I love the beach and distrust it. I call the trip the most relaxing week of my year each year, and that's true. But relaxation and satisfaction are two different things, and to a great extent each year, the week leaves me wanting. As much as I may escape here, as much as I may hate to go home at the end of the week, as often as I may threaten to leave whatever job for some seasonal island work, there are no answers to be found when there are no true responsibilities, there are no people, there are no choices. There's nothing, really, to be gained or lost.

So, important people in life, I've brought them here or I've kept them away. I've hidden the escape factor or laid it out there. No matter. The situations have ended up the same. Happiness at home or away turns out to have nothing to do with place and everything to do with people and choices. Even if choices are far off, there's a certain management that can be done to treat the possibilities fairly and openly. There's a responsibility in life to care before you ever get in the car or arrive at the big bridge and fruit stands. They're locations, and that's all.

I've put too much faith in those locations, I know. Whatever ways I can hope to come here and then run magic or fight fate, the beach freezes the skinny from the ocean and burns the pale off the sand.  There's so much beauty around, but participation, as wonderful as it may be for a time, isn't conversion. If you want someone else, want someone else. Underneath the pier, the best place to go, turn around and come back, the tide's doing the same, in another direction. Has to be more?

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