He walked a good distance from the entrance before he sat down. The beach at that stretch opens wide — nothing but ocean across the whole frame — and he took a spot near the tide line, camera up, expecting to check in on things. The check-in did not happen. No service. He noted that when he first arrived at this place the coverage here had been excellent, 5G on the sand, and now there was nothing. Like, what? The other direction, where he often walked, was closed off for nesting birds. ATVs were bringing people through. It was Tuesday, he confirmed to himself, a chill day. He decided he would find a piece of driftwood somewhere on this beach where the signal came back, and check in from there.
While he sat, the work continued. He had ideas for the Upwork profile — smaller clips of each project, one at a time, talked through in a presentation format. Maybe a document alongside it. A better format for him, he said, especially for something like this. He stated the plan plainly and then stopped, because the next thing did not have an obvious shape. I just don't know how to even say it. What he said was that he is doing what he has to do to move forward, and that after two years he still has not found an audience that reciprocates. He named the exception precisely: one person, yesterday, sent him $100. He had already thanked them. He said he was grateful and he said, in the same breath, that he is at rock bottom right now and needs a lot more help. He is doing what he can. He always is. And the part he returned to twice was not the money but the visibility of the effort — why would people who can see that not help. He did not resolve the question. He left it stated.
Then the ocean, which he said he always feels better coming to. He had been thinking about it on the walk down: this ocean is a little different. Spread out, all of it at once, hard to trace. The waves here come in together and go out together, no variation, none of the zigzag he associates with southern Oregon. He said he loved that. He tracked the white foam of the tide as it arrived, watched what it did on the sand, the fractal patterns repeating down through scale. That does something to your brain, he said. And when the sun catches the wet sand as the water pulls back — that one he called almost like a drug. He had no words for it and said so, and kept looking anyway.
He said he cannot believe he never connected with the ocean his whole life. He had seen the Atlantic. Florida as a kid, with his mother — he does not remember it well, though he thinks he remembers drinking sea water and not liking it. A beach a few times with the Boy Scouts, in Mexico. Exposures, not connection. He could not imagine being parted from coming down like this now.
Right here on the edge, he said, there is nowhere else he would rather be. He enumerated what he could lose and lost it aloud, item by item — the Jeep, the RV, the computers, everything — and placed himself at the same coordinates on the other side of that accounting. Truly homeless, he said, and still right here, because this is where his soul belongs. And still building a life, because he never gives up. The list was specific so the conclusion could be exact: the assets are not what holds him to the place.
He closed on the general architecture rather than his own case. All his life he was helpful to other people. He gave freely, without expectation, because that is what he understood the thing to be — and he said that is not shared in the world anymore, and he does not understand it. Is it any surprise the world is in the state it is in, when the world is only a reflection of us as a people, as humanity, made by individuals together. Then the last line, stated as a completed fact and not revised: I always did my part. Behind him the tide kept coming in together and going out together, and he still had to find that piece of driftwood.