The Sea

bad photo of seals so you can see how close to shore they were

Okay, this was my day today. A ten minute boat ride to Long Point, a tiny island in Provincetown where the sand is soft, the ocean is vast, and there is plenty of beach.

JB, I and our friend Liz sat in front of seals all afternoon. One was 50 feet from JB and me the whole time we were in the water.

We saw two baby dolphins on the boat ride back.

The day was spectacular: you couldn't help but notice how utterly beautiful the world is.

It was low tide when we arrived back to the boat house.

So low we three had to walk a bit of distance in a foot of water off the boat.

The sand was not even. 

When JB fell and then Liz, we couldn't stop laughing,

Until  JB realized: soaked iPhone, soaked iPod, soaked camera.

The  iphone and iPod are currently attempting rice immersion therapy. The outlook is sketchy.

JB is very upset.

We had to console ourselves with two pound lobsters and two episodes of Sex & the City.

I hope your day was at least 50% as good as mine at the sea.

Two days left.

love

kj

Thursday Thirteen

It's not how I thought it would be.

My vacation.

1. Most of all, I have worried about my 96 year old Mother. She can't rely on her memory and most of all I am pained to think of her afraid and lost. Which she has been. Especially when I am not around. I know now I will not be away for this long again for as long as she knows I am gone. Trip to Alaska next spring? Cancel. Trip to Seattle in October? Cancel. Quick trips back to Provincetown? Yes.

2. With the hardest out of the way, for the rest of my seventeen days in Provincetown JB and I are checking off a list of 'would like to's"written on a napkin the night we arrived. For starts, I've wanted to write every morning, get through the first full run of my never ending novel. I'm doing it.  I am approaching page 300 (double spaced with plenty more editing to do) and I can finally see The End.

3. We kayaked the morning after a rare blue moon and the tide was so low we hit sand bars three times. Grrr. But what fun. I saw no water lily girls but I looked for them (mim xo)

4. Every afternoon by 2 pm JB and I are at the beach. We bob in the August waves of the Atlantic ocean and lie in the sun, happy voices and flapping waves coming from all sides. I forget to worry in these times. My senses take over and I am content.

5. Late late at night we are watching early episodes of "Sex and the City." We brought the whole CD set here and we are almost at year three. Oh the sex! But too the series is thoughtful and deep in friendship and philosophy. These four women are my orgasmic friends! :^)

6. We have looked at three houses. I like do that on vacations: look at real estate. But this time we wonder what it would be like to live here in a house. The news is not promising: expensive. Very. Impossibly so. But I don't worry about that. When something's to be, the path becomes clear. Sooner or later, wishes meet reality and something happens.

7. I have taken four dozen pieces of paper of all sizes and either taped or recopied their scribbles into my address book. I now have an organized book again. After three years.

8. Lobster tomorrow night when our friend Liz arrives.

9. This book I am writing: I have four books I'm using as research and I'm reviewing my notes from them. This morning: Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser. My favorite: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel.

10. I haven't mentioned food. We get to eat out. With an ocean view. I'll leave it at that.

11. I am looking at my water color set but mostly I am looking at this brush that looks like a small fan. It is for painting leaves on trees. I've left it on the coffee table so I won't forget to paint a tree this week.

12. Today I plan to paint my toe nails blue.

13. And tomorrow I am getting my hair colored but I don't know what color. Safe is auburn. But safe on vacation? Maybe not.

I hope all is well where you are. ♥

Love

kj

First Day of Kindergarten

Dear Mr. Ryan,

I love you more than shoes.

Love.

Gram

Provincetown Picture Poem

I must be giddy. I've stirred up Ptown into colors and words and out comes a picture perfect poem :^)

love

kj

What would make the light

turn molten gold

And does it matter if fallen buds 

close before or after they die? 

If I bury my umbrella

all the way to China

Will the sky

tell me

 What will remain?

Sometimes my wings tuck in

and I cannot glide

and sometimes I  walk

through determined sand that nurtures grass.

Too, I park my wheels

before the certain path

Where I'll find my cinnamon rose

waiting there just for me.

Life in Provincetown: the first few days

I am not happy with my last post so I am replacing it entirely. 

In it I said my 17 day vacation is in jeopardy because my Mother is not doing well, but I am still here with no plans to leave yet. Today she is doing better.

So I am content and this is why:

do you see donald duck?

:^)

what am i doing? writing each morning, beaching each afternoon, carousing each evening. or not.

time changes when there is no routine, no necessity. and with it my central nervous system changes. 

i can relax. coast. consider. appreciate. 

baino my friend, i hope one day you will be here too. i think that will be so.

and anne and deb, feel better.

and every one: speak the truth and live it full and real. there is no other good way.

the end for now

love

kj

Tides

I arrived in Provincetown Saturday night. This is an extended time (longer than I've had in years)  to write in the morning, accompany lunch and JB to Herring Cove Beach for the afternoon, and fall into late afternoon and evening doing anything we want. 

Lest your envy be rising, honesty requires that I say that my 96 old Mother started having delusions ten minutes before I left on Saturday and it has gotten worse. Chances are good I will need to drive four hours back to see her, perhaps stay for any number of days, since she is safer and calmer when I am around. Safer is an important word: she also fell yesterday.

I can't say I am happy about this. In fact, I am depressed. Who wouldn't be? But for now here I am still on the sectional red couch and it is close to heaven. The sea awaits.

What am I doing on the beach besides swimming and bobbing and digging my feet into cool sand? Well, I'm writing little letters to myself :^)

Wish me luck, please. Even though in this moment I have little to complain about. 

love

kj

P.S. I wanted to put these photos three small ones in a row, side by side, but Blogger insisted I space them one below another. I would have liked a series of three pix, three rows. But how?

♥