Writings from the side of the creek…
It has been grey all day in Claverack, just a bit on the cool side, perfect weather if you wanted to do all the shops on Warren Street in Hudson but I’m afraid I couldn’t quite manage that. I am cozied in the cottage recovering from arthroscopic surgery on my left knee, a torn meniscus the culprit.
Once finished with the surgery on Wednesday, my dear friend Lionel drove me up to the cottage where I have retreated for four days of rest and recuperation after a stunning set of days on the Cape and the Vineyard – Provincetown with my friends Dawn and Gail and Edgartown with Jeffrey and Joyce, ten days where I did my best to turn off the outside world and concentrate on the beauty that is the Cape and the Vineyard.
Then home for a few days and the surgery, which has kept me close to the cottage, leg elevated, ice pack on for a half hour, off for half an hour, a steady rotation that marked my first three days of recovery, days that were stunningly beautiful. I sat and recuperated on the deck, staring down at the creek, watching a gaggle of geese sail majestically up and down the creek as it glittered in the sunlight dancing between the tree boughs. It was an idyllic setting for recovery.
And as the sedation slowly washed its way out of my body it was good to reflect on what has been, for the most part, a very good summer albeit with its intimations of mortality that came with the death of my friend Joe Eros. I have cruised to Bermuda, visited my town of origin, walked the streets of Provincetown, stared at sunsets over Edgartown harbor and feasted with friends at numerous good restaurants here and there – and the summer is not quite over. Labor Day Weekend I will go to the Wisconsin Dells for the wedding of my best friend from high school’s youngest son.
It has been so idyllic that the drumbeats of reality have seemed particularly far away. It was hard to imagine the rioting and protests in Egypt as I scudded across Edgartown Harbor with my friend Jeffrey on his sailboat. The plight of Snowden seemed far away; I didn’t care if he ever got out of the transit area in Moscow’s airport.
I have felt carefree about the NSA and the thousands of times a year they apparently have flaunted the law in their eavesdropping. How could I care when it was much more important what I would have at Devon’s Deep Sea Dive in Provincetown?
As I was having a shrimp special on the Vineyard, NBC and CNN were getting themselves into hot, hot water with the GOP over proposed projects on Hillary Clinton. Surfacing from my knee surgery, it seems the GOP has punished those two networks with bans from the Presidential Primary Debates in 2016. Couldn’t they have waited to see the projects?
Russia cracks down on homosexuals and the world becomes outraged. I care though my outrage seemed muted by the sun on the Vineyard, where I learned to love the BTBama, a latte with four shots of espresso with grapefruit zest – it could start any heart. I sipped it while reading the morning papers in the Behind The Bookstore café in Edgartown, owned by Jeffrey and Joyce, where all the news seem muted by the pleasant present of lattes and papers and good weather.
Soon, Labor Day will come and with it there will be a return from the land of the lotus-eaters into every day reality that will be unbroken by time in the pleasant spots of the world. It will be a fall of concentration and nose to the grindstone but I will have had the cosseting of a mostly marvelous summer.
In the fall, I know I will have to turn myself to creating the future, not just enjoying the present. Summer fades and the tasks of fall mount up but buoyed by those summer memories, hopefully yours were as carefree and jazz filled as mine.
Letter from the Vineyard 