Brighton Beach was shrouded in a thick gray haze that stretched out over the dark, icy Atlantic ocean. I was there alone. These are my favorite beach days. It’s quiet. Through the whistling salty wind, if you were to listen very carefully, far away you could hear the bustle of a cold, yet glowing New York City. Nothing stops people from going out here. People are relentless. New Yorkers. People taking their over stuffed trash bags and leaving them out in the snow. The older man across the street with the dog, always out for a walk between 6 and 8, mornings and evenings. It wears a coat. Men shoveling heaps of snow into the street from their storefronts. The ones they return to every single morning no matter the weather. Nothing changes. Streets flow with adrenaline, always under pressure. Part of it sickens me. 

The wind out there on the beach was crisp, almost sharp. I wrapped my scarf up tighter over my ears to hide them from its merciless lashes. The restless water was nearly black beneath its frothy white blanket churning itself inside out. I reached deep into my inside jacket pocket and took out a beaten pack of cigarettes, weathered after only two days. “You smoke too much,” they always say. “I like to.” I had a lighter in my back pocket. I desperately tried, but it wouldn’t light. Too windy. Too cold. As hopeless as the fog. Though it wanted to be still, had to give in and succumb to the raging winds. I could see no further than 15 or 20 feet out into the ocean’s water but a deep fog horn miles away in the distance reminded me of its vastness. 

I began to walk, battling the wind. Sometimes I ask myself why I come out here. Why in this miserable weather? I don’t think I have any answers but I feel at peace. A rare thing. Something about the infinite lack of a sky or the bleak, windswept sand in its perfect grayness makes it feel like a landscape from another planet. One far, far away. No one here to talk to. I feel protected, shielded from the wretched suffering of the world I must of course eventually return to. And so I venture out into this gloomy world. It requires nothing of me. It doesn’t ask me how my day was or how I’ve been. It is my own. I think to myself how on any other sunny summer day the place is crawling to the brim with bright, cheerful couples and families, all tanned under the hot sun, children giggling. Not a cloud in the sky as the sound of a dog barking at a seagull cuts through the soft murmur of the ocean waves lapping up over the sand in its peaceful, monotonous rhythm. Perhaps a soft breeze winding it’s way through the overcrowded beach creates an audible whir and hum as voices echo off one another and escape into the warmth of a hot summer daze. Not today. On a formidable winter day like this the beach is my own. My own world. I am sheltered here as the howling wind and dense fog create a thick barrier between this desolate landscape and the rest of the world.

As I trudged forward over the stark tundra I could see the lights of the nearby hotels and housing glowing through the thick wispy gloom. Ahead of me I could see the looming figure of the Ferris Wheel which for some reason reminded me that a year earlier in that very same place I discovered a strange figurine in the sand. Camouflaged in the footprints and scuff marks that surrounded it, I remember picking it up and studying it. It was a strange iron figure with rust in its creases. An antique I thought. A young woman, writhing in torment as the piggish grasp of some demonic reptilian creature seemed to suffocate her. Beautiful and heartbreaking in perfect absurdist fashion. Her eyes bulged out in discomfort as though she might burst. Delightfully hideous. I put her into my pocket and stood looking out into the waves. The water was almost black. Much too dark to see anything beneath it at all. Today she stands on the window sill in my room.

All in one moment I wanted to leave the beach and hurriedly made my way back to the road. The fog cleared away by the time I got to the boardwalk. Still cold, but less gray. 

The station was eerily quiet and the platform was absolutely empty as I waited for my train back home. In the stillness I drew a cigarette from my coat, lit it, and listened as the crackling sound of burning tobacco tickled my ears. The smoke curled perfectly from my lungs, unfolding slowly into the thin, frosty air. I smoked a second before my train pulled in. The depressive, and mostly dejected gaze of a wrinkled older woman welcomed me into the warm subway car.