The Wonders of July – on the beach, on my mind – Rhode Island into Oblivion

Benjamin Heim Shepard is in Charlestown, Rhode Island.

July 8 at 12:35 PM ·

Working even harder drafting the new novel, hitting the beach and the pub with Mon amour!!!!

Thinking  about oblivion. 

This magnificent creature has six toes and no tail, visits us every day, greets us, says buon giorno and makes her way away. maybe she's a goddess? — at Rhode Island.

Benjamin Heim Shepard is in Narragansett, Rhode Island.

July 8 at 4:42 PM · You think it's easy reading literary memoirs on the beach?

No tail made another cameo — in Charlestown Beach, Rhode Island.

“All at once I entered a magic realm… a world  of beauty and mystery…”

Harold Norse, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel

Other summers  we’ve been at La  Finka Caribe in Puerto Rico or Cape Cod, of the Rock House in Jamaica or  La Isla Mujeres in Mexico, or elsewhere on the trail.

While the little one was in camp, we decided to stay nearby.

From Long Island, we made our way to Sag Harbor over the Ferry to Connecticut to Charlestown Beach, Rhode Island.

Walked along  the shore in  Orient.

And  made our way to Rhode  Island.

Greeted by a garden, birds, chips,  a cat with six toes and no tail, named No Tail, who visits us every day.

Pete, the owner, brings us snap peas, telling us about the public space  battles on  the beach.

“A man was arrested  for picking  up seaweed,” he kvetched. “They  later  threw  out the charges.”

Class conflicts are  everywhere. 

The kids are not  with us.

One is at Camp at a nearby college.

The  other is in Tokyo modeling.

Hold with open hands.

Let them fly.

The first days the beach is clouded.

The kids are on  our minds. 

Feels like life is passing.

We don’t miss the kids.

We miss the kids.

Like falling into oblivion.

All day we spend on  the beach,  reading Master and Margarita and Memoirs of a Bastard Angel.

Harold had an out of body  experience:

“That  night, unable  to sleep, I gazed at the stars through the attic window.  Boundless space. Infinity.  My mind boggled.  Who am I? Why am I here?  Where am  I going?  As I stood stargazing, I began  to rise and  soar like a commet, speeding out of this world toward the astral bodies, beyond space and time.   A circle of light engulfed me as I floated in some fifth dimension, in  a tide of faces, arms, legs, genitals – a sea of human bodies – thousands, maybe millions, swirling around in whirlpools.  Then, as I had once done under ether, I suffocated, losing consciousness.  So this was death!  But almost at once  I lived again – a new life – feeling ecstatic.  Again I was standing in the attic looking at the stars.   It was no dream,”

Norse, Harold. Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, p. 41

The teenager sends dispatches from Japan.

No Tail visits every day.

Douglas Crimp dies.

The greatest  philosopher of my generation. 

I think about his Mourning and Melancholy.

The clouds lift.

Revealing  blue green waters at East Beach.

I look  out and imagine.

Wonder.

I could be in Morocco

Or San Juan.

Or the dunes of Provincetown. 

Or right here with Caroline.

Wondering about the treachery of the old USA.

“There is only so much barbarism or inhumanity anyone can take,” she wonders,  thinking about the state of affairs.

Seagulls visit every day.

We swim.

Read.

Warm up. 

Yoga.

Read.

Nap.

Greet the seagulls.

Munching  on  our watermelon.

Enjoy it guys.

There  is plenty to share.

Harmony for a moment. 

Enjoy the skies.

Fly.

Soar.