The cry of winter sea gulls in June June 25, 1985

 

Here I am again, Island Beach State Park, a place where the memories roll in with every wave, serving me now as a refuge from depression and too much labor.

I came the last time here with my now-ex-girlfriend and my dog, Spud, strolling out the great jetty of stone, so slippery with the foam I slipped and cut my knee, my dog howling at me, as if saying “I should not have gone out there in the first place.

Fran never laughed the way other women I know would have, perhaps a bit over protective of me the way my dog was.

It is surreal, thinking about that moment then and my need to return here, still aching over her loss, even when while with her I sometimes felt smothered, needing her and at the same time, needing to escape.

I don’t come here often, yet each time I’m stunned by how open it is after having spent so much time in the city, smothered in a different way, struggling to cope with the day in and day out insanity of life.

From the beach, I can’t see the lot where I parked my car, dunes thick with sea grass like small mountains between me and the rest of the world with the open sea to the other direction, blue now because of the blue sky, often gray at the threat of rain.

The wind kicks up the finer grains, casting them over the scrub pines planted near the base of the dunes. The other side beyond the parking lot and the road down the middle is a bird preserve I have only seen from the water when my uncle sailed his boat on the bay.

Years before I came with Fran, I visited this place with Hank, Rona and Pauly, when we took one of Hank’s magical mystery tours in the dead of winter, gulls screaming over head hungry for food, the left overs from summer crowds long exhausted, haunting Hank because of the bag of chips he munched from as we walked, drawn to him the moment he tore open the top, so many swarming around him so as to test his sense of humor, waving his arms to wave them away, and when they wouldn’t go, throwing offerings to them on the sand that only made it all worse, and Pauly howl, “I’ve seen this movie, will you stop with the potato chips!”

Hank thought this funny and deliberately spread the remaining chips around us in a big circle so that we became engulfed in birds, feathers and beaks, the howl of their desperation, the wind carrying their cry far beyond us, cries I recalled long later, after Rona enlisted in the army, and Hank became a hermit in his Haledon room, while Pauly is today what he was then, only older, perhaps a bit meaner, certainly sad.

I came here now partly because of him, needing space from him and his woes, while I struggle with woes of my own, thinking I need more than just a weekend excursion away from him, thinking maybe I need a year or two, not just from him, but work, my uncle, even maybe from my writing, to contemplate what the world is really about, rather than what I want it to be, time away from the knock of my landlord demanding his rent, or the host of other letters I get with overdue notices in them.

I walk to the edge of the water, barefoot, letting the foam rush over them with the incoming waves. The wet sand deceives me, my feet sink ankle deep, less clear blue this shallow, stained with bits of seaweed, I get absorbed staring into it. Can I man drown in an inch of sea water? How far can I walk out into the waves before they consume me? Even though the air temperature is warm, the water is still ice cold from winter, needing until July to lose its chill. Too cold for swimming. I stroll up the beach, people in the distance, but I am mostly alone, hearing the cry of the seagulls inside and outside my head, having nothing to feed them with, no circle in the sand for them to surround me, aching for a time past, aching for something I can’t define, walking down the beach alone.

 

 1985 Menu

 


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