The Beach

The beach? I'm at the beach every day, in my mind, even though I'm really trapped in one of the most fiendish corporate ghetto-prisons ever devised.

How do I do this? Just look around. See that old coffee-sipper who has propped himself up against the dayroom wall to stare at the distance, zombielike, for hours on end? Ordinarily, one would assume that he is recapitulating his normal role as a skid row alcoholic watching the cars speed by. To me, he is a waterlogged piece of driftwood Washed up on the shore, picturesque and aesthetically pleasing.

See and hear those domino-fiends slapping and banging their play-pieces while jabbering nonstop nonsense? To everyone else, they are attention-starved children who have been too often slapped out from in front of the TV by their momma's pimps. But, to me, their noise is the slap-slap of waves breaking and the high-pitched shrieking of seagulls fighting over possession of a smelly, dead snail.

Notice the guy standing on the chair who gets his attention by constantly changing channels on the TV, causing whiney protests from the crows he annoys? They are colorful raucous parrots, and he is a monkey on a palm trunk straining to reach coconuts.

Over by the microwave is another wad of inmates. Some are arguing over who jumped line while everyone was distracted. Others argue over inanities, such as the geographic location of Stinkie's mom's sister's house in relation to the local liquor store, back in their `hood'. To me, however, the microwave is a campfire surrounded by drunk natives who are either dancing and singing, or trying to dig fire ants out of crotches as they scream in pain. It's hard to tell which while perceived in the distance from the window of my grass hut.

It takes practice and concentration to transform the crescendo of fractiousness and insipid buffoonery into mock peace and relative quiet, but it can be done. The first step is in realizing that they can't help the way they grew up. They suffer a culture of poverty, ignorance, deprivation and thus criminality and moral deficiency, Their minds are trapped in adolescence due to being deprived of worthy adult male role models and a father's discipline. Only the strongest mind can overcome these disadvantages. Worse, they can't even see the abnormality of their behavior, so how could they fix what they can't tell is broken?

The next step is to forgive them and their ignorance. Once you realize their limitations and forgive their unthinking, run-amok behavior, you can get back to the beach, (or your work) to do what they can't: accomplish societal progress.

You can't beat it: The shorebirds dancing with the waves, the crashing of the surf, the scuttling of the crabs', the tanned bathers, the sea breeze blowing fresh air onto the land by day, sweeping the polluted air out by night. The beech is where I try to stay, mentally, while trapped in prison with a bunch of scared young punks, treacherous old men and malicious guards.

They keep dragging me back. I tried to eat my slop, and two punks, attached at the hip, sit down nearby. The dominant punk, insecure, has to mind-game his "friend" in order to maintain his tenuous hold. His sly mind decides it's safe to count coup on this "old man" to impress his "buddy" with his fearlessness. He screws down his neck to produce a loud gravelly voice from his tender, young throat and demands of me, "What house are you from?" I tell him, as it is not costly to be polite and let punks have one freebie. But that was too easy for him, it's like a reward. He sees a cringing old man feeding his ego, so he screws down his neck again, and demands, "You been in any other house?" Again, due to the rules of social conduct, I politely give this punk another free answer. Even this is not enough to sate his expanding ego. He imagines how impressed his friend is, and loves the feeling of power he receives from this and his imagining how he is bullying an old man. He wants more! "How long you been here," he growls.

The punk really should have asked somebody before just picking on a random target who looks weak and feeble. I stop and think about this punk and where he'll be in ten years. While I'm gauging him, he gets irritated at my gaze, and he fears he's losing control of the situation. Trying to get it back, he scowls and demands, "Who are you?"

This punk will be dead in ten years, as he works his way down through shittier and shittier prisons. I decide that I will save his life. I jam my plastic spoon-handle in his eye. I feel it crunch past bone and enter his brain before he begins screaming. I can give him an amateur lobotomy by simply wagging the spoon around in his brain. But I decide that he is not a real psychopath, only a faker who would later become a psychopath if left to run amok on his own. The punk gets tangled in the bench, falls to the floor and wallows in the slime that's always there. His "gang" gapes at me, horrified, then makes his escape. The cops swam. They give me a cage all to myself.

The shorebirds peck at the seaweed. The sailboats glide by on colorful sails. I see fish in the waves as they thunder in. I ease into the surf. The tide floats me out toward the sunset. The peacefulness is intoxicating.