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I've kept a running journal off line the last two weeks, taken dozens of pictures and even got some work done. Mostly though, I've spent time thinking.

That isn't always a good thing.

Tomorrow I have to close one of those transactions that should have been clean, simple and easy for everyone. Of course Murphy's Law is in full force and effect, so I will lose a day tomorrow trying to patch tears from loose ends that never should have been dangling. At least none of them were my fault.

Then I will edit my journal entries, and post them. I'm sure everyone here is just waiting to read what I have to say in my own version of "how I spent my summer vacation"... but trust me, it's okay to breathe. Just how exciting can walks on the beach be, after all?

lake thoughts

Laughter. What a sweet sound … genuine, spontaneous laughter. My son and his friend are caught in that boy world that I always expected to be found here, that my older son didn't find as he spent his days reading and sleeping. They've found streams pouring into the lake and rather than be content to build sand castle damns, they follow them into the woods and chase frogs and look for turtles and arrowheads. They found a wild tom turkey yesterday, and you'd have thought they'd discovered gold. Priceless.

They go into the lake, the temps in the mid seventies and they are fearless. In reality, they teach swimming lessons, work as lifeguards. Between them, they have more medals than I can count. Yet two days ago, a nineteen-year-old boy drowned, while his two friends sunbathed on the beach. One must never ever trust the lake completely. So I make arbitrary rules… "Don't go out farther than the sandbar" I tell them, though I know that the water is barely five feet deep between the shore and the sandbar, and as shallow as one foot on it. Doesn't matter… they accept the limit and turn into human dolphins diving the waves, arching tight backs while their near-man rippling muscles glisten under bronzed skin. I want to take their picture, film them the way I did the dolphins in Maui, because there is some sort of metaphor there that I've not quite got yet. Something about connections I think. Instead, I watch them and hold the photograph in my mind.

I've been having odd dreams since I came here, which means I've been sleeping. I am not sure what that means either. That the air is easy to breathe, that I get enough exercise to be tired? That I feel at peace here in a way I haven't at home for so long? Or does it have more to do with the need for the nightmares to assert themselves, get their message across? Do you believe there are other lives in your mind that have either lived before, live concurrently, or are yet to be set free? I just don't know. I know that there are words there whose origin I can't trace, so I try to honor that as much as I can.

I jot down the bits I can remember in the mornings. I am forced to in a way, because I have to connect to the internet by phone. Waiting gives me a chance to write without interruption or the addiction of email.

I've been reading, luxuriously slow reading. Savoring bits and pieces of novels to steal, as my last writing professor advised. Putting together a house leaving messages of what should be attended to for its new owner, taking off sunglasses to hear better. And this from Baxter: "If God appeared on this earth again, lawyers would sue Him."

I've started talking to people too, something I've been criticized for here. That I am aloof, lost in my head and not the friendly one. I am asking for their stories, quietly, casually, and have learned much from the two lesbians, both in their sixties and bleach blond, though different from the blonds from Texas, these two are beefy, full figured women, though I note that their legs are really quite shapely. It is from the hips up that they balloon, almost identically, and I wonder if it is what they do, or how they eat or if in fact it is heredity. They tell me about the weather and the gossip of people I'm supposed to know, but have forgotten.

There is also a nice looking man down the beach a ways, hair mostly white, with a touch of the blond it once was showing. I like him mostly for the pace at which he walks, slow, languid, as though there are things on the beach that must be found and nothing much up ahead to worry about. That seems to be the right way to walk on a beach such as this.

He likes my dog.

They all like my dog. She's well known before I arrive, a stick slut for whomever will toss whatever piece of driftwood she can hold between her teeth. Only these strangers who toss it for her, these people charmed by her intelligent eyes, don't know she has no sense. They have not put salve on her bloodied paws or given her analgesic to make the pain of getting up and lying down easier at night when the sun has gone down and she aches. I tell them, she doesn't know any better, and they simply think I'm mean, not to throw for her myself.

She knows though, and comes with me.

In the morning before the maid comes.

Maid…what a misnomer. She is really the Woman in Charge. The lady that actually cares about the dust and cobwebs in this monster of a house, with the power to send me cowering in my office, behind my precious stacks, while she takes aggressive command of the rest of it. I have to scurry about gathering all the books and papers I've left all over the place before she comes, or risk never seeing them again. So the office grows worse and worse… (grammar police, please check that word usage?) I've banned her from that room you see. For me and the papers, it is safe haven. But of course I end up losing everything in the attempt. Eh.

Even now I am not in my office. She will be here in half an hour or so, but I can have these moments to sit with my coffee in the short silk robe the color or the sky, greeting the words while my girl cat, who spent the night outside, cuddles against the laptop's warmth. The coffee is Costa Rican today, fresh ground. I sent the last of the coffee I brought from Hawaii to a friend yesterday. That's okay though. He did introduce me to Costa Rican coffee after all. ahhh.

I'm practicing a writing strategy this week, that of just typing in the journal to get the words flowing. I'm dreadfully behind on my personal deadlines, and worse, I've let myself get out of the habit of writing. I'm immersing myself writing books, determined to actually read one of them. This weeks choices include Ann Lamont, Bird by Bird, William Zinsser, On Writing Well and The Gotham Writers book on Fiction. I decided it was time to get back to the basics. Or maybe I'm hoping that if I bore my self with the how to books I will write just to win the right to read fiction again. Yes yes. I do play games in my head, don't I?

Enough about that. I may have to break a rule and write about my trip. But only if I can find an angle that makes you feel… something. For now, I have to get dressed because the enemy is approaching and I have to save the lives of some dust bunnies.

sounds

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk to you again,

Do you remember Simon and Garfunkel? The voices of my angst ridden youth.
Yes, it is dark now, well past one a.m. Time seems caught on a wheel that hasn't decided yet if it's going forward or backward.--too much travel. Tree frogs or bats are squeaking outside, … it's an eerie loud sound, like so many mice up in the trees. No, that's not it at all. It's the sound of clean athletic shoes changing direction on a gym floor. I am fond right now of images that evoke a change in direction.

Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping

I was a geeky college kid, always writing poems and staying up all night just to listen to music. I'll even confess most of it was chick music… Carole King and Melissa Manchester and Elton John. The Moody Blues were setting trends then… An aside: I forgot to mention that I saw them in concert on Father's day… the music was the same, the guys were no longer hot…. And the crowd. Oh dear. Just as you'd imagine. Wrinkled hippies with gray hair. The women should have kept those bras they burned in the sixties… gravity didn't treat them well. And they still wanted to groove to the music. I'm still processing that… always the observer you know?

And the vision, that was planted in my brain, still remains.


My journals from that era are introspective, as though I was aware of metamorphosis and hadn't yet decided what to do with it. Then, as now, I wore as many hats as I could…. I was a sorority girl, but served on the political science counsel (apartheid was our issue, and oil. Sigh. Oil.) I was an editor for the literary journal for three years, but don't think I ever missed a frat party. I was a Serious Student. I was open minded (ha!) about sex.

I just realized what a mess this entry is becoming. Feels good. I'm not a tidy person. I do love a good stack of books and papers to burrow behind on my desk. I enjoy the clutter in my head. There are so many interesting corners to dwell in.

I have one more trip this summer, and it isn't really a trip as much as it is respite. My place at lake Michigan. No fish out there pretty enough to swim out to see, no salt. Just beautiful waves, miles and miles of unspoiled beaches, and if I'm lucky, quiet.

Within the sounds of silence.

vacation

It amazes me really, to wake in paradise yet another day, and find the words still hiding. Everywhere I look, from a double rainbow over the mountain to the indescribable blue of the sea, my eyes water with a sweet orgasmic ache, manifestation of the need to see it all. I am beginning to believe the only place I can really write at all is tucked away in a closet or an attic with no windows, where the words are the only sensation of pleasure there is. Perhaps this is why "happy" people don't do much writing. I keep telling myself that I am filling the well with beauty, but I still feel like such a fraud.

Yet even in paradise the small motors hum and manicure of the grounds, the garbage truck grinds the same loud growl of garbage trucks everywhere. Tennis balls plunk against the sweet spot of the rackets on the courts outside the lanai, and the expletives of the players are universal as well. I am still charmed by wind in the palms, though here on the sixth floor they are at eye level and look more like prairie grass swaying in the wind.

And the only thing more seductive, more intense than the land, is the sea, my friends beneath the water: A sea turtle, diameter about 4 feet, as he gulped for air, then dove for food. He and I alone on the edge of the circle of swimmers, not unlike last years nurse shark. No one around to hear my exclamation of joy at his grace. The dolphin who broke surface a few feet away, flirting like a waiter looking for tips.

I would write more, but there are colors to absorb, neon blue racing stripes on black spines and cartoon colored fins waiting for me to come and play. There is sand waiting to smooth the citified calluses from my feet and the sun waiting with its paintbrush of bronzes to lighten my hair and darken my skin. There is coconut oil to smooth over the merging freckles of my arms, aloe to cool my overcooked shoulders and when all that is finished, there is sweet dark rum.

If I'm not exhausted after dark, I'll try to write again, but it has already been a week and I've not adapted to that yet. I can hear the waves kick up on the night wind and the lullaby is irresistible. It amazes me most, waking in paradise, that it is from real sleep that I awaken. It's been a long, long time.