Hands in the Sand

            I had breakfast the other day with a young, hip friend who’d been to a swanky conference of digerati in LA.  He reported that the new new thing was something called “the New Hollywood.”  Apparently, the cool kids now are going to physical locations where there are interesting things to do, in real life, and this is what’s cutting edge.

            I’ve been going to places in real life and doing stuff almost every day, but I didn’t know that was new.  He said I didn’t understand, like at this one place there is a sloping structure you can sit on and go down to this other area with other things to climb.

            I said, “like a playground?”  And he had to admit that, well, yeah, like a playground.  Only it was indoors and being frequented by people wearing designer clothes.  I told him I knew this other really cool place to go where there’s like, all this water that moves around noisily and the ground is really soft like tiny, tiny pebbles and you can sit on the soft ground and sift it between your toes or dig it with your hands.  You can even get in the water. 

            He said, yeah, but his friends don’t want to put their hands in the sand because then they’d need to put down their cellphones.  Meaning, they’d need to stop being in the ether and be in only one place physically and mentally. 

            And I felt grateful to be able to be where I am, in real life, a lot of the time.  I felt grateful that real life is my regular.  And I felt grateful to be reminded that being in a real physical location in this human body is amazing, more amazing than fantasy.  That this life, this dirty dishes, patchy grass, almost out of milk mash-up life is spectacular when I remember to get my hands in the sand and enjoy what’s here.