Letter to Jimmy

foreword, the Santa Monica wanderer

As the seagulls desert Santa Monica State Beach, and a small boat pitches on the waves in the distance, I sense your presence as I do each time I wander here. I fix my eyes on the horizon, watch the fading of the sun, and I stretch myself out on the sand. The clouds seem to form shadowy figures — today an elderly woman with an unsteady step.

I want to forget the world around me: the hubbub of the street, images of movies I have recently seen, the books still open on my desk.

In truth I envy the wanderer I see at the other end of Santa Monica beach, a gray beard he has not shaven in years falling to his chest. Never has a stranger so fully captured my imagination, prompting me to trail him, as if I expected him to reveal the key to the mysteries that confront me when I read your work. I cannot stop myself from wondering about his life, with the secret hope that one day I will find a way to speak to him about you. I know that he will take the time to listen to me; he spends his day conversing with invisible beings, throwing his head back in laughter for no apparent reason, urinating at the foot of a tree, forgetting to zip his pants, getting irritated by a flock of gulls, then sits down on his shoes, worn through from wandering. But the strangest thing, Jimmy, is that he will build colossal sand castles, where he must dream of ruling as king of his own fantasies, with his court, his family, his subjects and his guard. Then suddenly he will demolish his kingdom with a nervous kick of the foot, and again return to being a wreck of a man.

Dejected, he will roam over toward the great Ferris wheel of Pacific Park, which ordinarily draws the Santa Monica tourists. I have seen him remove a bowl from a pocket in his ragged clothes and beg until nightfall. He seems like a character lifted straight from the pages of one of your novels!

It is to him, to this wanderer, that I dedicate this letter.