It’s the rhythm that does it to me, the waves lapping, advancing and retreating, moving in and out.
It’s the palm trees swaying and the birds here, different from the ones back home.
It’s the landscape. Semitropical, lush — hot, yes, but where isn’t it hot these days?
The rhythm of Florida has become the pace of relaxation for me.
One of the joys of a beach vacation is how few decisions need to be made. I love the hustle-bustle of a traveling getaway, one where you must decide which states or countries to visit, which sights to see, where to stay, which routes to drive.
But on a beach vacation you know what you’ll do. You’ll walk, read and swim. You’ll look at the ocean and marvel at the immensity of it all.
Yes, you must decide how to divvy up your days. Beach in the morning, pool in the afternoon — or vice versa?
And what you must also decide is what to listen to while striding down the strand. Yesterday, it was Bach. To “Sleepers Awake” I watched gulls swoop ands swerve. To “Sheep May Safely Grace” I dodged lizards in the dunes. To the “Toccata and Future in D” I saw thunderheads pile up in the east.
They almost chased me inside, but I kept walking and they blew over … for a while, at least.
Today, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and humankind’s first footsteps on the moon, I take off for Florida, the state which launched that famous spaceship.
Even on television a rocket launch is a grand and awe-inspiring sight. Here in D.C., they’ve turned the Washington Monument into a light show of the Saturn V rocket, an inventive and whimsical creation that seems just the right touch for the day.
However you celebrate it, July 20 is an awesome day to be an American, and, as always, an awesome day to be alive.
I miss reading Mother Goose rhymes to little people, but this morning it was almost like I was reading one to myself.
Into my mind, unprompted, came these words:
A diller, a dollar, a 10 o’clock scholar
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at 10 o’clock,
But now you come at noon.
I know why this nursery rhyme suddenly came to mind. It’s the first day of my vacation, and I slept from 11 p.m. till 9 a.m.
The feeling, like the nursery rhyme, is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. And, like both, it is much fun.
I hadn’t done this in a while, had forgotten how exhilarating it can be to park at the high school and walk to the Metro station. But when I saw the open parking spot, I impulsively pulled in, covered my window with a sun shield, locked the car and took off.
The pace set my mind spinning and the rhythm of footfall turned an ordinary commute into a tiny adventure. Yes, tiny. I don’t want to over-dramatize this. But when the conditions are right, parking and walking not only saves $5, but also provides a jump-start on the day.
Like all walks, this one has segments: crossing at the corner, trudging up the hill, turning into the neighborhood, walking through the “tunnel” (which is not really a tunnel but a passageway under an overpass) and then passing alongside the garage on the way to the station and train.
There’s only one problem now: This afternoon, I’ll have to walk back.
An article in yesterday’s Washington Post says that writing a narrative of one’s life helps prepare one for death. It makes sense to me. But I would amend it slightly to say that writing a narrative of one’s life prepares us for … life!
I’ve been keeping a journal since high school, and wouldn’t trade those books for anything. They are a motley bunch of spiral-bound and hardbound volumes, with writing cramped and tiny or loose and free depending on my mood. They preserve more than I could ever remember — and quite a bit I’d rather forget. But they are a record of my life, for good or ill, and as such are valuable to me.
An expert quoted in the Post article mentions that merely listing one’s life events doesn’t work. It’s creating the narrative that brings perspective, linking one incident, one person, to another, a chain of belonging, a chain of being.
In other words, it’s figuring out the question that Charles Dickens so aptly asks at the beginning of David Copperfield. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
(If life is a journey, it is also a narrative.)
Days like this seem like they will never end. Up late with an orange moon, up early with a red sun. And in between, seeking shade and the cool interior.
Listening to the insects, their chirps and crescendoes, their cascading calls to one another, all of it music, summer music, an aural expression of freedom and relaxation.
I want to capture midsummer, bottle it, preserve it. And then, one bitter winter morning, take it out and spritz it on my wrists and behind my ears, wear it like perfume.
I tore through Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ memoir Small Fry in a few days. It’s honest and it’s titillating, since Lisa’s father is Steve Jobs, and his paternal behavior is quite strange, to put it mildly.
Steve has little to do with Lisa and her mother (who he never married) in the beginning, and only acknowledges paternity under duress. Eventually, he has a relationship with Lisa, albeit an unusual one. They skate together, have dinner together and in high school Lisa even lives with Steve and his wife and son. But it’s a relationship fraught with uncertainty and even meanness. Steve won’t admit he named his Lisa computer after his daughter. He belittles Lisa and refuses to pay for her last year of college. Lisa has the final word, though, in the way of all memorable memoirists.
What I liked best about Lisa’s writing was when she described the California of her youth, the sights and smells of the land she came alive to: “Here the soil was black and wet and fragrant; beneath rocks I discovered small red bugs, pink- and ash-colored worms, thin centipedes, and slate-colored woodlice that curled into armored spheres when I bothered them. The air smelled of eucalyptus and sunshine-warmed dirt, moisture, cut grass.”
It reminds me of George Eliot’s line: “We would never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.”
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| Charlotte Airport, 9 p.m. |
Modern travel has much to recommend it. More people can be whisked to more places than ever before. But as anyone who has flown recently knows, modern travel can also be a headache.
Yesterday I spent 12 hours getting home from Little Rock. I could almost have driven in that time. Thunderstorms were the culprit. They grounded planes, which then caused a cascade of delays that rippled through the East Coast and beyond.
That much couldn’t be helped. But as I walked through the Charlotte Airport I couldn’t help but see deeper problems. There were plenty of places to spend money, but no comfortable seats. The place was so cold that my fingers were numb by the time I boarded the plane. And while the airline wheeled out a cart of snacks and drinks, there weren’t enough attendants to help the stranded travelers get where they were going.
There was, in short, both too much … and too little.
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| National Airport, 3 a.m. |
It’s been a short trip to the Natural State. I leave later today. Amidst the work I absolutely have to do, I find time to visit with people I don’t usually see. It’s what makes it rich, and it makes me think how shallow life can be when efficiency rules.
Dozens of times each year I vow to be less efficient, to smell the roses, to take life easier. And dozens of times I break that vow.
But I’m an optimist, so I think … maybe this time it will be different. It probably won’t be. I know that. But I can always try.