SHELTER COVE, CALIFORNIA

BLACK DOG ON THE LOST COAST // Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. EF24-70mm ƒ4L IS USM. ISO 100. 24 mm. 0 ev. ƒ7.1. 1/125 s.

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We drove from San Francisco to Shelter Cove to see if we wanted to move there. I experienced physiological manifestations of mental illness in the form of elevated heart rate and shortness of breath. This photograph was taken after I had successfully beaten those symptoms into submission by running through the forest and the whole town with Ramona. We saw a bear shit and I felt better and Ramona had lots of fun running behind me formed up like a wolf. She got tired eventually and we went back to where we were staying to drink some water and we drove the truck back down to the beach so I could take a swim.

While we were in Shelter Cove a man at the general store told me how his bobcat broke and his portable milling business was on hold. A lady told me that the seaside air cured her asthma and that you should never go swimming here or you will die and I said don’t worry I’m a professional and the ocean is the least of my problems which she did not like but it’s true and swimming in the ocean was a brilliant part of our stay.

There was an airstrip, a house by the beach road with drawn curtains and “fuck rik” painted on the outside of the window. There was small fish processing station. There was a man who had an artistic garden and chickens who I complimented. There was lots of boats, some broken, some not, one with a statue of a shark driving it through someone’s front lawn.

The way the coastal range, covered in dark green forest slants into the grey rocks of the beach is quite magnificent. I could live there, but right now I don’t want to leave where I am. I feel that I’m being uprooted by force and cast to the wind. I hear the voices of people that scorn me for having these feelings, and thinking these thoughts. I am a failure, and an embarrassment and now I have the audacity to write about it.

I am writing into the void though dumbass. And the standards at which these accusations are rendered are not my own, any more than I am anything more or less than some mysterious, happenstance confluence of matter and energy. Now, finally the radio broadcasts, which pleases God. Does God desire an editor. I suspect so, but trust that position will be filled at the appropriate time and plac.e