me and the moon

I left town late in the afternoon. Certain obligations kept me in town later than I'd liked and I was hoping to get to the coast, find my campsite and set up camp before the sun went down. But that's just one of many things that didn't go as planned.

The whole thing was just a desperate attempt to find something; relief, god, a sense of purpose or direction, myself maybe. I didn't really have a clear goal in mind, just something... I just wanted, no. I just needed something. I brought a special chocolate - guaranteed to open my mind like a door to another plane of consciousness and it sat in the center console waiting to be consumed. I'd eaten mushrooms before, I knew what to expect and I was looking forward to loosening my grip on reality.

By the time I reached the coast it was dusk. I didn't have much time and I turned North - following a friend's directions toward an ideal location for this sort of thing. I had tired of the radio and drove in silence through one salt-worn town after another. the two-lane Highway wound up the coast through fog and trees and sheer rock walls with guardrails. It was dark now and I'd seen no sign of the turnoff I'd been looking for. I started looking for any place, hopefully one relatively empty - but one after another all I found were over-crowded state parks, the kind with clean cut parking spots, picnic tables, steel-drum fire pits, running water and garbage cans - not exactly an environment conducive for life altering interactions with the infinite. After another half hour of searching and another seaside town, I'd used up half a tank of gas and I decided to turn around and settle for the last campground I'd passed.

I pulled in and slowly passed square after square of campers, fifth-wheels, BBQ's and tents - halogen lanterns casting artificial blue light in all directions. I pulled into an empty slot the size of my bedroom and unloaded my gear. I struggled setting up my tent in the dark and finally got a fire started. A few spaces down people were laughing and hollering. Beyond the thin wall of trees that were leaning away from the ocean, and thin undergrowth was the highway where cars and trucks and rumbling motorcycles drove past at random, their headlights throwing shadows through the trees.
I guess this will have to do, I thought to myself. I fed the fire and then I sat in the tent watching the flames and the moon through the open tent door. I unwrapped my chocolate, took a bite, chewed and swallowed, took another bite and then it was in me. I snacked on some of the food I brought and then waited. My eyes were red from the drive and the smoke and the weed I'd smoked a few minutes before. I stood by the fire poking and reducing the coals, feeding in more wood, waiting, listening, watching the moon shining through the branches and pulling on the ocean a hundred yards away. I listened to them crashing on the shore and it was so loud and so relentless - it sounded like a freight train tearing through town, a train that never stopped rattling by.

More laughter cut through the dark and a woman squealed with glee a few spaces down. I smoked another cigarette and pulled out my notebook as I sat by the fire - prepared to record my musings as I passed into the realm of, who knows. I tried to write a poem:

I threw a couple more logs on the fire

and plopped down on my coat

she watched me and then the flames

"tell me a story" I said

and then I waited... and waited

and she just kept smiling, like she was

about to tell a fantastic tale, 

but she never did. She just kept smiling

and she never did.

I had another smoke, and waited.

An hour later I was still waiting. the fire cracked and spit, the waves crashed, the moon drifted through the branches imperceptibly slow and I waited... waited for what? Who knows, a ghost or an angel to walk through the trees and sit down at my fire, a bolt of lightning to my mind or heart. The poison stirred in my gut but never worked it's way to my brain. So I whispered into the darkness, "Okay... I'm here. I'm open. I'm waiting... if you're really there... speak to me... show me a way... meet me here...". But I said those words to no-one and as soon as I spoke them they burned up and disappeared like the tiny sparks of glowing ash that fly up from the fire. 

A few cars passed on the Highway and it occurred to me how utterly ridiculous it was of me to be sitting there waiting for some other-worldly experience. I laughed to myself and an image came to mind: I could be sitting there, on the seashore, waiting until I grew old and my skin turned grey and my bones turned to powder and still experience nothing close to what I was seeking. Indeed many men have spent their lives waiting in vain. And while it sounds less comical as I write it, it was enough to make me laugh out loud at myself in the dark. I wondered if anyone heard or saw and if they thought I was crazy. 

Every few minutes I fed the flames, just enough to give me light and some warmth and I felt like I was teasing the fire as if it was a dog, it wanted to eat and burn and grow and I fed it rationed bits for my pleasure. And I suddenly sympathised with it as I felt that if there was a god, he was doing the same thing to me - allowing me to burn up only so hot and burn down only so low before throwing a couple more logs on the fire and my whole life was just to provide him with some warmth and some light in a cold, dark universe. I waited.

Finally, around three a.m I crawled into the tent and tried to fall asleep. My head was exhausted but my body was restless and it thrashed about trying to get comfortable as I resigned myself to the empty conclusion I knew was coming. Nothing had happened. And I thought about what it felt like to be a man - a solitary man in the world, sleeping under the moon, listening to a vast roaring sea crash on the shore and the cars pass on the highway, and I felt alone. 

I woke up feeling betrayed and disillusioned, maybe a little dehydrated. I tore down camp and loaded everything back into the truck. I drove back into the nearest town and, as I'd smoked the last one before I fell asleep, I picked up a pack of cigarettes at the first market I passed. It was  just after noon and where I'd stopped to grab a bite to eat they'd stopped serving breakfast, so I just ordered a cup of coffee and sat there alone, resenting something that didn't even exist. Angry at myself for needing it so badly and not knowing how to find it.

I sat on the beach for a few hours watching the waves and the sun pass slowly overhead, then I gave up and walked away from it all. So I found myself sitting in some dingy ocean-side bar drinking beer and writing this down. How does a man find meaning in this world? The ocean would drowned me without a thought. How can I find purpose in a universe that doesn't give a shit either way, and why should I? I had another smoke and drove home.
Time was up. Back to reality.


Meaning and morals...
I think about the meaning I might draw from this story, but even as possible answers begin to formulate in my mind they are halted by a bigger, more prominent thought - That it doesn't necessarily mean anything, and that maybe I spend too much time seeking answers that don't exist, or perhaps more accurately, answers we only make for ourselves.
You will find your own.