Consider the Beach

A friend and I like to send each other photos of the corniest beach house signs we encounter, those punny plaques that declare a Margaritaville state of mind rules in this house. The signs are made of painted driftwood and say stuff like “Sand by Me” and “It’s Always 5 O’Clock Here” and “If You’re Not Barefoot, You’re Overdressed.” These are all variations on the overarching theme, the through line of summer vacation: Life is a beach. You are hereby commanded to put on a brightly colored swimsuit, sip a frosty cocktail garnished with a slice of pineapple and relax.

This is one of the problems I think non-beach people have with the beach. That mandate to hang loose, to be easy and fun and not care that invisible bugs are biting you all the time. Non-beach people lament that the beach is one of the few places where you can’t get everything you want at any time (this is precisely what recommends the beach to others). So you need to pack with provisions for any contingency, like you’re deploying for six months to a remote location of unpredictable climate and topography, perhaps the moon.

As a child, the beach was uncomplicated. I loved nothing more than to sit in the sand all day in a damp bathing suit making drip castles and letting a soft-serve ice cream cone melt down my arm. But as a teenager, some combination of body shame and a desire to appear as vampiric and vitamin D-deprived as the goth musicians I idolized made me into a person who wanted nothing to do with the sun and therefore nothing to do with the brand of plastic fun that the beach was peddling.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood there are many different ways to be at the beach and many different ways to be a beach person. The beach can be a full-day family affair, with inflatable sea horses and economy-size bottles of SPF 75 and a cooler of soft drinks. It can also be a solo sojourn on a Tuesday afternoon with just a towel, a hat and a book. The beach is a site freighted with so much preparation and expectation that we forget it’s just a location. We project all kinds of meaning onto the place but really, it has no meaning that we don’t give to it. It doesn’t insist that a particular kind of good time be had there. It’s land and water, evidence of the earth’s functions, erosion and deposition, tides and currents.

The beach for me these days is participatory performance art. I love to see people unfurl their beach selves under the sun’s spotlight. To see how they’re adorning themselves, the music they’re blasting, the way they stake their territory, their peculiar rituals and accessories.

I like the community aspect of it all: Your music is, for better or worse, my music, for you are my neighbor for one brief day and this is our pop-up neighborhood. I like to eavesdrop on people’s conversations and observe how they discipline their children and, if they seem interesting, offer them some of my chips. I even like that moment of danger when a big breeze comes and someone’s giant, improperly anchored beach umbrella unmoors and comes soaring down the sand.