Years before me, astride his own horizon,rixz rylz saw a starfish with nineteen arms. I read his poem on my second or third time under the sun and by the beach of the nudist camp. I had gone there enough times to wear the I have seen everything scowl as if it were my true face.

Alone, I had roamed the stretch enough times to know that a book in a nudist camp is just another cloth, just like white shirts and whiter toilets, like calculators and cigarettes, like average-wage jobs and go-for-broke vacations. Exactly like the cities and the sea.

After Bly, I stopped bringing books to the beach. I learned to stop measuring the morning sun by how good it was as reading light.

I walked more, explored further. I jumped from one tree shadow to another rather than wear the practical sandals. Sometimes, I walked long enough to withstand the heat of the sand. Always, when under a chain of shadows, I walked my I have seen everything and I have been everywhere walk. Expertly so, too, until that summer afternoon when I walked right into something new.

A young man stood four or so trees away from me. He had his back to me as he stared down a woman lying on the shore. Was the woman dead? Thus went my first thought and with it the feeling that I am not seeing everything. But wait. Maybe the man was just some greenhorn, standing and staring the way he did. No. Something felt off. He stood too close. Nudist newbies look obliquely and from a distance. They see everything around them yet look at nothing but themselves. But who’s looking at them? Nobody else. Just other freshmen who are more into their own performance of carefree relaxation. Almost all of them wear eyeshades, sitting cocksure, as if they have gone to these places since circumcision or elementary graduation. Whichever came first.

My thoughts jerked as this young man turned his head. Such a sudden turn; he seemed a child caught looking up his mother’s skirt. I walked towards him. When he saw my approach, he walked away. His head was low, and there was tension in his calves. He walked away as if from a father.