed up seaweed on the shoreline though twists me around how beautiful it gets left in place.