Thursday, September 4, 2008

a note on devils

The sun rose that morning over the lake, hanging bland and distant. Jeremy woke up cold, eye crust crustier than usual, realizing that he had fallen asleep on the beach.
While he was an american college student, and drank in approximation to what was expected of him (despite contradictory statistical 'evidence' that was provided by his school), he felt that morning, as he saw the sea gulls hover curious and hungry, that perhaps, he may have gotten too drunk the night before.
He checked his pockets, and found only sand and dirt, as if his cell phone and change had during the night dissolved back into the elemental things of nature. Luckily, he thought, luckily I still have my wallet.
Upon standing, he found himself involuntarily dry heaving. Maybe I should sit down a bit, he thought.
He sat cross legged and tried to be as serene as possible, trying to pretend that he came to the beach on purpose, that when he woke early from his bed, he said aloud "It will be a fine morning to sit at the beach and watch the waves, and think of the multitude of experiences that shall come to me on this very fine day."
As he thought about that, a man came jogging up to him.
"Are you okay?" the man said. He was very red and very barechested, and sounded to Jeremy like he was Polish.
"Yeah, I'm just thinking."
The man was jogging in place, an activity that seemed to Jeremy a pointless motion, a crude shadow of the real thing.
"It's too early to think, I think. The day not hot enough yet, still the world is temperate enough to run. You should run!" The man than began to jog away, kicking sand at some gulls that had been watching them.
Jeremy watched the man jog away. He began digging a small hole in the sand. When he decided it was big enough, he vomited into it. He carefully covered the hole with sand, and sat and thought until the idlers came at mid-morning.

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