Letter from the Vineyard

The rhythm of the summer is beginning to reveal itself. I am mostly settled in the little cottage off Katama where I will live until I depart; the number of things I need to get is dwindling.  This season’s cottage is better outfitted than last year’s “most exotic Marigold Hotel” cottage.  It has heat, for starters, which is needed this time of year.  And it has wi-fi!

The mornings and evenings remind me of childhood weekends on the North Shore of Lake Superior, at a little resort called Erickson’s; little yellow cabins set among the pines, looking down on the rocky shore of the lake.  Cool to cold, fresh, with the smell of crushed pine needles in the air.

It is larger than a New York City studio, recently done over.  I think it was meant to be an Airbnb, but the owner must have decided it was less hassle to have one constant renter over the summer than a series of weekenders.  Just out the window, and across the patio, is a larger cottage, which is where Andrea is living.  She’s managing Behind the Bookstore, the restaurant which is directly behind the bookstore.  Cleverly named.

Andrea has a dog, Joey, who is actually a she and who has taken, thankfully, a liking to me.  Joey ran in and played with me for a bit just a few minutes ago before Andrea went back to the restaurant to do some paperwork.

I have entered the summer monastery of the bookstore, days there and evenings in my cottage, jazz and classical music, a lot of reading, a little video, feeling wrapped away a thousand miles from the rest of the wild world in which we live.  And right now, I like it that way.  It’s pretty scary out there. No, actually, it’s a lot scary!

The island is slowing coming alive.  The ice cream store on the corner of Main and Summer will be opening this week.  Behind the Bookstore will start dinner service on weekends beginning with Memorial Day, which is just around the corner.

Here I have both a sense of timelessness and an acute sense of time passing.  I will blink, I know it, and it will be Labor Day and I will blink again, and I will be on the ferry heading back to – somewhere.

The vagabond has not decided where he will go when he leaves the island, after a pause in Stuyvesant.

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