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Emilia pointed to a bush and said it’s in there and we were all skeptical. She pointed out what she thought was a path, but we couldn’t see it. It was just a bush, tall grasses. Sure enough, she started walking through and seemed to make easy progress into whatever was on the other side. Miguel and Jen followed, quickly swallowed by the green. I was left alone to photograph the nothing that was left, then pushed myself through. The beach wasn’t much of a beach. More like an asphalt dumping ground. So much so that it almost seemed paved. Well, it was paved, but more through accumulation than intention. Evidence of this place’s past lives were easy to spot. Boulders of shale mixed in with leftovers of concrete dividers, asphalt slabs and chunks of all sizes, wooden pier pilings forming a border between all of these and the lake, which loomed both large and small beyond. A lone tall ship skimmed the horizon and we watched. I grew up on a lake like this. A Great Lake. As a kid, it was never a playground. It was too polluted for that. They say it’s better now, depending on the day, but I’m not sure. Later, Miguel would go swimming here, but I couldn’t, my associations too strong. As a teen, though, the nighttime beaches and other shores were the perfect places for playing, for doing whatever we wanted. Booze if we could buy it. Weed if we could find it. Sex if I was lucky. Star gazing. These places were outside of the shine of streetlights, lumens of our parents’ gaze, and we revelled in being unsurveilled. Here and now, at this place, we’ve again reached for a blind spot of surveillance. Or so we assume. In the city, on the other side of these grasses, cameras are everywhere, networked, connected, recorded and logged. Once outside of here, the whole of my progress, everyone’s progress, will be visible to one eye or another. A to Z. But I assume no one will be so interested in mine as to intervene. I am an acceptable level of threat. Our group has met to discuss being together, and we do that. I wander in and out, taking photographs, recording wave sounds, soundwaves, trying to contribute. The conversation is gripping at times, relaxed at others. We’ve all had experiences of places like this - places beyond unwanted eyes. We consider its histories, ancient, recent, immediate. Scales of the moments of wreckage here vary, from the geological to the most fleeting human urge. We collect empty liquor bottles and other items, arranging them as an unintentional altar. And we talk around it, and are together.