Full Moon. Or not. Perhaps the memory is a dream. Perhaps it was just the security lights from the beachhouses that illuminated the night instead of the moon as I remember. Whatever it was, the light darkness of the moon, or the dark lightness of the security lights, it was gentle; the night. The air was still, the aftermath of a storm passed. Entirely still. Completely. The air almost mischievously mockingly still against the subtle intensity of the sea.
A surf warning had been issued earlier that day and we, Aaron and I, had taken our regular skateboard ride to the oceanside to see what all the fuss was about. It didn’t seem particularly dangerous; the ocean. It wasn’t obviously violent. It was more powerful, heavier, but also seductive. Something was different. The waves crashed with weight, but not smashing, not flatly closed out... but... the sand, yes, it was the sand. The sand scraped out under the mild crashing thunder in a fury of granular sound. A rough background baseline for the waves, a synth fading in rhythm, and as accompaniment to the hypnotic waves pulling it along. That was the only warning given to death’s flirtation should someone walk in.
And so, I stepped out of my flips, removed the items from my pockets and threw my shirt over my head. With bright eyes and wild heartbeat I dashed in and... I flirted. I immediately understood I was in a situation on the edge of my control. The caress against my legs quickly becoming a caged suction, a lovers caress turning into a feverish grab; pulling me in up to my chest and out to the crest of the breakers. Within a second my feet lost touch of the firm and the water became a thick cool blanket around me, both comforting and terrifying. And, I sober. Or not. Perhaps in a dream of a memory I watch the houses. Beachhouses move past, slide away along the shore, each house not moving back away from me, just away in parallel, as cars of a train pass, somewhat slowly at first, with most windows dark, their residents long since asleep. But some passengers were looking out lit windows. And the train car of house windows was picking up speed. And, Aaron is also in the water. Or not.
The waves were somehow hushed, and feeling it, being in it, I understood why they were not crashing, the power of the current, the speed of the water perpendicular to the shore stole the roll of the wave, the physics of the current pulling at them with angular momentum was robbing them of their direct assault on the shore... and the speed at which I floated along that singular crest of rolling, gently breaking wave... the momentum of my life. The sound of the sand underneath taking on a doppler pitch as I moved along past the houses one by one sliding by... and yet, even as I felt suspended, helpless, in the middle of a supremely gigantic thunderous power extending the entirety of the world, I was as calm and still as the night air.
I float on the crest. The sound of sand drowning the thunder beginning underneath me, just past the line of safety, just over that white line of foam the wave is finally crashing. My body follows it up, then down when it lets go... and my body just past the roll, just past the white line disappearing under cubic tons of water, under an echo that matches the sand. The beach front houses continue to slide by, not away, not further, just along. I notice the train car of house windows has really picked up speed. I expend some effort attempting swim strokes toward shore. The tiny distance gained is unnoticeable or just immediately lost to the current. My flirtation with fate is to be decided by a goddess of the sea, Amphitrite perhaps. Such immensity of power, such immensity of energy, such a total immensity all around me. I remember looking away from the beach, turning myself to look out into the fade of ocean to the sky without visible separation. No gradual color hues of a sunset, just simply beautiful complete darkness out and down into the depths and out, up and away.
My swimming strokes make no difference to my direction, to my course, I am fully immersed, in the water, in my decision, and I can do nothing but relax and wait. Another cascading thunder rolls just past me and the houses a seeming blur of movement; suddenly I have a sensation of vertigo, of being stationary, feeling the slow rising and falling of the tumult vertically, but feeling stationary, simply a witness to the houses rolling by alongside the sporadically lit beach.
I am relaxed and know I can’t swim in, it would just tire me out, and then, I feel the wave again, underneath me building, and I am on the whiteline crest, and I swim now, a fraction of a meter… and it seems minutes but I swim and… then… I’m in it. I’m in the wave and it is punching me, my body is on the plane face of it, and I am smiling at the beach, I am smiling on the beach, straining and pulling myself of that magnetic quicksand suction like Posiedons own hands pulling me back to ask about my tryst with Amphtrite.
Aaron yells to me from down the beach. He is running toward me. I run back along the beach to him, passing house after house, noticing how far I had travelled… been swept along, for, what, 30 seconds? I had only counted the roll of a few waves, maybe 5 waves, maybe 6. Maybe I was in for 45 seconds? It couldn’t have been more than a minute all told. Yet, I was dozens of houses from where I had first stepped in. Aaron greets me running, big hugs and shouts! We run all the way back to my pile of belongings. Safe. Or not.
It occurs to me that I could just do the same thing again. Why not? I am still being seduced and the flirting is too much, the sirens are calling and before I can stop myself or Aaron can talk sense to me, I run back to Amphitrites pull.
It seemed a safer prospect than before, than when merely a moment ago I had run toward a fate of completely unknown ocean variables. I risked my life again, but this time I knew the point at which I had exited safely, I could see the house down the beach where the tide, the current had remained perpendicular to the beach, and so I could assume it remained a safe exit point before the caress of the sirens would pull a man out to sea with the same swiftness it moved the houses past like a train. It would not be a possible, or even probable death, but near certain. And as I floated again, and the houses streamed by, I began laughing. Not a panic laugh, just a sincere laugh of someone as alive as can be when on the merest edge of life’s precipice and not going over, not yet, as long as a wave can hurl me back to shore again. Was it hubris? I believe it wasn’t. I wasn’t certain I would live, I wasn’t certain I could make it back again. I was foolish, but respectfully foolish, and for that the gods let me live, again.
After another 45 second ride that should have been terrifying to any sane individual I am laughing and shouting like a true maniac, having pulled myself to the beach again, the second time, and some lights are being turned on in the houses, I am sure emergency services were being called or at least considered as an option. For, any people at the beach on a night like this, and yelling wildly, are either unlucky and in trouble, or crazy.As I was the later and not in any need or want of authority arriving to save the peace of the mansions nighttime mood I ran back to my clothes and we grabbed our skateboards for the ride back home, laughing and shouting all the way. And, not truly realizing, not until this very moment of writing this story down, do I know just how close to the edge, to the dropoff, into the depths of the emptiness, how close to the shelf, I had taken my life.
This story does bring a memory of a time a few years later, that I did go over the edge. The only other time, other than my motorcycle accident that I flirted to such a degree. A time that I should, by all rights, without just the smallest bit of luck, a bit of luck that is so important that I cannot help but see it as a tangible object, a corporeal moment… a time that I should not have made it. The sirens called to both Ehrick and I that day. But, that is another full moon story for another time. Or not.
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