Trading riffs.

Went out on the deck today with my guitar and stared at the ocean for a while. I needed some quiet time and just started playing. Didn’t know what I’d play necessarily, just that I wanted to hear the chords and feel the strings and the sounds.

It was cool because the sun was dropping fast behind my back and light looked orange on the sand and the reeds. They rocked back and forth with the wind as I watched the waves roll over the surf.

Things lined up for a while, and I just traded riffs with the ocean.

My mind wandered as I sat, and I thought about school and work and how fast life was moving. I watched a seagull or two fly overhead against the wind, and saw American and South Carolina flags blowing to my right. I looked down at my guitar at one point and thought of a lady in a meeting I used to attend who dealt with her own issues and told me her son played guitar. On my last day with the group she told me to “keep playing that geetar,” and that doing so would help me focus on bigger things. I hope she is at least where I am now in dealing with these things, if not better.

The reeds were crazy-green in the glow of the dusk and the waves kept rolling. Families walked by on the beach to pose for future Christmas cards in their white shirts, and as time kept moving, I kept strumming.

It was clarity, and it was nice, like church bells and wind chimes.

D.