…thinking, wondering, imagining…lust, love, loneliness…building, dissolving, receding…this, this, only this…*

*…walking by myself along this beach in south Jersey, from populated areas to a somewhat wilder zone by the wildlife sanctuary—sand above the surf line roped off to protect nesting areas for piping plovers, people allowed to walk through but not stop, sunbathe, or swim, since the shy little birds need to run to and from the water, and won’t if anybody’s in the way…seems reasonable enough, so keep up a steady pace—seeing no plovers…(sorry, that’s not one in the picture)…though can’t deny looking probably more than watchful boyfriends like at women in skimpy bathing suits…but, more than that, another, less superficial and piggish aspect of mind caught on someone…far inland…wondering if she thinks about me…imagining, hoping…that old song…tip-toeing a narrow course between solitude and loneliness, dipping precipitously, despite such gorgeous tranquil surroundings, seemingly made for peaceful reflection, toward the latter…trying once again to be mindful…and all that…observe thoughts floating by instead of getting caught up in them…gain that awesome sense of wonder found in pondering the infinite in one’s own breath, sun on skin, cold salt water on the toes, even a bit of pain in one hip from walking so much in the sand…for a sudden moment feeling somewhat jarring comfort in the knowledge that, really, I know nothing else…the rest only thinking, imagining, longing…speculation on reality that’s always something else…and not even that ten minutes later…gettin’ all Krishnamurti-like n’ shit….and then, of course, thinking about writing about it, maybe quoting that famous William Blake line, something like “to see infinity in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour”…( having to work by memory even once the walk is through, since there’s no Collected Poems of William Blake nor consistent internet access at the beach house)…though, by the time I got back, reduced it all to the few simple formulae above…wondering if the wave thing’s too clichéd…as well as whether a cliché’s always such a bad thing….or whether anybody’s gonna get what I’m talking about at all…**

** from a version published a year or so ago at Yoga for Cynics…