Beach Goth

Going Down the Shore and Finding a Little Hope

You can make all the “I wear all black, even to the beach” jokes you want, but BeachGoth IS an aesthetic, and a 50 SPF one at that, and I am proud to represent in my lifeguard hat, full-sleeve rash guard, and swim skirt. (And insane amounts of tinted mineral sunscreen).

I have been coming to this beach campground for almost ten years, and if you could use a smidgen of hope, I want to tell you that in every single one of those almost-ten years, an alarming number of homes and boats featured TRUMP flags. Like, I’d see hundreds on every week-long trip.

This year? Not one. Not one single TRUMP flag anywhere.

Is it enough to show we’re out of the woods? Absolutely not. But it shows that something that has shifted. Even here.

I got in the water, which I usually don’t, which made me feel bold and intrepid, though when I turned around to look back at the shore, I realized I was about 5 feet out in the waves, just past the surf line. Up to my thighs. And I went on the big swings at the boardwalk.

I also saw a bunch of wildlife, including this white egret (who I caught pooping, whoops, sorry dude!), and many lovely sunsets, and one night when I was out walking around the campground as the sun burnished and lowered, I decided to head back to my people because I was missing them, and it turned out they’d come to find me because they were missing me, too.

We’re still in the benevolent shadow of a new moon in Cancer, and the advice is to rest, center, find and give yourself what you need, and attract. It’s been scary and ominous in the world, and in my work, and I worry that, truly, so many of us are essentially *done* in the lanes of publishing we were used to for years, maybe even decades. Substack is a vale of tears and anxieties about how hard it is to sell a book, promote a book, get reviews for a book. And the prevailing, overarching anxiety is, IS THIS IT? IS THIS MY LAST CHANCE? I want to tell everyone it’s been worse, that it can only get better. But I don’t know if that is true. So instead, I say, here and now, that I understand. I’m scared and anxious, too.

But today, I’m wading in the cold water, getting used to it, taking risks that feel thrilling (if not all that risky, truly), keeping good company, and hoping and praying that as much as I miss publishing like I used to, and still have so much to say (like all that scholarship!), maybe what I’ve been missing is out there and will come looking for me because it misses me, too.

Give yourself a comforting gift today.