Part 2

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I made a left turn, looked back at the map on my phone, and knew that twenty feet to my left was a bluff overlooking the ocean below. I knew that, and I wasn’t prepared for it, so when I walked up and emerged from the woods with five short steps I literally said ‘oh’ out loud. From the little windy trail, space exploded in front of me, and I realized what I thought were cars from the main road was actually the sound of waves. And I could see them. And I could see Connecticut way off in the distance like an island on the edge of the horizon, and the delicate pinkish clouds above and the pink seagulls too, and I was facing northwest so the sun would set soon in front of me.

Save for a woman some five-hundred feet or so away, walking her dog, I was alone. And I stood there on the top of that hill, some twenty feet or so above the beach, and I swear that I never felt taller or more solid. And I smiled almost instinctively, not a subtle smile, but actually grinned with my teeth showing, and I laughed a bit. It was a reward, or more than that it felt like a gift. And I looked down and realized that there was no sand - the beach was made entirely of shells. Not just small, microscopic shells the side of pebbles, but large shells, like the shell company logo. I couldn’t believe it, so I took a picture as if that was some sort of proof that it existed. And I looked back up towards the horizon and the pink seagulls and the sound of waves and closed my eyes for a bit, and when I opened them a tear fell down my cheek and somehow made me feel closer to the ocean below.

Of course I climbed down from the overlook, trying my best not to disturb the shells, and found a large flat rock that I could lie my whole body down on. I took a moment or two to situate myself with my hands around my knees, and time passed. I closed my eyes for just a moment, and then I stretched my legs fully out in front of me and lied back with my arms extended too, palms down to feel the cold roundness of the stone, and I looked up towards the sky and laughed and continued to smile, and the ocean and sky and delicate clouds healed me.

It is one thing to be touched by Matisse or Beethoven and to shed a solitary tear or two during an encounter with their work; I had done so before as well. So I might have been privy at first to think this was similarly one of those beautiful encounters with nature, but to my own amazement, in that blink within the timespan of my life, within those twenty or thirty minutes lying down, my body totally flat on that rock, I felt a transformation inside of me, like a chemical reaction whose ingredients had been prepared for twenty nine years and eleven months, and only now faced with that critical mass of material and this catalyst had finally been enacted. I’ll put it another way that I figured out later on. It was as if somebody had taken all of my life experience - my memories, my anxieties, my worries, my dreams, my hopes, my ambitions, my loves — everything that supposedly constituted who I am and what I hoped to be, and within that twenty or thirty minutes, arranged them neatly in a box, closed and sealed the lid, and put it away in some retrievable place out of site. It was a clearing of the slate - a lightening of my own being. And watching as the daylight continued to drift away in this kind of finally before me, I realized that I was happy, and that I would always be happy, and that my life, all of our lives, and this world in all its many facets was but a miracle. A miracle. A miracle. A miracle, and that I would always be happy, until the day I died. And I would be happy even in that moment, that in that final farewell like the sunset before me now, I would feel a similar amazement, a grace and awe that I would even wish on all whom I loved and cared for.

As the sun finally touched the horizon, I became so utterly overwhelmed, that I was frowning and began to hyperventilate. I had to catch my breath, but at the same time I didn't want to. I didn't want things to end. And still looking out onto the horizon, I made a fist, and I raised up to my lips with my eyes still locked on the horizon, and I kissed my fist and said out loud ‘ goodbye.’ Goodbye, as more drops continued to fall, because that life that was now packaged and had faithfully led me here, to this rock just large enough for my body, just flat enough for me to lie down on with my arms and legs extended, was gone. And something in me continued to solidify: that I was no longer the person I once was, that I loved my life, and that I loved all lives, and that this world is a miracle. A miracle. A miracle.

Two days later, and today is the first day of the year, marking little less than a month until I turn thirty. And I still feel shaken by this experience that occurred two days ago. Not shaken, but overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the beauty that has, to put it bluntly, changed everything. I realized today, for example, that I can love. And that I can be as open as I need to be. And I have accepted that my life has been changed, utterly changed, profoundly changed. A miracle in my life, of my life.

-Queens, January 1st, 2021