In the waning hours, the time right before bed I look around me. One cat black and sleek sits on the cushion of a disheveled couch. Children play havoc with any concept of order now don’t they? Another feline sits staring into the next room. She is always waiting for the next mouse. Perhaps the next fly might be her ticket to entertainment. She, no matter what the prey might be, is always waiting. In the center of the room lays a kitschy faux bear skin rug. It is not some much an approximation of a bear skin rug as it is a template for a faux bear costume for some masquerade. Still, it was a gift and I love it. Disheveled, rumpled and filled with odd creatures this warm and wonderful place is home. The room and I share a moment of silence interrupted only by soft purring.
Audible machines begin to hum, both the AC outside and the kitchen refrigeration unit kick in. Over by the baseboard I hear the fan begin its task of blowing the cold air about. Well at least the ceiling fans are not moving now although they might be sufficient to cool the room if I were to turn the air conditioning off. No, I will leave the fans off for their electric motors grind and there housings shake and make discordant sounds I would rather avoid. How mundane these sounds are compared to those encountered on my recent vacation down the Jersey shore.
Being on the beach is a wonderful thing. To people that have never spent any appreciable time by the ocean’s shore you just can’t explain it. The experience from the feel of hot sand on your bare feet, to the small bits of bubbled dark green seaweed in the water to the sinus assuaging salt smell of the air to the feel of a wave crashing against your torso, that experience is not something you can really convey in a couple of sentences. People who have never really lived near the ocean hear phrases like I went to the shore and they nod, but they don’t get it.
Getting into the rhythm of beach and its particular style of living takes time. You can’t just plop yourself in a rental for a week and understand the cycle of life at the water’s edge. When you are there a month you think you have it, but you don’t. When you spend a season there you think you have it, but you don’t. If you were to be at the shore each day for 365 days for five years you might get a glimpse of life at the edge of the water but you still would have only limited insight into the cycles, the variations, the nuances of life next to salt sea. It is sort of like the experience Annie Dillard wrote about in a book a few years ago about living by a creek for a year. In the end you may be there, but not be of the place.
My week by the water was wonderful. I saw old friends. I saw old places. I ran into the water again and again. The sun beat down and the sky stayed clear. Each day was a moment of clearing for my soul. Sitting on the beach the sun reflected up and tanned me even through the SPF Bear Fat Level 1000 sunscreen. I buried my head in a book of philosophy and was lost to the din of our electronic world. The night was just as wonderful being filled with vicarious joys. My kids rode the coasters and the log plumes and played games at the boardwalk arcades. Geeked to the maximum they giggled and howled and begged and pled for more. And finally there was the full moon rising over the sea. Yellow-orange and huge in the warm night it brought back every memory I had of being 19 and out at night on the beach.
It was a good time.
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