King of Kiawah Island

    “No journey is too great, when one finds what one seeks.”

—Frederich Nietzsche

      A week from now I will be out of my element—a stranger in a strange town, working in a strange store and surrounded by strange faces with unfamiliar expectations.  I’ll be living with strangers for four months in a two-bedroom, two bath apartment in an area I’ve only visited once in my life.  Just about a week ago as a matter of fact.  My life will consist of long work hours in a congested, upscale shopping center surrounded by looming live oaks with their branches dangling in sheets of Spanish moss like silver tinsel on a Christmas tree.  Ah…the coastal air, full of the salt and brine of the sea, cool spring breezes blowing off the marshes of my much fetishized Low Country—the land of shrimp and grits, oysters on the half shell, local beers and spirits, the first shots of the Civil War; a realm glowing with the pale reflection of the crescent moon on the water and the long shadow of the Palmetto tree across the amber sand.

    I’m excited.  I’m nervous.  I feel a speedball of emotions—adventure and uncertainty—an anxious and uneasy thrill like that first sip of Absinthe after reading all the old tall tales of wormwood-enchanted writers chasing the Green Fairy.  But beneath that there’s a layer of eagerness, a yearning for new places, new people, new food, new women, a new atmosphere and new attitudes.  I’m always looking for something in a somewhere over the next horizon and down some road I’ve never traveled.  Never content, never settled, my interest wains and I grow bored and restless like a cat wailing at the front door to be let back outside.  I feel it in my bones and in my soul, like an itch I can never fully scratch.  I crave the road and some new adventure.

    These last seven years have past like watching the sunrise from a tiny barred window of a prison cell.  This move was never meant to be permanent.  So many years lost.  Where once I lived a very social life, I suddenly found myself without social contact.  I accustomed myself to silence and solitude, only able to venture to South Carolina once a month to visit my friends in Charleston, Columbia, or Myrtle Beach.  When I became a manager, those visits grew less frequent.  Maybe once or twice a year I was able to free myself of an incessant seven day work week.  I canceled more plans than I kept as one or another of my employees would always quit, get sick, lose a loved one, etc. when I had plans in the works.  The needs of the business always superseded those of my personal life…or what was left of it.

    Now I have the opportunity to latch onto what is left of my youth for an intoxicating joy ride reminiscent of my glory days of living the beach dream—a life quick, easy, and ephemeral as a high rolling tide.  Nothing at the beach is meant to be permanent; not even the fixed structures last much longer than the next hurricane.  Relationships are heavy and short-lived like a deep puff off a cigarette, just waiting for the long exhale into the void of nothingness and a return to the previous state of becoming strangers all over again.  The job is temporary.  The housing temporary.  Everything impermanent and fleeting like the grand scheme of life itself.  I can’t wait.  I crave the one thing I’ve been denied these last seven years—CIVILIZATION!  I want a place to enjoy a Happy Hour drink, mingle with single women, make new friends, enjoy good food, and have a social life again…if only briefly.  Then I’ll kick my heels and stomp and pout and return to my life as it is: caring for my aging parents and watching their health and mental states slowly deteriorate before my eyes.  

    But until the time comes I must place my parents to rest six feet under, one must keep to HAPPY THOUGHTS.  And the good vibes of an amazing summer…

    Catching whiting in the surf off Folly Beach.  Turkey hunting in Francis Marion National Forest.  Long lost friends from college coming to visit.  Eva is a short(er) drive away.  Fresh seafood and Bloody Mary’s for brunch.  Maybe even a Zen meditation group to join.  I want to rediscover parts of myself that have disappeared over these last years and I want to discover new aspects of myself at the same time.  I’m always searching for something in a somewhere and maybe that something and somewhere might be there this time.  I have high hopes and expectations.  I want to write a novel about the experience.  By July 14th, I want to be the King of Kiawah Island…