I close my eyes. I direct my attention to the top of my head. I gradually relax my scalp until all of the tension there dissipates and moves elsewhere. I do not concern myself with where that tension has moved. When my scalp is completely at ease, I turn my consciousness to my forehead. I relax my face – my brow, my temples, my cheeks. I slacken the muscles of my jaw, then my neck, then my shoulders, calmly ushering the stress away and down through my body. The loosening continues, an easy wave rolling lazily on through my torso. The tightness in my chest, the stiffness in my back…it all seems to melt and flow through my belly and hips and buttocks and into my thighs. I feel now as though I exist entirely in my thighs. I let myself gather there; I allow all of my awareness to collect in the blood that feeds the tissues of my quadriceps. Eventually that awareness drifts down behind my knees and into my calves. My energy finally trickles on into my feet, and it tingles there briefly before it seems to escape from my toes and into the warmth around me. I am serenely bereft now. The turmoil I once housed has left me; it lies scattered, atomized among the billion grains of sand in which I lie. I rest peacefully at the edge of a doze.
I am startled by the shriek of a gull, and I jerk my palms down into the sand in a spasm of alertness. A stabbing pain shoots out of my left wrist and toward the fingers of my left hand. It’s my carpal tunnel syndrome. (About a year ago the chronic pain in my right wrist became intolerable and so I switched to mousing with my left hand. This tactic bought me some relief, it’s true, but comfort is a creditor without pity.) I suddenly realize that I have no idea how to relax my arms or my hands. What had that audiotape that they played at the anxiety workshop said about arms and hands? You’re at the beach, then you do your head, then you do your neck, then you do your shoulders…. Do you do the arms and the hands after you do your shoulders? But then you’d have to come back up through the arms again in order to get to the chest. That can’t be right. The whole point was to go downward through the entire body in one slow, sweeping motion. Maybe you’re supposed to do the arms at the same time as you do the torso? But then your arms would have to be laid flat against your sides. The tape never said anything about your arms needing to be flat against your sides. I think back to the voice. What had the voice said about my arms and my hands?
Nothing! I’m sure of it: the tape never mentioned arms or hands. What the hell? How do you make a tape demonstrating a physical relaxation technique but not mention the hands? They’re the busiest parts of the body, the prime utensils of a hectic, stressful lifestyle. Jesus Christ…fucking HMOs.
I hear the raucous calling of more gulls, and I look up to see them swooping in their frantic, graceless circles. Their cries grow ever more incessant, more desperate, as they jockey for some unseen carrion. In their mindless screeching I sense a universal pang of hunger and an instinctual fear of death. Oh, the madness, the senselessness of it all! For what more could life be to these wretched seabirds than a futile bid to defy the inevitability of death? The irony of their frenzied will to live is that death will obviate life’s purpose, and so there is no urgency. In reality there are no stakes. There is no pressure. Yet the gulls do not calm themselves; they cannot.
I raise my hands to shade my eyes from the sun’s burning glare. I wish I had sunglasses. It occurs to me that I’m not wearing any sunscreen. (It’s not that I forgot to bring sunscreen; I just hate the greasy feel.) My lips are chapped, cracking badly, and my Blistex stick has worn down to a concave nub. I'm so thirsty. I think I'm getting a migraine.
