Chapter 17

  After sleeping till about noon, he gathered himself and headed to the beach. His love of reading had been rekindled during his time in New Zealand, and today he was reading “Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found," by Cheryl Strayed. He had recently watched the movie starring Reese Witherspoon, and the story of travel and redemption was something that deeply resonated with him.

He read-

‘That it was everything. It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

How wild it was, to let it be.” 

 It was beautiful prose, and he was especially drawn to the line “like all lives, mysterious, irrevocable, and sacred.” Mysterious, irrevocable and sacred. How did those adjectives describe his own life? He’d gotten well past the point of predicting what would happen next to him, but he had grown to enjoy the mystery. 

He knew that the secret to happiness in life was to live in the precious present, and right now he was immersed in the moment. The hole in that philosophy as he saw it, was that for him at least, it was easy to twist this philosophy into a kind of hedonism. Historically that had been the case for him.

With this question ringing in his head, he heard the sound of music coming from the surf club down the beach, and turned to look. There were pretty girls in bikinis out on the deck and the man with the guitar was also back. What better time to live in the moment. In not now then when? 

He was a little startled when the bartender smiled and referred to him as “Dr. John.” It was never a good sign for him when he got on a first name basis with the bartenders and he made a mental note to watch himself. 

Sunday had always been the hardest night of the week for him in his life. From a young child onward he remembered that strange pathos of pending doom that came with a Sunday evening, and just recently the feeling had returned. Why was that? Was it because he had moved to a new place? Started a new job? Started drinking more?

 He ordered a bucket of Coronas and made his way out to the patio. Several people said hello and slapped him on the back, and he was filled with a strange sense of Deja Vous that he had done all this before. And indeed he had. Less than 24 hours ago in fact. He knew his memory may have stopped recording some things. He wasn’t just living in the present anymore. This was hedonism.

He spent the next several hours drinking and dancing and singing on the patio, noticing as he did a number of coronas now turned upside down in the silver bucket. 

He heard his name called from inside the bar and looked in and saw a head of long pretty black hair peaking out from under a large sun hat. It took a minute for him to pull focus, and he realized it was a pretty nurse named Natalie he worked with back in Auckland.

“Well hello doctor,” she said with a smile. “Nice to know you like to see how the other half lives once in a while.”

“Oh you have no idea. I AM the other half," he replied.

“Haha. Well nice to know in case I ever need a drinking buddy at the office. I’m here with some girlfriends. Why don’t you come and join us if you’re free?”

If you’re free? Hmm. Kind of a loaded question really. Was he free from his memories? Free from poor impulse control? Free from a sometimes unhealthy relationship with alcohol?

Right now he was. Indeed he was.