The Big Floppy Hat By the Sea...

Dear Juliet

I don't think you've ever been to Gibson beach, but it looks like it's nevertheless become your sanctuary. My memories of it are seventeen years deep and so profound the only way I can deal with them is through humour.

I was coming off a near nervous breakdown at the time, and did indeed get off the Number 5 bus like a pilgrim looking for his Calvary. I think I had the same straw hat both first and last times. The Chevron filling station south of Carmel is a pretty unlikely shrine, but I orientated myself by it and went on down to the Point.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. For sure.

I'm probably going to get shouted at for this, but a Mack truck did get a bit close while I was getting my bearings. Mind you, I didn't think I was going to run out of luck just then. It was just the faintest of reminders that one day my road would be run.

I asked directions at the ranger station, found Gibson beach on the map and renamed it Drusilla's beach when I got there. It's a long and winding trail, trees dry as tinder, no sound from the road. Sun does scorch the beach, but there's a bit of shadow near the shore.

Pity, one might say, that I couldn't sit there evermore.

I think I was quite business-like that first time, taking shots of that great stump of stone sticking like a sore and stubborn tooth out of the water, summing up my own past.

You helped me change my own history.

I think you'd like the place, although you'd need hard feet, a big floppy hat and a bottle or two of water. The market's not that far. There always seems to be some hold-up thirty miles to the south though resolute care is still needed to cross that road.

Did I think of you all the time?

Of course I did. Not Dru. Not Hollywood. Just you.

I couldn't go back there again on my own this year. It would be like an insult to you, and that I will not do.

Yeah, I think you'd have liked it there, sitting in a big floppy hat by the sea.

Love,

James