Nantucket '07: Time After Time

I woke up just after sunrise this morning.

Stepping into the living room I was gob smacked by the sea shining through the picture window. The only sound in our cottage, Watcha Dune, was the ticking of the old novelty clock on the wall that reads, "Who Cares."

I grabbed the DV and began shooting right away. Soon enough, I was on the beach, the tripod wedged level in the sand. A seal was splashing around in the waves a few hundred feet off shore.

I turned the camera towards the waves zooming in on the slow-rolling water there before it crested and capped and broke. Then I turned northwest and shot the sunlight sparkling on the waves as they lapped onto the shore.

Everything around me had a pulse. Everything around me beat the rhythem of time. I stood there, my toes in the water, and thought to myself 'This is why Mister Rogers loved it here.'

Increments of time feel both more minute and more infinate here.

The island changes with each passing season: inlets deepen, sandbars grow and homes fall into the sea. Someday, perhaps, it will all wash away.

It is the steady march of time. Unlike Times Square, Copley Plaza or Piccadilly Circus, where the horns and the sirens and the lights and the crush of the hawkers, barkers and hustlers, is relentlessly distracting. Each wave, each soaring gull, each blade of grass blowing in the wind, actually means something.

Slow.

Down.

* * *

I am eatting bluberry pie for breakfast now. Because I can.