Sitting in the Evening Sand of Jax Beach
There are several surprisingly young men with metal detectors, a little Middle Eastern girl trying desperately to fly a $3 kite, and a cruise ship just off shore. But I'm the only one here wearing blue jeans.
I sit high on a dune where the sand feels packed firm under my towel and butt.
Two thick bikini girls coerce their guy to snap endless photos after they dry off. Arms and legs wrapped tight around one another as they each balance on one foot in the sand. Holding towels in the air to flap above their heads with wind and squatting like ducks. When they convince the guy to do the same, I stop watching.
The little girl's kite falls fast and pierces the beach head first. Only a second later, she trots in circles around the fold-up chairs in which her family sits. Kicking up sand, but not too high. None of her family notices her, or seems to care much. The kite can't move by itself, so it stays put, half-buried.
And I think an old Asian couple just covertly took my picture.
A teenage American girl with a light-up hula hoop spins with it, in ways that make my joints ache. Then she drops it and I don't feel so bad.
The little girl's mom falls to knees behind a beach trash can and begins to pray. The girl keeps calling, Mama, Mama. But her mom won't answer, facing East and eyes closed tight. For several minutes, Mama, Mama. To no avail.
The Asian couple is actually part of a foursome, all with cameras dangling from their necks. The patriarch stands with his long lens aimed at a mother in a pink beach dress bouncing her baby. This lasts much longer than it should.
Trying again, the girl drags the kite, achieving airborne once or twice, but mostly thumping it up and down the well trodden sand. When she loses her grip on it, the kite skitters off. But she never runs after it. Just walks.
My butt feels numb. I stand, beat the sand from my towel, and stroll a bit.
Between hotels can be seen flickering gray clouds, soundless pockets of lightning far off. The last exhibitions of day or the first rasps of new night.
In a large hotel, there are only two rooms watching TV with the lights off.
As I stand near the ocean and text my friend a grainy picture of the sliver moon, a bald father almost backs right into me as he plays with his son. I back up and he shuffles by, his son jogging after him. He's so enamored with his child that I don't exist. He kisses him with a smack as he lifts him off the damp sand. They won't, so I am the only one who will remember this moment exactly this way, as it happened.
Walking back, darkness settles, and the glow-in-the-dark hula hoop spinning sharp circles is all that I can clearly see. All else moves spectral around me.
Someone left sneakers on the sidewalk.
I sit high on a dune where the sand feels packed firm under my towel and butt.
Two thick bikini girls coerce their guy to snap endless photos after they dry off. Arms and legs wrapped tight around one another as they each balance on one foot in the sand. Holding towels in the air to flap above their heads with wind and squatting like ducks. When they convince the guy to do the same, I stop watching.
The little girl's kite falls fast and pierces the beach head first. Only a second later, she trots in circles around the fold-up chairs in which her family sits. Kicking up sand, but not too high. None of her family notices her, or seems to care much. The kite can't move by itself, so it stays put, half-buried.
And I think an old Asian couple just covertly took my picture.
A teenage American girl with a light-up hula hoop spins with it, in ways that make my joints ache. Then she drops it and I don't feel so bad.
The little girl's mom falls to knees behind a beach trash can and begins to pray. The girl keeps calling, Mama, Mama. But her mom won't answer, facing East and eyes closed tight. For several minutes, Mama, Mama. To no avail.
The Asian couple is actually part of a foursome, all with cameras dangling from their necks. The patriarch stands with his long lens aimed at a mother in a pink beach dress bouncing her baby. This lasts much longer than it should.
Trying again, the girl drags the kite, achieving airborne once or twice, but mostly thumping it up and down the well trodden sand. When she loses her grip on it, the kite skitters off. But she never runs after it. Just walks.
My butt feels numb. I stand, beat the sand from my towel, and stroll a bit.
Between hotels can be seen flickering gray clouds, soundless pockets of lightning far off. The last exhibitions of day or the first rasps of new night.
In a large hotel, there are only two rooms watching TV with the lights off.
As I stand near the ocean and text my friend a grainy picture of the sliver moon, a bald father almost backs right into me as he plays with his son. I back up and he shuffles by, his son jogging after him. He's so enamored with his child that I don't exist. He kisses him with a smack as he lifts him off the damp sand. They won't, so I am the only one who will remember this moment exactly this way, as it happened.
Walking back, darkness settles, and the glow-in-the-dark hula hoop spinning sharp circles is all that I can clearly see. All else moves spectral around me.
Someone left sneakers on the sidewalk.
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