I woke up this morning in need of a latte

I woke up this morning in need of a latte. Food too natch, something from the biscotti phylum, and one of those much-touted long walks on the beach.

The complete fantasy package is a long walk on the beach with a latte and my dog. I’m wearing Birkenstock loafers and biodegradable hemp fiber shorts that run half on electricity, half on gas. The dog is a golden retriever named Dakota or maybe Aragorn. Yeah, Aragorn. And not my dog but a free, self-determining compan­ion animal, irrespective of race or creed.

That Indian on television who cried looking at litter along the road, he’s there too, on the beach, looking at more litter. At his feet lies a half-full can of Sherwin-Williams Peach Blos­som Whisper interior, oil-based latex paint. “We cover the earth,” the label says.

A newspaper called The Answer is blowing in the wind. A few loose pages catch around my leg and I look down at the classifieds. A light drizzle begins to fall as the Personals Section gets my attention. Tangled in my legs are four broadsheet newspaper pages of “in search of” ads (“ISOs”) in six-point type. It’s a warmish day and the drizzle intensifies into a full-fledged shower. Raindrops fall straight down from a windless sky.

Just before the pages are turned into papier-maché, I manage to read one of the ads. “ADJPNSCSCND (asian divorced jewish professional non-smoking christian street car named desire) ISO like-minded man for LTR. Must enjoy quiet walks in the rain. E. Rigby”

I look up and there she is. The author of that very ad is just fifty yards up the beach, walking quietly in the rain. I look around and see others. A lot of others, in fact. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

There are now hundreds, maybe thousands of solitary indi­viduals, all walking quietly. Nobody is speak­ing to anyone. There isn’t a rain hat or an umbrella in the bunch. Most are deep in thought, gazing down at the sand. A few are facing the sea while, metaphorically, also facing the latency of their unrequited hopes as a harbinger of humanity’s ultimate desola­tion amid love’s inability to deliver the goods forthwith…

Whatever.

The only sound on the beach is unison sighing.

A nice-looking youngish guy, yet somehow old in acquired wisdom – thin, with blue eyes, thick black hair, killer abs. He walks in low jeans and a shirt left unbuttoned, through the intermittently spaced lost souls, feeling his way as much with intuitive radar as with his eyes, searching, sifting. He approaches a young woman carrying a mocha java grande made from aged Sumatran beans. Full-bod­ied, smooth, spicy, complex. As is her coffee.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” She nods back and a moment of silence settles over them.

“You know,” he finally says, “I climbed cathe­dral mountains. I saw silver clouds below, saw everything as far as you can see. And they say that I got crazy once and that I tried to touch the sun. I lost a friend, but kept the mem­ory.”

Though alarm bells of warning are going off in her head, they are like a ringing in the far distance, as removed as an Amish farmhouse fire bell two counties over. She looks at him with her head slightly tilted. Her soft mouth, shorn of all defenses, can utter only, “Gosh.”

He gazes sagely into the middle distance. “Now I walk in quiet solitude, the forest and the stream, seeking grace in every step I take. My sight is turned inside myself to try and understand the serenity of a clear blue moun­tain lake.”

She intones a long “wowwww,” way too softly for her own good. Her eyes are wide, unde­manding of anything.

Flashing a Jack Nicholson scheisse-eating grin, he takes the mocha java from her hand, downs the rest of it and tosses the cup. "Name's Lucifer. I like long walks on the beach."

In a voice as quiet as the air floating between her ears: “Jennifer. Virgo. I like quiet walks in the rain.”

“Cool.”

I watch them stroll away together. The shower abates, and as it does, the walk­ers in the rain fade one by one. Nobody actu­ally goes to their car and drives away. They just fade, literally, unmindful that it is also happening to everyone around them. With the cessation of x-amount of raindrops, each one grows increasingly transparent until right near the end when they suddenly poof into nonexistence.

The air makes a tiny plinking sound as each one disappears. Plink... plink... plinkplink... plinkplinkplinkplink. It was like watching a video of popcorn popping, being played in reverse.

It seems these personals ad walkers can exist only in the rain. Only at the beach. Their loneliness was compounded by the fact that none of the ads said, “love loud, boozy socializ­ing on the beach in the rain.” Just quiet walks. Intimate, confessional statements from people trying to end their solitude by proclaiming a love of solitude. Once again there is a need for the existence of a typeface for irony.

Also typed in ironics, is my sworn statement to the Environmental Protection Agency on the unfortunate demise of a large school of dol­phins accidentally killed in the preparation of this report. The printer, plugged in, fell off the table and bounced off the pier into the Club Med cove. The little Flippers never knew what hit them, and I’m sure they didn’t suffer.

Go ahead and judge me if you want. I have come to accept that I can’t be everything to all people. I am learning to be happy with myself, to love me as I am. I often surprise myself with gifts. I need a latte.

My biodegradable hemp fiber shorts are half-filled with gas as I go placidly amid the noise and haste, remembering what peace there may be in silence.

Larry Moffitt
Editor, www.ReligionAndSpirituality.com