Midnight in Dewey

I just walked back from the beach where, rather sappily, I stood in the darkness and found myself thinking about Albert Camus essay "Myth of Sisyphus."

Here I am on Carolina Street, where I've lived for twenty three or so summers.  I've biked back here so many nights and wound up in this very spot, looking at the same houses and the same lights casting shadows across the beach.  I was a prince of Dewey once, and now I look out and see that although I am in the same place, it is not at all the same.

Even the notion that I am in the same physical location is false.  The Earth rotates on its axis, and traces a giant elliptical orbit around the nearest star.  As it rotates, the axis itself processes.   The chances that in a few short years I would be able to stand in the same place are tiny.

The beach is here, but dredging makes its physical form alien to me.  The hard pack trail over the dune isn't what I remember walking over after seeing the sunrise over the ocean.  The waves are still there, but that water has since been swept across the globe by various currents.

So I find myself wishing that by being here, now, in the same bed I used to sleep in, that I could wake up those few short years ago tomorrow morning.  That all I had to worry about was getting on my old Specialized Hard Rock and biking down to open the sailing club for the day, or maybe waking up to lay on the beach before biking down to wash dishes in the back of Ponos.

An allusion to the sand blowing against my legs to the "sands of time" would be cliche, so I'll leave it out.
What was it about those times that brought such happiness?  Do I really hate the status quo so much?

No, what made my reign in Dewey so wonderful wasn't the place.  It was the time and place.  It was the people, the friends I had, the people I love.  I don't miss the space, I miss the spacetime.

If there is one thing I can't stand, its a lack of control.  I don't mean in the sense of being able to manipulate others and get whatever I want at the time, I mean the fear of being unable to control anything.  It's that sneaking fear that the last time you kissed the one you love was the last chance you ever had.  The dread that I am nothing more than a grain of sand, tossed around by forces completely out of my control.

So I suppose one must be thankful for not only all the good things they have, but all the good things they've had.  Even if they happened in the past, their goodness isn't invalidated simply because the consciousness that experienced them, bound by perception, bound by a body, bound by time, occupies a different point in spacetime at this moment.

One cannot be lulled into a lackadaisical sloth by the helplessness they feel over this lack of control.  No, they must strive on and affect what little change they can.  And now one feels the struggle, pushing endlessly onward up the hill.  The chances that the boulder I struggle against will only roll down again are just as good as the chances that the spot by the lifeguard chair where I stood will not be the same.  Still, one strives to obtain the life they want, to grasp the things that make them happy and hold on.  And so, tomorrow morning, when I get onto a now different bike and press down onto the pedals, I'll know that the things I had still exist, and I can take joy in the ability I have to steer the bike, mobilize myself through spacetime.

Am I lost?  No.  I have always been "lost", I know now that I just am.