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The Beach Journal (by abandonedstation)
The Beach Journal is a novel that deals with a man who survived...something...somehow (I like keeping things open), and lives in a cave on a nice sandy beach. It has no moral, defies most genres, and is shrouded in ambiguity. Good. It is a available for purchase - $5 flat - at our page on lulu.com.
Below is a sample. Enjoy.
Part One - Day One through Day Thirty Six Part Two - Day Thirty Seven through Day Seventy Three Part Three - Day Seventy Four to Day One Hundred
I ventured through the cave a bit. It’s a bunch of rock. This is so fucking boring. DAY TWO Bored. DAY THREE Bored. Then stared. DAY FOUR Bored. DAY FIVE Stated out the day positive it was day four, because of the sheer boredom that was the last two days. It was like they merged into one in my mind. Had to really think about going to sleep and getting up in between to remember there was difference. As for today, take a guess at what's going down. Give up? It starts with a 'b'... DAY SIX I thought about the small house in the city that I grew up in and all those memories that fester and bubble in my mind and how my past seems to be trying to tell me something, how I should I live my life, what it’s missing, what has changed. Then I was bored. DAY SEVEN Lucky seven. Lucky boring seven. DAY EIGHT Bored. Masturbated. DAY NINE Thought of my last sexual conquest. Then my foot hurt. Tried sitting in a more comfortable position. Put more weight on my left buttock. Was a rousing success. DAY TEN Bored. And I’m leaning to my left. DAY ELEVEN Thought about chocolate cake. DAY TWELVE Is there vanilla cake? I’m sure there is, but I don’t think I ever had one. Always chocolate. Masturbated. Later I was positive that I’ve seen vanilla cake. Maybe I've even eaten it. If so, it didn't make much of an impression. DAY THIRTEEN Black cat walked in front of my path. I chased it down, caught it, skinned it, sawed it into manageable pieces, cooked it with onions, then didn’t eat it ‘cause hey, that would be sick. DAY FOURTEEN Bored. DAY FIFTEEN Bored. And it smells like rotting cat. DAY SIXTEEN I saw a seagull. I think it was seagull. I don’t know shit about birds. DAY SEVENTEEN Same seagull. Or not. Maybe it’s a different seagull or different bird altogether. It looked like a seagull. I think. Regardless, it looked like the same bird I saw on day sixteen. I ate part of the cat out of curiosity. DAY EIGHTEEN Seagull ate the rest of the cat. I watched him. What a hungry bastard. Should probably admit now that I threw up after eating the cat. Is it because the cat was rotten, or does cat just not agree with me? Do the gods love it because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? These are not the same questions. I came up with the first. The second was asked by Socrates to the man whose father killed a slave. Slave aren’t people. Neither are cats. That philosophy course was a waste of time. DAY NINETEEN This is by far the most uninteresting cave I’ve ever leaned slightly to the left in. DAY TWENTY Bored. DAY TWENTY-ONE Bored. DAY TWENTY-TWO Missed celebrating third week anniversary. DAY TWENTY-THREE Bored up and down the ying-yang. I mean, yeah, I do stuff like move around, and doodle on the walls, or play elaborate rock throwing games, but it’s all drenched in bored. DAY TWENTY-FOUR Thought about chocolate cake again. Didn’t think much about vanilla, though. Who does? DAY TWENTY-FIVE I almost stopped paying attention to the cat remains. Then I looked at it and felt kind of bad. I put it in a brown lunch bag then tossed it as far into the cave as I could. My vomit from eating the cat has either dried up or the seagull got to it. Or maybe I just can’t remember where it is. I think closing your eyes when you vomit is a reflex, like sneezing, or something. DAY TWENTY-SIX Today the sun is shining and I’m bored. I never noticed that (I’m) I never noticed the sun has (so) been shining every day I’ve been here (bored). DAY TWENTY-SEVEN Today is divisible by one, three, nine, and twenty-seven (go figure on the last one). DAY TWENTY-EIGHT Remembered to celebrate four week anniversary. Couldn’t find a suitable party hat, so I balanced a rock on my head. Seagull came and looked around. I threw my new, heavy, gray hat at it. I missed and it flew away. Should probably treat my guests better. DAY TWENTY-NINE If I had booze for last night, I’d have a hangover now. Instead, I’m bored. DAY THIRTY Bored. DAY THIRTY-ONE Haven’t seen the seagull since the party. Probably still upset over my attempt to kill him with my hat/rock. DAY THIRTY-TWO Woke up in the night and remembered that the seagull can’t possibly be upset. It does not have the mental capacity to be so. DAY THIRTY-THREE Bored. Fucking seagull. DAY THIRTY-FOUR Red sky this morning. Sailors taking warning. In fact, I think they all left. I can’t find them anywhere. DAY THIRTY-FIVE Seagull came back. Maybe he’s forgiven me. Or he forgot. Or he doesn’t care. I didn’t throw a rock at it. I’ve got to build the relationship up before I can get close enough to properly brain him with a rock. DAY THIRTY-SIX Today can be squared without a remainder…um…remaining. After I realized that, I masturbated. The two events were unrelated, though. One did not prompt the other. I don’t want anyone to assume I have some weird math fetish.
Bored. Hmm, I haven’t been ‘just’ bored for a week. DAY THIRTY-EIGHT Bored. Thought about a girl I once knew. Old whats-her-name. She wouldn’t let me finish in her mouth. Had a great taste in movies, though. DAY THIRTY-NINE Saw seagulls (or whatever type of bird I’ve been seeing this whole time) flying above me in formation. They didn’t stop by. I waved, but they didn’t respond, unless you count their flapping wings as constant waving. DAY FORTY The devil came and tempted me, turning some stones into bread. I didn’t fall for it, though. As soon as I eat ‘em they’ll turn back to stone in my stomach. I told him I wasn’t born yesterday. He told me that didn’t matter, and offered me a city. I told him thanks, but that I’d probably get too emotionally involved and get an ulcer, or something. He understood. We shared a joint and then he left. Before he did, he showed me a great party trick involving a lighter and the hair on your knuckles (his knuckles, mine have more of a peachfuzzy-vibe going on). It was nice to have someone to talk to. DAY FORTY-ONE Although I was never competing with him, and totally ignored the fasting thing, I’ve bested Jesus. DAY FORTY-TWO Bored and kind of lonely. I think I was spoiled with the devil coming to visit, and all. DAY FORTY-THREE Saw a cat. It ran away. Perhaps it has a gut feeling that I’m not to be trusted with cats. DAY FORTY-FOUR I had a dream I was drowning. Ridiculous. I can barely see the sea from here. One day I think I’ll go and splash around a bit. But not today. Or tomorrow. No real reason for the delay. Just want to makes some principles for myself. Limits, checks and balances, judicial restraint, etc. DAY FORTY-FIVE Bored. Too bad I promised myself I won’t go to the sea. DAY FORTY-SIX I dreamt again. I was back in a city. Maybe it was the city. It was empty except for all the people I broke promises to. Fortunately, they didn’t bring it up. In fact, they didn’t even talk to me. They looked at me, though, as I was about to give them some advice. All those admiring, cautious, questioning eyes. I didn’t say anything. I was too busy looking for a phone booth so I could flip through the phonebook and find a bakery. Suddenly my urge for chocolate cake was near insatiable. I found a phone booth eventually, but the book inside it was vandalized to the point where it was unrecognizable. As I swore under my breath, a man came and leaned against the phone booth. He looked at me pleadingly. I recognized him as a guy I once met and promised to go see his band play at bar I knew. I never went, which is why he was here. He looked at me and then began to cry. Then I woke up to being bored. DAY FORTY-SEVEN Worried about having a dream tonight. I didn’t. Slept like a hat. DAY FORTY-EIGHT Today is what six times eight is. And the age of my least-favorite uncle. He was addicted to valium for awhile, and that’s kind of interesting and all, but I like him the least because of the way he treated my cousin. Always belittling him. Christ, he was only fourteen, you asshole, lighten up. DAY FORTY-NINE Bored. DAY FIFTY Bored. No seagull, no party, no nothing. Should’ve went to the sea. DAY FIFTY-ONE Saw a cat today. I really should be trying to catalogue what the ones I see look like so I know if they’re the same one or not when they come back. Other than that, mostly bored. Tossed some rocks at what looked to be a crude caveman drawing on the wall. No sun. Cloudy. DAY FIFTY-TWO Bored. Wonderfully bored. Just what I expected. No surprises, please. DAY FIFTY-THREE I don’t remember yesterday at all. I just realized it as I was taking a piss. Not that I missed much. Just a bit of the old boredom, apparently. DAY FIFTY-FOUR Crawled out of the cave just a bit. Saw a cat. I think it was the same from a couple days ago. Color was identical, and responded to my call of ‘hey cat!’, just like the last one did. Maybe ‘responded’ is too strong a word. It looked at me briefly then walked away. It’s all you can really expect from those bastards. DAY FIFTY-FIVE If I see the cat, I’ll name it. I thought all day of a good name, so I was bored in a very different way. I like the name ‘Chuckles’. It isn’t common, and not at all serious. DAY FIFTY-SIX No cat. Seagull came. I won’t name that thing, though. I hate it (but I don’t let that on to him/her), and probably would just call it ‘fucker’. As in ‘come here, fucker’, or ‘piss off, fucker’. If fucker didn’t have the reputation of being such a horrible word, I can see people actually liking it. It has a nice roll off the tongue. DAY FIFTY-SEVEN Bored. DAY FIFTY-EIGHT Bored. Haven’t bored two days back to back for quite awhile. All of a sudden I feel guilty for bringing up the past. I should just let it die peacefully. DAY FIFTY-NINE Today can only be divided by one and itself. I think. I won’t go to the length of checking up on it, though. I’ll just have to trust myself for once. DAY SIXTY Masturbated. Twice. A nice personal celebration of sixty days. DAY SIXTY-ONE Wondered about the birds. They can fly because they have hollow bones. I bet I can snap a bird like a twig. DAY SIXTY-TWO A massive flock of birds flew over me. For a couple seconds they blotted out the sun. It was scary and beautiful at the same time. Christ, where the fuck are they all going? That’s what I really want to know. DAY SIXTY-THREE Bored. Waited for the birds. DAY SIXTY-FOUR Maybe that seagull has been coming back and I’m not really paying attention. What a fool I would feel like if that was the case. Would it come and look for me? If it thought I had food, it might. Do seagulls eat meat? What a dumb question, of course they do. Remorseless bloodthirsty killers. For some reason, I just pictured a shark eating a seagull. It was no effort at all for the shark. It was more of a tease for it, actually. Like eating only one potato chip. DAY SIXTY-FIVE A couple of birds. I threw a rock at them. Not out of malice or urge to kill them. I knew I’d miss completely. It was just to see how good my aim is (bad). DAY SIXTY-SIX No birds. Today I got my kicks. DAY SIXTY-SEVEN Today I thought of the past. I couldn’t help it. It was so easy. I thought about what it would be like if some things were different years ago. I could only think of a couple ways the world would be different (if there would still be a world), but on a more personal level everything could have changed I took that job, moved there, didn’t go camping, ate at that restaurant, all sorts of little stuff that snowballed into big, giant never-would-have-guessed-at-the-time stuff. Not that I am interested in the ramifications of what would be different, but just the difference in and of itself. Then I yelled for the devil. He didn’t come. (‘in and of itself’? Who am I kidding with that kind of talk. The useless leftovers of a philosophy course…) DAY SIXTY-EIGHT Bored. DAY SIXTY-NINE. Huh-huh. Sixty nine. And to think I thought I had my sense of humor shot off in a war. DAY SEVENTY If days were years, I’d be pretty goddamn old right about now. A couple of birds. Ugly ones. DAY SEVENTY-ONE Rain today. A nice, light shower. Watched it come down for a long time. Went to the cave entrance, cupped my hands and drank a nice fresh glass. Tried to masturbate but couldn’t get all the way off. Maybe it’s solar powered. DAY SEVENTY-TWO Kept raining until I just started to try and fall asleep. Already having a hard time to get use to silence that I’ve not had for the past two days. Stupid really, I’ve had it for a long time. Silence should be ingrained in me. DAY SEVENTY-THREE The realization that I hadn’t talked for what might be an entire week scared the shit out of me. Made it a point to sing some songs to no one, just to remember what I sound like. I have a lovely falsetto, if I do say so myself.
I dreamt I was walking on a forest path and I stumbled and instead of hitting the ground I kept on falling and falling to the point where I wasn’t even scared, just so bored falling through empty space that I hoped I would either hit something eventually and splatter or just wake up. I woke up. I was so hard I couldn’t piss for five whole minutes. The rest of the day was uneventful except for a bird that came and hopped around the opening of the cave. It looked at me. I gave it the finger. Then it flew away. DAY SEVENTY-FIVE Just for a change of pace, I sure could go for some cat. Mmm, boy. DAY SEVENTY-SIX Bored. DAY SEVENTY-SEVEN Forgot the dream I had. Funny that I remember I dreamt, though. Perhaps I am going in insane. It’s bound to happen sometime. All of… this… can’t be too healthy. DAY SEVENTY-EIGHT Masturbated. It was hotter than usual. The temperature, I mean. DAY SEVENTY-NINE I thought about going to the sea today. Then I thought it might be interesting if I didn’t go, and used that as an allegory of something like man’s impossibility to achieve something or other. Then I remember Virginia Woolf’s fucking To the Lighthouse and promised myself, that over hell or high water, I was eventually going to go to the sea. DAY EIGHTY So what, I say to the birds, so you can fly, big deal. DAY EIGHTY-ONE It rained again. I’m not surprised. Sometimes it rains. This is one of those times. It doesn’t surprise me one bit. I watch the rain, trying to be interested, but I just become bored. I stare outside at it, just watching it fall and run over all the rocks, and I think I’ve been doing it for hours, but I bet only a couple minutes have passed. Fucking hell. I’d rather roll a rock up a hill. Then watch it roll down and crush people in the town below. I probably wouldn’t kill many. Most could get out the way, I bet, since it would be hard not to notice a giant rock roaring down main street, destroying cars and cracking the pavement. I’d probably only get old people/invalid kills, and in the grand scheme of things, they’re only worth half-points. ‘The grand scheme of things’. What a phrase. Like ‘big picture’. Kind of lame joke now. In the grand scheme of things there is no grand scheme of things. DAY EIGHTY-TWO Bored. DAY EIGHTY-THREE Still bored. Rocked back and forth a bit. DAY EIGHTY-FOUR I decided that from now on I’ll only masturbate about once a week. I want to avoid overkill. Keep it fun and interesting, and all that jizz. DAY EIGHTY-FIVE Alone with your thoughts. Bullshit. As long as you have thoughts, you’re never alone. Especially if you can’t hear yourself in them. It’s like a whole new person in your head. Man, I hope I don’t go crazy. And the worst part about it is, I’ll never know if I do. DAY EIGHTY-SIX If I’m not insane, then I’m certainly in denial. If I’m not wrong about everything, then I’m right about nothing. If I’m not reaching up to touch the sky, then I’ve got my hand caught in the gutter. If I’m not going to die, then I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get old. If I’m not a perfectly preserved specimen, then I’m a warning for what can go wrong. If I’m not having the time of my life, then I’m a piece of entertaining puppet meat on a full stage performing for an empty audience. If I’m not a work of fiction, then where the fuck am I? DAY EIGHTY-SEVEN Bored. My brain should be tired after yesterday. Maybe my eyesight would go out for a couple hours for some recharge time. Or maybe the part of my brain that does math would shut off for the day. I could deal with that. What am I going to do? Count rocks? DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT Twice infinity. Impossible. One is enough for me. DAY EIGHTY-NINE It was cloudy. Masturbated. Then I noticed a bird. There’s probably been many more passing by, I just haven’t been paying attention for awhile. DAY NINETY Bored. DAY NINETY-ONE Bored as a stiff. DAY NINETY-TWO It was a sunny day. Like usual, I think. I really don’t notice very much anymore. I’m spending more and more time with my eyes closed, stuck in another little world. For the brief period when I was here, a bird flew down from god knows where (was it only a few days ago when I last saw one? It feels like forever) and landed on a large rock about twenty feet away from me. It was a seagull. I called at it. I tried to be charming. It didn’t look over until I made a clicking noise by dragging my tongue over the roof of my mouth than quickly snapping it down. Such beady fucking little eyes. And a beak that always looks like it’s angrily judging you. I pretended I was going to gently throw something at it, something like food, just to see if it would follow my hand. It did. I wasn’t sure I was pleased or disappointed. It’s nice to know I can trick a bird, but birds are stupid, making it an empty victory. DAY NINETY-THREE One day, something is going to happen. Not today, or the next day either. DAY NINETY-FOUR I was right. Today was uneventful. Tomorrow something will happen. The best thing about being so vague about ‘something’ is that it’s so easy to be right. The sun will rise tomorrow. That could be my something. One could argue that the same thing just happened today, but then that’s their something, not mine. I’m the only one that counts. That is, unless Satan comes back and starts to build up a reputation around here, which is entirely possible because I can’t win anyone over without promises of bread and cities. I’d tell him to get off my property, but I don’t own any. DAY NINETY-FIVE I changed my mind. Tomorrow something will definitely happen. Masturbated (that wasn’t the ‘something’). DAY NINETY-SIX In commemoration of eight times twelve and my promise that something would happen today, today I went to the beach. The walk was longer than I thought, even though I can see the crashing waves from the entrance to the cave. The only problem was that first step onto the couple dozen yards of gravel before the sandy part of the beach. Going barefoot today is pretty shitty, but no one cool wears socks to the beach. I tried to walk on the balls of my feet, like a reverse tiptoe kind of thing. The first thing I noticed coming out of the goddamn cave was the fucking, fucking heat and humidity. The sun is nicer in the cave. Manageable. Tolerable. Just lights things up, not sets them on fire. When I got past the gravel, I think I was actually sweating. And I couldn’t look up at the sky because the sun was all over and I lost my sunglasses long, long ago. And just when I thought I was in the clear with the end of gravel, I find that the sand was hot as a match head. I almost preferred the pricks of the gravel on my feet. But then I saw the sea, and stopped caring about third degree burns. I finally looked out in front of me, and it was beautiful because it was different. That’s all. I mean, I could see the sea from the cave, but now it was right in front of me, stretching forever in what felt like three directions. Waves lazily rolling up the beach and then easing their way back in. I did a kind of mad-dash over the burning (fuck!) sand and stood on the cooler, muddier part of the beach which always gets covered in the surf every couple of seconds. I just stood there and let the waves wash over me, the cool (but not too cold) water rushing over my feet and ankles. I looked over and saw a whole flock of seagulls (I’m so sure that’s what they were) just standing around on the sand. Apparently the heat didn’t bother them. Maybe they’re too stupid. Or they don’t have the same type of nervous system as we do. Less sensitive. In some ways that’s good, and some way’s that’s bad. I thought all about this while my feet were constantly being embraced by the waves and the mud around me built up and I started very slowly to sink into the earth. I let myself get up to about my ankle before I stepped out of it. I started walking towards the seagulls, enjoying the light cool breeze that suddenly started up, or that I finally noticed. It was a welcome relief from the constant heat. Or maybe I just pushed the temperature out of my head as I focused on the seagulls. They scuttled away like crabs as I approached, never perturbed enough to break out the wings. I wish I had a pair of tongs. I bet I could snag a couple easily with something like that. The sounds of the waves up close was much more soothing than what I always heard in the cave, and I found myself being taken farther and farther away while I crouched and did my business. After I pulled up my shorts I shed a tear for the lack of toilet paper and hightailed it back to the cave. No birds followed, and they avoided my shit like the plague (the flies seemed to fall deeply in love with the log, though). DAY NINETY-SEVEN Bored. One hundred is coming. I try not to get excited, but it’s hard. One hundred. It just sounds important. Maybe I’ll masturbate twice that day. DAY NINETY-EIGHT I think I’ll go back to the beach on day one hundred. Even though I was there only a couple days ago, I don’t think going again so soon will make it any less special. I mean, one hundred is special enough that I should do everything I’ve done so far all over again in one day. Masturbate, catch cats, wear rocks, all that stuff. But no, the beach it is. Maybe I’ll even go swimming. Maybe. I’ve got a fear of jellyfish, and I’m not good enough with geography to be sure that they are not floating out there like an invertebrate balloon army, waiting for me to finally succumb. So there’s that, plus I know for a fact that there are sharks out there. I guess I’ll just have to wade, but even then I’d feel better about it if I had a harpoon. For day one hundred, I will also make a real effort to kill one of those birds. It shall be a nice feast. DAY NINETY-NINE Bored with anticipation. DAY ONE HUNDRED I was all prepared to do some hardcore wading in the sea with a pointed stick I found near the gravel as my makeshift harpoon, when something else caught my eye. I don’t know why I didn’t see it a couple days ago. Maybe the sea was so damn enchanting, or maybe I just didn’t walk far enough south (or north). There was a boat on the beach. A small rowboat. It looked old. There was no interesting food in it, and the one oar looked broken. I would have quickly lost interest and re-focused my attention to the birds but then I spotted a book left in the boat. I picked it up with interest. Perhaps it had something to do with sex. Or cooking. It was neither. It seemed to be an instruction book for emergencies and other irrelevant things. There were many drawings and illustrations, but they were pretty boring and obvious. A splash of colour would have made giving CPR or gathering wood for a fire seem much more interesting than it really is. I saw a film at school once of someone giving someone else CPR. I don’t remember if it was real or not. It looked pretty dull, even though the person doing all the work seemed really into it. I remember getting in trouble for writing something on my desk because I was bored while it was playing. I had to write ‘I will pay more attention in class’ one hundred times on a piece of paper (actually I needed three pieces of paper). I took the book back to my cave, anyway. It will be nice to sit on something other than rocks for awhile. By the time I got back I forgot about my promise to try and get some seagulls. I also forgot I was celebrating one hundred days. |
Song worth paying for: Memo From Turner - The Rolling Stones | |||
