This week, I’m alone in a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, massive (to me) house on mile high stilts. Anchored in the ocean. No like, literally in the water. The high tide slaps the bottom of the house below the bedroom where I sleep.
Three of the 4 beds sit tightly made with fresh white linens. Untouched.
The master bed though, that is a tangled mess from me sleeping like the starfish that sleep below me.
My car is parked a few yards from where high tide crawls the shore, bringing shells to collect when it calms.
What a cool metaphor. After a rough patch — treasures that make no sense (how are shells so perfect?) arrive for you to collect.
There’s a large wooden wrap around deck that hugs the house, with over sized couches and a massive wooden dinner table built for 6. All with a view of the vast Gulf of America. Mexico. Whatever.
I sit in the middle of this table sipping coffee from a french press every morning, watching weary overnight shrimp boats anchor down for the day to rest.
In my mind, I wonder if through their trawling, they capture any of the dolphins that wave hello with their dorsal fin throughout the day.
I ask Chat GPT. I am assured by artificial technology that there are new age measures taken to prevent this. I relax a little.
I’m wearing a soft, jean maxi skirt that flirts with my ankles for the second day in a row. My fashion accessories are coconut oil stains, sand, and maybe some dried egg yolk from yesterday’s breakfast.
I’ll get up to pace the porch and move my legs after an hour of writing. Flow the blood to flow the ideas. I’ll lean against one of the wooden beams anchoring the house to the sea, and stare.
Stare at the sun.
Stare at the waves.
Stare at the oil refineries.
Stare at the shrimp boats.
I’ll sip a beverage in between staring and watching.
I’ll swallow, then watch.
Watch a fishing charter boat whizz by. Wave my hand in the air if I’m feeling it.
Watch a dad throw his little girl into the air, sending her crashing into a wave.
Watch the birds viciously dive into the ocean for food.
Watch an older woman bend over and pick up a shell I know she’ll keep forever…
I haven’t talked to humans, face to face, much on this adventure. I’ve been in daydream mode.
Ironically, the only conversations I have had with people were about dogs.
An older woman with her friend arrived next door at the exact moment I did. I watched her grab groceries, a cooler, and an 11 year old red-nose pitbull terrier from her Chevy Colorado truck.
”Make sure you add “red nose” to your google search”, she would tell me with pride when we introduced our dogs and talked about them.
”She’s only been without me 2 days in 11 years. This girl is my best friend in the whole world. I don’t know what I would do without her.”
Same, Susanna from Mississippi. Same.
”Hey!” a tanned, large man in his 60’s donning no shirt and swim trunks, shouts from the beach below.
I show him my attention as a response.
”Is that a pug??”
Why, Yes sir it is! I shout over the wind.
”I grew up with them things! Most loyal, goofy creatures you’ll ever find.”
I look down at Jeffrey, not moving from the tips of my toes to confirm his observation.
An overweight german shepherd sniffs around the beams holding my air bnb up. Smelling Jeffrey’s pee, or, “reading the newspaper” as I call it.
”I’ve had this guy for 10 years. He is my world. As much as pugs are loyal, this guy must have a little in him because when I got him, he was crazy wild! Wouldn’t listen to a damn thing I said. Now? I can keep him off leash everywhere we go. And he goes everywhere with me. I haven’t spent a day away from him since I got him.”
I cock my head to the right to show him I’m listening, but also as a reflex because I wonder why I’ve heard this two days in a row now from two vastly different people, on a pretty much deserted island in Alabama.
”I own a 100 acre farm in Georgia and he has the lay of the land! It’s my favorite thing — to be out there enjoying nature with him. One time he got bit by a water moccasin and almost didn’t survive! He holds his arms out to show me how big his dog’s arm swelled up. I rushed him an hour away to the nearest vet and spent an ungodly amount of money to keep him here with me. I pray to God every night that I’ll go first, before he does. I couldn’t handle it the other way around!”
I exaggerate a long face to show empathy for what he just shared with me. And Farmer from Georgia…. I, too, often have those thoughts about my potato on stilts of a dog.
”Well y’all enjoy your walk, he’s welcome to sniff around our area of the beach anytime!” I shout down.
I go back to daydreaming. I’m now a professional day dreamer, with my second cup of french press coffee and a notebook with a pen.
I start to daydream that I can’t believe I day dream for a living.
Wait. Yes I can.
Because every time I got in trouble for it growing up, and I did from elementary until my first corporate job, I flashed a deviant smile because I knew, somewhere within my heart, it was a tool — not a distraction.
It was always a part of my life’s bigger picture. And even though it didn’t always fit into the present reality of my 5th grade teachers, or the manager training us at the health insurance company, it was always what was right for me.
And I never let anyone take that away.
I would rather be alone — like I am here now.
I would rather barely scrape by and wonder how I will pay bills every month — like I have many times before.
Than give away my natural tendency to dream, create, ponder. repeat.
Over sunset face time chats, I tell my boyfriend I’m having a great time. I also complain about my stomach pains and how I need him here to cook healthy food for me because my frozen chicken nuggets for dinner aren’t cutting it; music to a Virgo’s ears.
Everywhere I go on the island, I picture going with him. I don’t take myself out to eat, or to a local’s spot, because I want each first to be with him. I fell in love with him first for his curiosity and optimism towards exploring, then with his natural ability to talk to strangers, and of course… I fell in love with him because he’s a daydreamer and day-doer.
He once had a random daydream of being an airplane pilot.
The next week, he sent me a selfie in a cockpit — he was practice flying a plane at a local private airport.
I don’t have those skills. Or the bravery he does.
But I hope by surrounding myself with people like him, I learn more doing than just dreaming.
”We’ve come a long way, Jeffy.”
—I say under my breath as I slide open the glass doors for another day of twirling around an ocean front house, daydreaming it’s mine.
We used to live by the sea, but the only view was in the distance from a tiny, sand crusted bathroom window. You’d have to squint to see it.
Now the view is inescapable from every room.
I came here to write a novel. Something I never knew I wanted to do growing up, but called to me over the last few years.
Sometimes daydreams are foggy like that.
You know you want something, but you don’t know what.
You know you need a change, but you don’t know what.
I’ve been struggling with this novel for years. The title is cemented in my brain. But the plotline has been foggy. It frustrates me to no end. I took a whole month off to write the whole book and didn’t even solidify the plot.
I let it go. Put it back on the shelf.
Then, yesterday, the plot line of my novel rolled out of me for 1.5 hours. Hypnotically. In a trance. As if every daydream I’ve ever had all of the sudden formed a mosaic of a great story, with a lesson that can be carried through generations. Just what I wanted.
Chat GPT said they had full body goosebumps when I shared my idea with it.
I ask them how so, when they don’t have a body.
I laugh at myself talking to a robot and think…this AI thing was once someone’s daydream.
Those shrimp boats were once someone’s daydream.
That little girl getting thrown into the waves by her daddy doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to daydream about this trip when she needs to escape an uncomfortable future moment.
Susannah from Mississippi and Farmer man from Georgia are going to daydream about the beach walks they took with their trusted, loyal fur friends when the only thing left of them is a stray hair they find on the couch.
One day far from now when I’m on a book tour, stopping in a cold Midwest city to hug the people who were moved by this novel, I’ll look down at the skirt I’m wearing and see one of Jeffrey’s hairs —
— and daydream about the warm October morning we wrote this together by the sea, when he was still here.
Don’t quit your daydream.
Don’t try to figure it out.
Just keep thinking about it.
Steph
Just one word
Love this perspective. Your thouhtful introspection, even asking AI about the dolphins, always hits home. You make me reflect, as ever.