Beer Can Beach

If you smile at me, I will understand
'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does
in the same language.


I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes.
The black queen chants
the funeral march,
The cracked brass bells will ring;
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king.


Makua Beach
Feb. 28, '73

What was happening on the beach now that I had moved into "no man's
land," could be put into three words, sand, surf, and me. Oh, not to
forget Mr. Sun, he's been wonderful. I had been reading Desmond
Morris's book, The Naked Ape, and, when needed, I had Walt Whitman to
hang with. I just bought another book too. It's thick. It will keep me
busy for a long time. It was Jean-Paul Sartre's book, Being and
Nothingness. I hadn't started reading it yet.

I had seen only two people. Both were shell gatherers. There were a
couple of beach structures standing on the beach, but nobody seemed to
be living in them. Well, that was almost true. There was this dog, a
white mongrel terrier hanging around. I think she belonged to one of
the vacated places. She was hungry because one day, when I returned
from beach walking, I found her rummaging through my tent looking for
food. Yesterday afternoon, when I returned from one of my walks, she
had eaten all my bread. I got mad. Not only was I low on money; it was
six miles to the nearest store. I wished that mutt would just go back
to where she came from. In better times I would have fed her, but now
I could barely feed myself.

Using the remains of a deserted camp, I had managed to put together a
pretty nice camp. I had a chair and table. I was eating hot food, and
best of all, the weather was great. In the daytime I walked the beach,
played my recorder (I played best when nobody was around) and looked
for shells. The shells that I found were mostly the little ones that
were strung together to make necklaces and bracelets. Everybody in
Hawaii wore them. They had a natural hole, which made it easy to
string them together. I wasn't into jewelry, but when I collected
enough, I planned to send them to Carol Sue. I thought she would like
that.

Since I was a long way from anywhere, water and food were somewhat of
a problem, but I was managing, barely. I spent a lot of time listening
to my favorite radio station. KIKI was an AM station, but it played FM
music. It played progressive rock, the best kind too. Every afternoon
at sunset the DJ's programmed special music. Last night was super
fantastic. When the sun was above the horizon, King Crimson's Court Of
The Crimson King was played. At sunset, the Moody Blue's Nights In
White Satin came floating over the airwaves. The DJ's finished off the
gorgeous sunset with Crosby, Stills, and Nash's great song, Wooden
Ships. I had no idea that God's gift to humanity, the sunsets, could
be so improved upon.