The bay for me, has become
a monument to perpetual vacation, to
ritual barefoot bliss. Every week there is an endless
relaxation.
Seven days without shoes, without anything in my pockets, I walk the sandy, rocky dirt roads wearing old, frayed shorts and a
dirty t-shirt. Wandering down to the
beach, my feet chunk-chunk on the wooden bridge across the reeds that stand behind the
short, misshapen dunes. I step out onto the simple, empty white sand, and listen to the waves, the gulls, the wind, and
the sweet silence of myself, alone on the beach. Balancing out on slimy wooden
seawalls, I crouch for half an hour, the
salty green water washing over my feet with the waves, watching the
blue crabs cling to the pylons and forage from their surface.
I begin to move like the animals, my body slowly falling out of step with
the twenty-four-segmented worm of the human day. Back at the cottage, the clocks are all wrong or broken, and my day falls in with
the rhythm of the tides, with the arc of the sun. I find my place, moving through time in step with the crabs, the
oysters, and the
barnacles. Found the right clock again, and I take the
boat out in the middle of the afternoon, only because it feels like a good time to take the boat out. Sliding around the bay,
surfing the currents of the wind, on a foamy green surface that slowly fades to red-orange as the evening wears on, listening to the waves against the hull, the
cicadas on shore, I wonder how anyone can stand the perpetual roar of a powerboat. And as the evening continues to fade, and the sun finally sets, I
turn the boat into the wind, feeling it keel over under my body until the waves nearly roll over the
gunwales. We pick up speed as the boat
reaches into the wind, reaching for home, I would say, if I were not already there.