Faceless Sticks in the Surf

Faceless Sticks in the Surf by Jay

Miami, Florida:  August 28, 2014

By Jay: Two men who are now slightly beyond middle age are sitting in a hotel room.  They are twin brothers.  One of them is in excellent physical shape – small-boned, spry and wide-eyed, and from a distance appearing much younger than his years – a runner of marathons who has recently qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon.  He is a good two and a half inches shorter than his counterpart – tall and white bearded who only a few short years before used to be in the same condition as his brother.  Now as he sits there he feels the sores in his mouth as well as the raw soles of his aching feet.  Even the tips of his fingers are red and hurt when bent.  He runs when he can, but lately he has been limping, and has recently purchased a cane to help him move around whenever his feet become too sore.  It is the chemotherapy drug that is keeping him alive at the moment, and as he squints at the old fading picture on his computer screen, he sees himself and his brother as they appeared three and half decades in the past at Wells Beach, Maine in August, 1979. 

The picture under inspection is an old slide that has recently been converted.  It shows a scene in late afternoon.  Two pale, stick-like, red haired boys are seen splashing around in the frigid surf.  They are turned away from each other, the one on the left rearing higher than the one on the right.  The faces are indistinguishable – pale and muted – white and featureless – as if they are phantoms emerging from the depths of a vast and ancient ocean.  Both ghosts are gazing skywards into the blueness of a 1970’s sky that has long since set and expired within the dust of infinity.  And the faded light and overall bleached and blurred image of the scene seems to be eroding into the distant realms of transient time.  Even the pale ocean itself, extending towards a limitless horizon appears to be of another world – one of dreams or even nightmares where giant monsters and serpents dwell under the dark depth.  The two boys appear to be lighter than themselves, as if they are spirits that belong to an incorporeal world.  They seem to be emerging from the surf as if intoxicated with the weightlessness of youth – the divinity of hydrogen and helium and the rise of unearthly space and thought and dreamlike matter that transcend the grim reality of the geologic touch and density that consumes the spirit. 

            The twins are still looking at the image on the screen of their faceless, ghostly selves – haunting and disturbingly true - stepping to the effortless rhythm of time, which in the final footsteps reveals the erosive face of us all.