Wash and swash

Shorelines are dynamic environments. If you ever see a stratigraphic collunm of an ancient shore, you see huge variences and shifting origins. Wedges of beach sand are cemented inside layers of bioturbated mud and the mud is between patches of back beach salt wash. Pictures of beaches running up and down the landscape, moving sideways, and moving back. Wash and swash.

I had a realization just five minutes ago.

I don't really have a whole lot of friends. At least not in this town. I have some excuses and some lies, but I have to admit it's my own damn fault.

I enlisted on the thirty-first of October, 2000. I quit talking to any of my friends left alive about two months before. We had habits and livelihoods that I didn't want following me into a my new life. I felt bad about leaving them behind, but it was neccasary. I severed those ties and have not ever attempted to regain them.

Upon arrival in boot camp, I found myself in a world of people who had no knowledge of the West, much less Colorado itself. I only had one person in my division from my home state and we tried as hard as we could to be friends, but somehow, his propensity for singing and acting didn't lend itself to my abilities of conversation. In a world of lining up nut to butt for chow and close quarter living, I was completely alone.

That is not to say I didn't talk to people. I have many conversations a day, just like I did then. One of those boot shining circle conversations led me to mention a 1970 half-ton Ford I used to have. From the other side of the circle came an accent that I confused for Norwegian.

"Dude, I got one too! I love that big piece of shit!"

That was Matt. My closest friend, maybe in my life, but I've had so many lives. We became very fast friends, stationed together in Pennsacola, then in Virginia. We have shared experience of the same boat and the same piece of industrial art called the Tomcat. I have met his family, and he has met mine. We've shared beers and women, and sometimes a tear for a buddy. Then he deployed and I deployed and we just never got in touch again.

Luckily, my deployment introduced me to a skinny guy working in 1st who asked if I was the "dude with the guitar". I told him that I was, so he showed me a beat up notebook of lyrics. He obviously had no musical experience, but we formed a very moving poem of his, called Johny's Kite, into a very good song. The business of being an Ordie kept me from seeing him too much more until our return to home station, but it was a pretty common sight in that berthing to see me and him reading Bukowski and writing in his beat up notebook. His name was Ash.

One day he walked up to me outside the ordie shack and asked if I still played my guitar. I told him yes, I did. He asked me to come over that night to jam. I told him I had a drummer I could bring with me, but we needed a bass player. Then he introduced me to James.

James was an amazing bass player and an amazing person who really needs chapters of a book to describe him in full. From that early start, we formed a band with my new girlfriend sitting in on drums. We were all very intelligent and well-read, or so we thought. Discussions on philosophy and literature were common. It was nice not to be just another drug taking/selling loser in a valley full of them. I was in a real group of friends. People who enjoyed my company and never had to be reassured they were wanted.

All of my friends left over time, only to be replaced by others, but never quite as close.

First Ash left, then my girlfriend, who had become my wife. Von and Cooley moved farther into my circle to fill the void. Robin was never replaced. Cooley left after I had spent a good long time sleeping on his couch and covering up my visceral pain with alcohol, insanity, and car talk. A string of our core friends dwindled until I had only James to hang out with. He was there for more than a few meltdowns, and I helped him through a hiccup or two as well. Then he left. Von was there.

Then I left.

I don't know anyone here anymore. All my old crowd is either dead or in jail or dissappeared in the manner of that type of friend. I have tried to make new friends, but they just don't seem to care about anything pertinent. I want friends who know about space and time and can speak and feel. Instead, I have had a steady stream of friends move in and on for whatever reason. Is enlightened debate and camping buddies that hard to come by?

Apparently, yes, they are. I could go out tonight and drink some beer and play some pool until I found a kindred spirit, but so many better friends are just a phone call away.

And thousands of miles away, moved on to their own lives of wash and swash.