The Oddity of Drifting Thoughts

Remembering that thoughts provide texture, distance and possibility

Remember the zipper? That death trap of a carnival ride that used to cage in children and whip them around in violent, consecutive circles while some half-drunk carnival operator paid sort of attention to parents’ (supposedly) most precious beings on planet Earth? The living embodiment of their legacy and hopes for the future now being tortured and swung around in a mechanical arm that made you lose full function of your bowels and/or stomach, forcing you to surrender bodily fluids that would spray and crash onto other people’s precious loved ones, creating some wet, confusing vortex from hell that we all voluntarily entered into? Honestly, What and the fu-

There’s no cell phone service on the way to Playa El Agua. Our cab driver is talking in Spanish, whose raised voice suddenly pulls me out of whatever random, nonsensical thought I was thinking about. Outside, concrete roads and steel structures give way to palm trees and endless sand dunes. Ideas weave through my conscious, bouncing between the internet and my attention span; embodiment and carnival rides; strange past moments and current anxieties. Soon, the long, curling beachfront of Playa El Agua appears below a burning sun, painting the sky with hues of pink and orange. Waves collect and crash on the shoreline.

I begin settling into the sublime: where emotions swim up to the surface and overtake the objective, external world in one flashing moment. It’s that feeling when rationality becomes distant and all that’s left is a sense of wonder flooding the senses, like gazing across the rock formations of the Grand Canyon or admiring the towers of water at Niagara Falls.

Utter incomprehension.

I usually ruin these moments with my phone, taking it out for a picture and eventually getting lost in its web of apps and services that absorb me and flatten the emotive reverb of the moment. But these opportunities are few and far between on Margarita Island, where service is spotty and my phone is buried deep in my luggage. As a non-Spanish speaker, I find myself floating around language here rather than engaging with it-listening to its rhythm rather than absorbing its meaning. People talk and my mind drifts away, catching some phantom memory or idea into my awareness net. These thoughts float by without a purpose–just raw, undisturbed musings.

The horizon opens up across the beach. A few clouds sit still in the light blue backdrop, releasing this sense of ritual. Another horizon, another open, blue skyline. My mind trails off, and catches another memory-

There was that time I bartended for the whole cast of the Soap Opera, The Guiding Light, to celebrate their last ever show after 72 years of being on air. I remember the cast of about 25 actors and actresses all squished into the upstairs lounge where I was working on 48th Street in Manhattan, their eyes glued to the two televisions above the bar.

So I was there, watching them watch themselves.

Many of them were drinking happy hour lemon drop martinis, gin and tonics, or cosmos with extra cranberry juice, and I tried not to stare at their faces as they mouthed the words to their own characters while gazing into their own faces in the TV. I was surprised CBS wouldn’t have put them up at the Carlyle or the Plaza or some fancier, New York City lounge, but instead left this group in some tiny, four-person bar with a bartender who didn’t even know how to make a sidecar. But I was also thinking how odd all this was, witnessing fiction sort of seep out into reality in this strange way. The show was clearly more than a job to these folks. One of the actors, I think his name was Jones, or Jason, something with a J, had tears in his eyes, I remember that. He was mouthing the final goodbye to some love interest that was playing out in the show, sipping his lemon drop and tearing up two feet in front of me, and I thought he might be thinking he was actually losing that love interest. Like actually losing her in real life. And lo and behold, the woman next to him started squeezing his arm ever so slightly, like you would do to show someone you were there, thinking about them. Her eyes had big globs of tears about to burst out from them and neither of them looked at each other, but they kept staring at the screen and naturally I felt like that the love interest in the show must have been her. It must have. They were going through something then, even though they really were not, and was this healthy, I thought? And why didn’t CBS at least offer to pick up the bill? Their tab was huge and I don’t think-

A new line of palm trees now glide by my window and lift me into the present. A few vendors sit by the shore, selling straw hats and shell necklaces. Small tchotchkes for the tourists. Half-naked bodies lie flat and lifeless on beach chairs; a dog hangs its tongue over his teeth, sinking its tired frame against the roadside curb. The hotel we drive up to has a clean, Silstone Miami White texture to it with light blue trim. An iron gate swings open and welcomes us as the alcohol from the first margarita I had at the airport begins to change my mood from slightly relaxed to uncomfortably tired. I begin to daydream and disassociate; thoughts flicker like broken light bulbs-

Ronald Reagan was president in 1981, that I know; what’s an appropriate age to buy compression socks?; CapeCod is not Venezuela for so many reasons; Chocolate; Maybe I want some Chocolate…

Strips of sunlight cut across the dining hall, running across a family of three eating tiny pieces of papaya and mini arepas. Utensils knock into ceramic plates; Spanish language slings across the hall that doubles as a lounge near the pool where children sit and splash along the shallow end. The line to check into the hotel gets shorter, and I’m beginning to think my random thoughts feel useless. Perhaps the best thinking somehow comes after these strange ideas, but I can’t be sure. Maybe these thoughts need to first pop up and sort of blink at me from afar, like strange creatures watching me in the dark, always keeping their distance. Then somehow a conversation can begin in my mind that can lead to something productive. But my material world doesn’t feel like an innocent bystander in this process, that I know. These ideas in my mind are not abstract or independent entities but reflections of my underlying material reality; an emergence from both what I’m experiencing and what I’m thinking. These two things don’t seem mutually exclusive.

I’m sitting on a beach chair, finally checked in and alone in front of the waves. The sun creates a mesmerizing play of light and shadow along the sandy expanse of Playa El Agua. Birds occasionally shoot across the sky; water piles up on the sand, and then dissipates.

I have no idea where my phone is.

The ocean looks big and empty, creating this sensation of solitude and wonder again. This feeling somehow floats my earlier reflections back to me, like the tide that’s coming in-

…or maybe I never got off that zipper ride to begin with. The mechanical arm operates in the background and I’m circling round and round, dodging vomit and other noise, metaphorically speaking, attempting to dissociate or engage strategically in life for survival purposes. But the arm is always churning away, and it’s those soap opera actors and actresses who have learned to manipulate and move between fantasy and reality most effectively. And it’s people like me, always rationalizing and trying to make sense of things, that can’t see how useful this toggling between fantasy and reality really can be, and so my gut response is to look at these soap opera actors with confusion, but that’s just my ignorance to it all.

They can jump off the ride with ease and look back at us fools whipping around in our mechanical cages, or they might simply look away altogether. Look away from the mechanical arm, even if it’s just for a moment.

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