I resent feeling contemplative while standing on a beach. Somewhere along the way, it got buried deep in my psyche that thoughts on a beach are somehow more profound.

They aren’t, it’s just a beach.

I’m from New England so there isn’t much to do at the beach besides think. Our water is as cold and unforgiving as our neighbors and our shores are as rocky as our municipal finances.

So I stand on the shore looking for meaning in the sloshing of the sea as if its ebbs and flows might speak to me. The crashing waves reach out to me like a thousand invisible tentacles trying to hold my imagination in it’s hypnotizing spell.

No matter how many times I visit a beach I try to trick myself into believing that those moments count more than any other.

It helps the illusion that visiting the beach is a disruption from my day-to-day routine. But truthfully, standing on the beach is no different for me than going to the DMV. Prolonged eye contact there makes me uncomfortable, I have no idea how long it will take, and no matter where I turn I’m seeing too much of other people’s exposed flesh.

Usually, at the beach, I’m just thinking about how glad I am to not be a fish. What an awful life that must be – to swim and turn wherever your school compels you. But that lifestyle might not be all that different from mine, standing on the shore, expecting some epiphany to hit me because my toes are in the sand. We’re all conditioned for something.

I have a very unrealistic fantasy of either finding a message in a bottle or buried pirate treasure at the beach. I know these desires are embedded deep within me because I look with disdain at those who actually pursue this dream: litterers and creepy guys with metal detectors.

I’m also put off by sandbars, the only kind of bar I don’t like. It’s misleading to have a little ledge of land separated by the sea. I appreciate team players, which sandbars most definitely are not.

I prefer rock formations that let you walk out over the sea. As a kid, I found them irresistible, although I haven’t been on once since my vocabulary grew to include the words “severe spinal cord injury.”

Lots of things at the beach intimidate me, especially the vastness. The magnitude of it all looking out at a limitless horizon with unexplored universes stretching out both above and below. They’re equally terrifying.

I despise brushing up against seaweed, or anything in the ocean. It’s all hostile and will gladly kill you if given a chance. A minnow even tried to eat my toes while I was honeymooning at a peaceful tropical resort.

Man was made to dominate the land. So why do so many of us go to its edges to relax alongside freakish creatures like horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, and sharks? And why do we think proximity to such terror will give us deeper insights into the universe?

This phenomenon is only magnified within me if I visit a beach at night and simultaneously hear the waves and see the stars, which usually end up being satellites. I look for the Man in the Moon and the Big Dipper because they’re the only things I recognize. If I’m feeling ambitious, I also try for Orion’s Belt but never actually know for sure if I’ve found it.

I can’t look at the stars for too long without convincing myself that aliens are going to abduct me. I used to think this would be an exhilarating experience that would distinguish me as a pioneer for all mankind.

Now I only picture myself playing the role of terrified trauma victim who’s lucky to survive such an ordeal. Chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes in a mental hospital while sipping black coffee and telling the orderly about how jellyfish are actually intergalactic hot air balloons for our future gelatinous overlords.

I don’t know when the aliens of my imagination shifted to a hostile demeanor, but I no longer wish to be visited by them.

Whether it’s day or night, you’ll be hard-pressed to find me hanging out for very long at the beach. You’re much more likely to find me sitting by a pool.

Pools might not hold the secrets of time or connect with anywhere else in the world, but they’re temperature-controlled, firmly rooted on land, and filtered – which is profound enough for me.

 

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