feel drowsy
exit and rest
We arrived in the dark of early morning. I wasn’t sure I’d even make it—sleep has been strange, I wake up from dreams, luckily not like the nightmare I had recently, but more dreams where I’m at school, on unfamiliar school grounds, and in one dream I was even wearing my Catholic high school uniform.
In the dark my friend saw a coyote cross her path and told me about it moments after I got out of the car to meet her. As we headed up the trail, a barefooted man walking downhill strongly encouraged us to take off our own shoes and walk barefoot. No thank you, my friend said. He said something else and gestured behind him where up ahead another person was carrying shoes—his?
We saw the moments after sunrise at the first peak. The moon shone bright in the western sky above the ocean.
Further up, closer to the peak we usually end on, I’d been describing to my friend my body’s transformation. It’s like since age 47 things have become downright unwieldy. I told her I’d been observing the older people’s bodies at the pool each week where I attend water aerobics and exercise classes. I’m not the youngest, but I’m among the younger ones. The bodies of elders, I said, reminded me that, Oh, this whole area—I grabbed my abdomen—gets bigger and my shape is changing. It used to not be like this.
I want to say here that I have a sense of humor about it—this isn’t a hateful or disparaging commentary on my body. Just an observation.
So what I’m noticing, I told my friend, is that a lot of the elders’ bodies are often big around the middle and then they have little legs!
Apple-shaped! she exclaimed. And I said, Yes! I guess I have always been more pear-shaped . . . but now I am . . . a fat pear?
Ahhhh, no, you’re not, a stocky elder ahead of us on our path said to me. He made some other comment that I don’t need to share here, except to say—He was not a part of the conversation, but inserted his comment so . . . expertly? that it was as though he’d been paying attention to the conversation from the time we even got on the subject yards away around the bend where he couldn’t have heard us. In fact, he was with other men, talking. I wasn’t bothered—in fact, it made me miss the people I used to see on my hike regularly, who always said Hello, how are you? or Looking good! or So strong!—the last one from a Korean man who would always put his hands in the air and encourage me to slap, high-five, five times or more.
It’s November and my body feels the anticipatory low-grade dread of night falling sooner. Thirteen years ago at this time I was nine months pregnant, coughing, sneezing, feverish, catching naps when I could, sitting up in an oversized living room chair, where I learned that the national news runs on a loop at 3, 4, and 5am.
Looking at photos of those first several weeks with a newborn I remember the sleep deprivation most. Around the three week mark, we decided one afternoon to drive to the beach. My favorite message on the 10 freeway’s digital sign is 7 MINUTES TO PCH. For those who don’t know, PCH is Pacific Coast Highway. 7 MINUTES TO PCH is like a hit of dopamine to my system. That December afternoon in 2010, nursing a newborn in the back of the car in the short term parking lot by the grass, where I could see the ocean, was a lifesaver. Literally. I had been losing my mind, a grip on reality, between the sleep deprivation and hormone fluctuations. I’d come a very long way from the first couple of nights home from the hospital when I had thought to myself, Oh my god, what did I do, did I ruin my entire life?
No, I didn’t ruin my life. LOL. In a couple weeks I may ask myself this again, though, when that baby will become a teenager.
A couple weeks ago on the day my partner turned 51 we went to the beach with our dog and got brunch and coffee. Whenever I do something like that—go sit somewhere beautiful with no intention but to just hang out—I get a taste of how I’d like the rest of my life to be. The beach is often not just seven minutes away, but more like 20 minutes or longer in traffic. Still—THE FUCKIN’ BEACH IS NOT FAR. I have to tell myself this to get myself there. It costs me $2 to park in the short-term parking lot. I can visit the exact location where we parked and I nursed that baby and felt cured by the air and the ocean. There are good enough public bathrooms. There are numerous Perry’s Cafes to choose from if I want to sit on a chair in the sand under an umbrella. If I want I can walk to the pier or to Small World Books in Venice Beach—roughly a half-hour walk in either direction.
That day we talked about a future where on Fridays my partner might work from home, and we would go to the beach and work. Or not. I don’t need to work at the beach, I decided. I could read. Or just stare at the horizon, or all the people skating, bicycling, ambling by.
My partner and I are harmonious as fuck. We have such similar wishes for the future it feels uncanny. One of our wishes is to have a vehicle with a pop-top or bed or something inside we can lounge on that we can take to the beach. It’s $10 to park in the day parking spots. This week I took myself and my dog to the beach and had a coffee and read Naomi Klein’s latest book Doppelganger. I will say this: if you want to sit at Perry’s you have to either enjoy or tune out the 100% Frank Sinatra on the loudspeakers. For some reason, like that old man butting into my convo, it doesn’t bother me. It’s a satellite radio station, it’s an interesting choice, and it seems like it’s been this way for as long as I can remember. Every time I’m there it makes me want to rewatch The Sopranos (which also feels inexplicably seasonally appropriate to me).
Anyway, in that future seniority, we envision parking in the all day lot, hanging out in the back of the van, hitting up Perry’s or some cafe in Venice, eating a weed gummy, walking the dog on the pedestrian path, taking a nap in the van, walking to the shore, driving home after sunset.
When I walked beyond where I took the photo of the above camper, I saw the inhabitants. They were lounging in comfortable folding chairs in the parking spot next to their vehicle, soaking in the sun and the negative ions. My dream.
FEEL DROWSY
REST AND EXIT
These are not the usual LED signs on the 10 but they were today, going both directions. It felt weirdly appropriate. On the one hand, I feel bad that anyone needs those signs to remember something that seems so basic and important. I also feel bad thinking that there are plenty of people who would scoff at such a sign because time is short, they are working, they feel they can’t stop, etc. I’ve been all of these people.
Today I’m someone who has spent the last few years realizing I can and need to slow down. A prior version of me would have felt weird or guilty taking part of a day off to go to the beach to spend an hour and half drinking coffee, staring at whatever, reading, drifting up and down the beach paths.
But me today—she’s into it.
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