The fog was so thick Saturday morning I couldn’t spy the sea beyond 50 or so yards from the beach, but I felt most comfortable with the natural phenomenon surrounding me, as if the milky enclosure were protecting me from an unseen world, a place that is sometimes vicious. Nature had provided me with a cocoon.
While a few of us bask in it, fog is often associated with doom, gloom and the supernatural.

A tad eerie but no ghosts. Darn.
“Something came out of the fog and tried to destroy us. In one moment, it vanished,” said Stevie Wayne, Adrienne Barbeau’s character in John Carpenter’s 1980 classic horror film, “The Fog.” But if this has been anything but a nightmare, and if we don’t wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water into the darkness…”
Adrienne Barbeau? “Hummina, Hummina, Hummina.” I was 19 when “The Fog” hit the big screen. Barbeau’s a fine thespian, but it wasn’t her acting skills that had my mouth agape throughout the movie. Come to think of it. Her bodacious bod was the only thing that made the television show, “Maude,” tolerable. That and I always anticipated Bill Macy’s character, Walter, backhanding Maude (Bea Arthur). To me, listening to Bea’s voice was about as pleasant as hearing a bunny squeal after its nest was raided by a cat, and that’s coming from someone who has trouble stepping on a cockroach. Just once, Walter. Pleeaase! It’s television. Fictional. Give her a whack. One time. No such luck. Hence, the show frustrated me in more ways than one.
Pardon me for the aside. As one who lives 24/7 with bipolar disorder controlling the relay switches in my brain, my thoughts drift constantly.
Where was I? Is this..what day is this? Oh, yeah. Movies, television and literature help perpetuate the myth that fog is dangerous. Not that I have a problem with that. For gosh sakes, I used to run home from school to watch the gothic soap, “Dark Shadows,” crossing streets as if I were the freakin’ frog in the arcade game, Frogger. It was always foggy in Collinswood and vampires, werewolves and witches were bound to be lurking in the white stuff.
“…Look for the fog,” Stevie Wayne said, warning her radio listeners in coastal California. Vengeful ghosts were hanging out in the fog banks, waiting for a gory 100-year reunion with townsfolk, and sexy Stevie wanted her audience to be vigilant.
Adrienne! Yo, Adrienne. I did. I looked for the fog. But I left the ghosts behind in my pad, so it was comfort for which I looked when I sought the fog on Saturday.
I’ve been on the downslope of bipolar disorder’s never-ending rollercoaster ride lately, plummeting into an emotional abyss after months of mania. Mania is a phase of the mental illness in which the brain shifts into a high-energy state. Imagine being The Energizer Bunny with beer muscles. That’s what being manic is like. You tend to be overly optimistic and sometimes overconfident, living life in a constant condition of euphoria. You could watch “Platoon” and laugh throughout.
The way I see it: the biggest danger of the illness, also known as manic depression, is coming down from that “high” and falling into the polar opposite – extreme lows. That transition often happens in minutes. It’s as if you’re descending into Marianas Trench and your oxygen tanks have been punctured. Like the Grim Reaper himself paid you a visit, scythe in hand with crescent-shaped blade shined and sharpened.
“..It’s just the beast under your bed, in your closet, in your head.”
Oh, hell no. I choose not to fear The Reaper. I awoke mid-nightmare well before Sol’s scheduled appearance Saturday, choosing within seconds to cast aside thoughts of doom and gloom that accompanied unsolicited dreams about past relationship failures. It can’t always be her fault. What am I doing wrong? There’s the door, negativity. Scat. Before venturing to the big pond, I surfed to The Weather Channel and saw that chances of rain were 100 percent. Pretty good chance I’ll get wet, I reckon. And? Donning my boonie hat and rain-proof Nautica jacket, off I went into the wild gray yonder.
Mr. Sol entered stage right but his rays never penetrated the fog’s veil. It drizzled from the time I left my cabana until I returned home. Fog? Rain? Didn’t bother me one bit. Neptune’s pounding surf provided me with all the comforting I needed. The sea is my sanctuary and I wasn’t about to let anything keep me from paying her a visit. Certainly not the weather.
It’s not the fog that’s dangerous. It’s our inability to navigate through it that’s the danger. If we let it in, uncertainty shrouds our psyches with doubts and fears. We all have the ability to overcome our insecurities. To see our way through difficult circumstances. Most of us set our own physical and mental boundaries. Many psychological borders are self-imposed and self-regulated and are subject to change at the drop of a hat. We decide what limits us and what doesn’t.
Dig this. When “Saturday Night Live” actress Gilda Radner was dying of cancer, she said, “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”
Gilda was brilliant.
(Bum’s rap: Give yourself an “A” if you made it through this one. Garbled thoughts. Twists and turns aplenty. Don’t be hatin’ on me, either. I detest the thought of men physically or verbally abusing women. I’m on record saying so on a few websites, including Facebook. Clint Eastwood had it right when he said a man who resorts to abuse to “control” his significant other suffers from the wimp syndrome.)
Sources: azlyrics.com, IMDb.com
Highway 17 Business was like a skating rink in the early morn. This photo was taken on the north end of the city just after 8 a.m.
Nothin’ like a good ol’ smack down from Mother Nature to heighten the senses and make us feel more alive. The inch or so of wintry mix that fell from the heavens in the early morning hours Wednesday reminded me of her power. It was raw outside with temperatures in the low to mid-20s. Add the wind chill factor and it felt like 12 degrees here in the Grand Strand’s hub.
Dunes. The beach looked foreign to me.
Good Lord, it was beautiful. Streets, lawns and rooftops were glazed with ice and snow. Vegetation drooped reverently, slicked over with a frosty cover of frozen precipitation. The white blanket rendered Grand Strand streets still.
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
The roads were treacherous until noon Wednesday, resulting in a list of closings that included Broadway at the Beach, Horry County’s public schools, Georgetown County’s public schools, Myrtle Beach and Horry County courts, Coastal Carolina University and Horry-Georgetown Technical College.
The quietness of our neighborhoods spoke loudly and clearly.
“From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
Venturing out into the hump day wintry mix humbled me in a way that no person, government agency, social club or newspaper ever will – hard as some might have tried. I’ll kneel to nature occasionally, but bowing to oppression isn’t an option for someone who holds the First Amendment in high regard.
Where the tides meet the mix.
I write that in reference to having been informed last week that my protest of nearly a year ago and subsequent opinions offered here weren’t appreciated. Oh well. I’ll stare down hypocrisy as long as I’m on the same side of the turf as ice-laden yucca plants. Mess with the shark and you’ll get the teeth. I’m unapologetic when it comes to questioning dogma, and I don’t equate either social commentary or political activism with cynicism. Is it getting cold in this blog or is it just me?
There are some who insist on twisting the First Amendment to suit their agendas. Their beliefs. That doesn’t mean I have to accept it. Nor do I care, necessarily, if they accept me. Thankful for the blog views, though.
“But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
The message of which I write was delivered by someone who’s both deceitful and delusional, so much so that she sees herself as the “cat” in a petty game she and her self-righteous cronies started and continue to perpetuate. What she had to say both to me and behind my back aren’t worthy of my concern. She just stoked the fire and the flames of that fire were already flickering when I wrote this blog’s motto in the banner above. A desire to seek the truth. Truth melts ice, revealing reality.
If plants could speak, I think this one would have been saying, “Yuck, what is this stuff?”
No need to go into much more detail. I put a blog relevant to this story to rest almost a year ago, moved on, and tackled other issues directly affecting me and an area that I loved long before moving here.
Life goes on and I’m indebted to family and friends for helping me through life’s blizzards and for teaching me to see the light. Mother Nature offers me respite, shelter from the storm of society’s craziness. So this morning, Thurday, I’m…
“To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
…heading back to the big pond and the frozen sands with no ill will for those who have trespassed against me. My energies and thoughts will be focused on people who have been good to me. They, like the ocean, have always had my back. Ice storm or not.
(Bum’s rap: The words in italics are those of the great American poet Robert Frost. Here’s the link to the related story: http://dharmabeachbum.com/2013/02/18/holy-hypocrisy-mental-midgets-run-myrtle-beach/ What can I say? I had a Gonzo moment. I’ve promised there won’t be a repeat performance. I’m going to kick back, let them have their fun and listen to some Jefferson Airplane. Volume: Loud.)
Desolation Row:
Sources: “The Poetry of Robert Frost,” “The Sun News“
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Posted in Local Ebb and Flow | Tags: " good songs, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's song "Desolation Row", Bob Dylan's song "Shelter from the Storm", Broadway at the Beach, Gonzo journalism, good books, good people, Hunter S. Thompson, hypocrisy and organized religion, Mother Nature, Robert Frost, social commentary, social conscience