I went to the beach a few days ago to clear my mind. In the past and most of the time since, when I feel the need to clear my mind I drink a bottle of wine in the coarse of an hour, and wait for its clarity to warm my blood. When I am on the beach though, or anywhere in San Francisco for that matter, clarity is stone cold sober and is so loud I can barley hear the trolly or the pleas of the homeless or even the waves crashing onto a boulder littered beach.
I say, 'the beach' because the Midwestern Ryan does not understand that in California, there is more than one beach. When I tell someone from here about my day trip to the beach, they ask, "which one?" and start listing a quick handful of beaches within 30 miles and get confused when I tell them I have no idea where I was. I have been to so many beaches here, none of them are the same but they are still beaches, and I am so happy to be on one that I don't think to look around me at a sign that clarifies, for no other reason that telling someone where exactly I am, the name of the beach. I'm to busy looking at the world to look for a sign with words on it, of a place, that I am already at. To me that's like walking out of the climax of an inspiring movie, to find out what theater number you're in.
I don't care about the names of places, it's just semantics. In the same way I hate when people argue about weather or not it is appropriate to refer to a carbonated beverage as a soda, or as a pop; I hate when people ask the question, "which beach?" I don't care if you call soda, pop. Both names bring the same mental image of a sugary, bubbly liquid and; when I say 'beach' does it help form a mental image of a beach if I preface it with a name? I don't know which beach, because I don't give a shit which beach. A beach is a beach. Still, people want to know which beach. Not that I uncovered an important truth about myself sitting at one, or that I cried watching a pelican scoop up a fish in his neck skin while walking on one, or that I had sex with strangers on one; they just want to know, which one.
I ran into a similar problem in Chicago when I refereed to Navy Pier as, "the beach" on a subway.
"Let's go to the beach," I tugged at Kevin's coat arm, "it'll be fun!" I loved tugging at his coat arm, I loved hanging on his arms, locking myself in their mass on the street. It was satisfying to know that the city and him were mine for the taking.
"There is no beach in Chicago Ryan," he said to me in total seriousness.
"What do you mean there are no beaches here? I was on one last week!" I snapped, throwing my hands in the air for emphasis.
"You were on Navy Pier, which is not a beach, fresh water lakes don't have be..." he stops himself mid sentence, points his finger in the air to tell me to hold on, and asks the guy next to us, "is there a beach in Chicago?"
The man who was fat and looked like he just got done auditioning for a Sopranos screen play, thinks for a moment. His thick black eye brows moved in the manor of a kindhearted mobster and he said, in a low voice, "No, oceans have beaches. Lakes have shorelines and water fronts."
I couldn't believe it. We entered a loud tunnel so I had to yell, "a beach is when you have SAND and WATER, Chicago HAS sand and water, so CHICAGO HAS A BEACH!" I was starting to laugh at how hard I was defending my stance on beaches, and because I had to yell, two women a few seats away chimed in. The first woman yells, "They're right, Chicago doesn't have a beach," and the second woman nods in agreement. I looked around myself and saw that everyone on the train car was now involved in the Chicago beach debate, unfortunately it was 20 against one.
Defeated, I stopped talking and looked out the window for a moment before Kevin grabbed my hand, looked in my eyes and smiled one of those smiles that brands itself to your cornea's, one of those smiles you never forget, one of those smiles that freezes itself in time, creating an entire universe of preservation, that will never exist for any-other reason than to petrify that smile; and he kissed me. I believe in that moment we were in love, and that love is frozen in time with that smile, with that kiss.
When we got off the train the sun was setting behind buildings, creating lines of lite and dark on the grass, on the water line, of which we were bound. When we got to the water we bought a coffee and took turns sipping it and holding hands and then not holding hands. We walked on the beach for an hour or so.
Don't ask me which one.
I couldn't tell you.
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