479 consecutive days. Like in a Row. Walking, at Cove Island Park.
~ 20 minutes before sunrise, and I’m walking the shoreline. It twitches. The surface stirs. Their bellies, silver flashes, mica flickering in twilight.
I look overhead. No gulls, no egrets, no herons. Enjoy your quiet time little people, while it lasts.
I keep walking. Multiple schools swirl ahead of me.
The Twilight Zone.
I walk.
Pages of James Tate Hill’s new memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff, turn. “It’s that meaning can rest in the smallest details, in every moment and gesture and line of dialogue.”
The middle aged Chinese woman runner. Hardy girl that she is, running every morning straight through the winter months. She no longer runs on Weed Avenue, the main artery to the Park. She ducks in and out of the side streets. Fearing assault? Retribution for the Chinese Virus?
The Veteran Retiree. No sign of him in months. Visiting his grandchildren? Ill? Hospitalized?
Runner with Spandex and wired, Over-The-Ear headphones. He rolls on. Wired. With Over-the-Ear headphones. With Spandex. Luminescent disco blue.
There’s an entirely new cast of characters at the park. Less consistent. Ever so chatty. Like Tourists, who only walk on sunny, rainless mornings — not knowing what’s sacrilegious (…try silence, a head nod, a smile for a greeting…and no! I don’t know what kind of bird that is.).
I make my way, way wide of the walking paths and, way wide of the look out points where the masses congregate.
Tate Hill speaks of his adolescent years. “Being a teenage boy without self-confidence or a girlfriend placed me squarely in the majority of my age bracket, which didn’t make me feel any less alone. The teenage years are an interminable parade of someday and soon, hour after hour of wishing you could fast-forward to life’s good parts.”
I drift back to my teenage years. Those interminably, long August days. Wishing they would fast-forward to life’s good parts.
And now? I can’t slow them down. These days, you blink and Summer is gone, the year is gone and I can’t keep up with all the good parts.
I look back down the beach.
Gulls are arriving. The schools smell trouble and roil the surface.
That someday and soon is Now.
DK @ Daybreak. 6:00 am, August 27, 2021. 74° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Live & Learn 
thanx for the damn good morning read/ (I just might steal that Hill quote)
gray
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Thank you! Enjoy!
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Love these lines: “I drift back to my teenage years. Those interminably, long August days. Wishing they would fast-forward to life’s good parts.
And now? I can’t slow them down. These days, you blink and Summer is gone, the year is gone and I can’t keep up with all the good parts.”
So true. Here’s to noticing, as you do (and we readers must remind you that YOU DO) notice them!
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Thank you Daniel!
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Time’s mercurial nature has certainly been laid bare this past year or so, hasn’t it? I’m realizing more and more how many days, nay years, I squandered, planning for the time when I had accomplished ‘x’ or completed ‘y’ and could really start living. Like you, I have recently become keenly aware that that time is *now*. Thanks for a thought-provoking post, pal. Have a happy, mindful day…. 🙂
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Yes! Yes! Yes, Lori. Again you’ve captured it. Thank you.
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Beautiful post. Just read it out loud to my husband. He’s the social one, the extrovert. Since he moved in, there is a lot more chit chat on our dog walks with all the friends he’s made and knows on a first-name basis. As much as I love him, I relish the solitary walks when I meet no one. The trick is to go out real early. The early birds are for the most part as anti-social/introverted as me and respect the head nod code. 🙂
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Smiling. How much earlier can one go out? And we might have common blood lines, must.
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I like to be a little bit ahead of the sun so it’s never quite light when I get up. It’s the only time in the day I don’t have to talk to anyone. Yep, definitely a common bloodline somewhere.
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Same for me. I clock it at 1 hour before sunrise…
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Yes.
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I somehow KNEW you would be right there with me Lisa. 🙂
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I’m glad I took the time to read and find out this was a school of fish. I wondered at first if it was a man’s hair-surrounded belly button. But to your comment about being a teenager wishing for the adult years to hurry up and arrive, and then wishing for those years to slow down – you’ve hit the nail on the head. I remember feeling that way … still wishing for time to slow down now.
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FUNNY!
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Unnatural extroverting is exhausting. I understand the young adult Caryll Houselander going out her bedroom window whenever her folks had company over.
I still need to know what that bird is, though. 😉
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It is EXHAUSTING!!!!! Laughing. And after lady asks me: What kind of bird that is? She says: “But don’t let know interrupt you in getting the shot! Classic!
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great shot! I’m enjoying your Insta!
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Thank you!
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are those tiny, minute fish? Looks so but am not sure. Yep, must be – you’re at the beach…. so lovely!
Love those quotes, those observations. This morning, I wrote to my daughter in law: Silence is the intake of breath by the earth…. she’s been – as part of her studies, for 3 days in a monastery, no phones, no speaking, getting up at 5.30 for prayers, contemplation, ‘instructions’, long walks…. she’s not religious but she said it gave her endless room for thoughts. Went well with today’s post.
Contrary to your and Hill’s feelings of wishing to ‘fast forward’ to the good parts of life I very vividly remember those times too, endless afternoons, being outside with friends, playing, but I honestly never gave a thought to what might be better later on in life.
And NOW I am glad that I stand where I do and not to have be ‘that’ age again, making all those experiences but being quite happy with the ‘wisdom’ (ha ha) of my gains of this life so far. I never wanted to be 20 again, although I sometimes wish I had still some of the energy from those times.
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Smiling. I’m nodding my head in agreement throughout. And yes, those are tiny fish. Not sure what kind. As to your daughter in law. I could do the 3 days of Silence easy. Without phones, hmmmm, no so much. 🙂
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
There’s trouble ahead indeed!! Multiple schools … “Gulls are arriving. The schools smell trouble and roil the surface. That someday and soon is Now.”
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Your writing and observations- wow, just wow.
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Thank you Carolann!
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all we’ve got is now, in spite of all of it
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Truth!
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“Those interminably, long August days. Wishing they would fast-forward to life’s good parts.” I never wanted those long August days to end – then, or now…
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Especially now Jim. Especially now!
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agreed!
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Covid has forced us to slow down, look at our lives, and see who we have become. And yet, everyone is wishing it would end, so we can get back to normal?
Normal? Busy? Unconscious? Missing precious moments, missing the whole point of life!? Oh that normal??? ha!
Great post DK and reminder. 😊👍
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It sure has Karen. Thank you.
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Ahh! You’ve got it! All we have, all we have ever had, is Now. The impatience of youth notwithstanding. 😉
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Truth!
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