THE INLET
(a Novella)

THE INLET
A thirty-year stream of consciousness journey, inside the mind of a tormented man trying to find his life after an immense loss, at the edge of an inlet, somewhere.

PREFACE TO A MIRACLE
I’m sitting in the middle of a miracle and everyone around me is buying and selling their souls. I see the new american dream, a symbol of community. A nun dressed in a john wayne cowboy suit selling prophylactics on the expressway (west side of the road) and a guy next to her wearing beat jeans, beads, ripped unkempt t shirt, has eat healthy” written on it yelling “kill ’em baby” holding a jackhammer in his right hand and a lottery ticket in the other, smoking camels and sitting on his shoulder is a yuppy couple posing smiles into an imaginary mirror and reading their portfolios resting on the guys head. The motorists are all uptight cutting each other off trying to win singing their new National Anthem “GO GO GO”, and all because they’re financed up past their eyebrows and can’t figure out why they do what they do each day but know how to pay for it!

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1989 – Year of my parents death.

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ALONE

We are alone, oh yes, very much alone here on the embankment of perfection. And each of us, vulnerable and in need of others, no matter what creatures they may be. The loneliness is strangest in the night, with the moon. It, too, is alone, shining from millennium in the heavens, circling its life path around and around this earth in a monotonous and glowing candlelight rendezvous’, courting, living, seducing each lonely and alone creatures lust for togetherness. And this beach, this little, loving perfect beach, sits patiently, alone, and has so for its eternity, on and on and on and on playing the role of doorstep, bed, camp site, home to many before me, and the trees are alone, rustic and reaching up to the stars, and the water is alone, constantly cresting waves onto and towards the beach, as if it wants to be with it too for a hug, and the ducks are alone, packed together for a snuggle, and the reeds are alone, like grass, together creating the illusion of a march, but each one, separately, holding a tall singular elegance, and the swans are alone, like a group of young and pure pretty nuns in white, moving heavenly down the lake, sitting on it, ducking their heads deep down into it to find food, and the fish are alone, hiding from the swans and ducks who eat them, and the stones are alone, each scraping together and rounding, smoothing each into a nestled set of pure white-like pearls cleansing the water, creating a sterile fresh pond bed, and the sand is alone, each grain, each one, simple and unique in shape, size, color, together creating a white blanket of softness for me to stand and lay on, and each grain together, as sand, or earth, making up the earth in its full sized spinning ball of absolute wonder, and the clouds are alone, moving through air as we do ground changing shape and form and color and texture as we do consistently, and each rain drop, snowflake, hail stone, wind particle, is alone, together making up our atmosphere, and the rail posts are alone, guiding us, and eternity is alone -here in this moment, as it has always been, alone, in this exact singular moment, or one a billion billion billion years ago, just like this one, exact in eternity, so, so, vast, and close, and alone, eternally touching and surrounding and penetrating each star, planet, living thing, through its space and time as it does now in this eternal breadth, and the creator is alone in eternity, or eternity is alone in it, and we, she, me, are alone, here on this beach at the end of a sunset looking up at each separate star, which is vast and great and beautiful and each star is filled with other stars and planets and atmospheres, and others, and the wind touches me, as if it were trying to hug me, because it is alone, and the temperature is all over me, trying to be a part of me, and the trees sway toward me, calling for me to be with them, and the stars look down on me, as if seeking some acknowledgment, some need for companionship, and the sand moves under my feet and hers, as do the stones, as if they’re happy to find company and want to be accommodating, and the fish, bubble up, talking to the water and me and her and heaven, and she and I look into each others eyes, separately, alone, on this planet in this universe of separate things, and we each, in a way impossible to know, share each others presence, and we touch … we touch gently… I her hair, she my face, and with a touch, we are not as alone, each trying to be inside the other for a moment, and we kiss each others lips, to taste and feel the other and to give to the other something of ourselves, and our tongues probe each others tongues, lusciously penetrating, going inside, in, to the other, and we hug, and caress, the other, like two blind people trying to see each other, and we find ourselves on the sand, and we part each others clothes, to be closer to each others truer presence, and we’re moving the sand in miracles of VanGogh patterns, O’keefe patterns, Pollack patterns, Mattise patterns as our bodies, which contain us, separately and alone find passion to be inside the other for a brief sojourn of togetherness, and we begin kissing the others body and sending and receiving intense emotional experience into and from the other, each, a part of a river like flowing, and we grab and penetrate the other together, as if wanting to be inside inside inside, inward of the other, so alone under this shower of stars, holding, touching, kissing and penetrating with luscious delicious experience, but alone, together, both intensifying the passion within us, like the passion that makes a star, like the passion that propels a meteor, like the passion that stirs tornadoes, hurricanes, storms, and sea breezes through the grassy marsh, the passion that is lighting us together, glowing together, becoming one, making and moving and in one river fall of desire, we come into the other endlessly vibrant, endlessly glorious, the other becomes us and we them as we engulf BODIES AND SOULS AND THEY MERGE INTO ONE FOR A LONG LONG MOMENT OF NON-thought, squeezing each other flesh into oneness, and at that moment we are inside the other, and they in us, glorious, heavenly, and in that moment, the stars enter us, and the moon is in us and the beach is in us and the stones are in us and the water is in us and the ducks and swans and trees and flowers and grasses and sunsets and clouds and air and rain, snow, hail, wind, hurricanes, tornadoes and eternity is within us in this moment of brilliant glowing life giving life as we roll on the beach, like the shadow of a bird in flight, one, together, and we lay on the beach panting, feeling our bodies move on the other, like footsteps touching the wet sand, like bodies touching the water as they swim, moving, spreading the others body and they ours and we lay for along time like that under the lovely watching moon, the gazing wanton staryeyes, feeling our hearts pump as one … and we look into each others eyes, and feel togetherness begin its voyage back inside our selves and slowly separating us again, and we, release … we exit from our passion and our illusion of oneness is now alone again contained within ourselves. A few more kisses, caresses, exchanges, and we roll over onto our backs alone, like two logs in a moonlit Monet’, and there we are, the two of us, together, alone ….. I think of my world, away from this lusty loving place, where we feel together, with all the other individual things. My world, whose people are cruel, to each other, where we make each other feel alone, almost like a weapon of quiet, efficient, sadistic torture, where this is an accepted, expected part of the sharing separateness, and I realize that we are all so vulnerable, because we are alone, and we are such feeling, needful creatures of the earthstar, and when we are made to feel alone, away from, alienated, unloved, unneeded … unwanted, we are the most viscous of all living things, not because we are viscous, but because we are afraid to be alone and in that aloneness feel our death by our sides, because we are so sensitive and because we understand with great complexity, the reality and result of our aloneness, our separate existence here. And I look at her, and the inlet, and the moon shining right over her hair lighting it, and we touch each others hands, there on the beach, flesh to flesh, flesh to sand, flesh to air, flesh to universe, flesh to eternity, together, in love with it, and together only when we are sharing love… alone.