PACIFIC RIM NATIONAL PARK

AD INFINITUM

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The infinite horizon draws humanity into a wild desolation that seeps inside every once and a while when time and space collapse along a restless cold blue, sand swept ocean shore.

Predispositions dancing about, along with everything in between, disappear, at least temporarily. I would stay forever, but I have decided never to return to this particular place that I have been drawn to every now and then over the years, since my journey began.

This space along the ocean dissolves the day into the continuum of thousands, perhaps even millions of years.

Nothing has been substantially changed, for generations, by either the force of the relentless rains or by the power of the wild winds whipped up over the ocean – this place already having long endured the cold, saltwaters cutting the rocks over millions of minutes that lapse in an instant, long before anyone notices.

This place will endure a long time longer than humanity – the mist already reclaims the hours from the present.

When I would return, time and time again, perhaps more out of happenstance than design, the mist in one form or another was often present, taunting me about the limited time I had left.

I would have to leave eventually, I know, even if I stayed this time longer than the day would last.

If everything else deconstructs, this place will endure, in perpetuity, having been formed, shaped, and continually washed anew as if in God’s salon. This place here remains, while entire cities have deconstructed.

Only footprints in the sand wash away, under the ebb and flow of ocean tides.

Everything has become so tragic, now, but this other worldly malaise is the reason why I go to this place – to let the wind whip away the worn out days until I empty out, and have enough space to begin again – knowing all along of the limits too obvious to ignore, as if lied to again by another chance encounter.

Undoubtably, I would begin again, letting the whirling winds and relentless rains carve out space for the next day, over and over again, one way or another, leaving one behind for another one.

Though, not this time.