being there

It's 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Tim is reading on a chair in the living room. Sherry was on the couch reading until just now when she went to check on the butter beans she grew in New Haven and brought to the beach for us to eat. We won't eat them tonight. John is cooking tonight, something involving ham and beans and yellow grits. Mimi and Bern are down in the Gazebo, reading. I was reading until I took out this laptop John gave me and began writing this blog. John, who read most of the day, is taking a nap. There is ice-tea, gin and tonics and white wine being consumed as people read.

Not much going on. And that is pretty much what is going on in the house with the amusing name 'Andromeda Strand' on East Beach Road on Long Beach on Oak Island. Five of us went into Southport for lunch at the Southport Provision Company which has a boat charter service and 'advise' as well as a restaurant right on the water in open air. Conch fritters, onion rings, tuna sandwiches, crab cake sandwiches, steamed clams, potato salad and cucumber salad were consumed along with John's incongruous hamburger, along with beer. Mimi, Sherry  and Bern went to Yoga this morning and John and I went to breakfast--biscuits and sausage gravy and grits for me. Tim slept in.

Other than that, reading and conversation and laughter and irony and humor and a great deal of silence when people are reading, which is almost constantly. I'm on my 4th book in 4 days--The Cuckoo's Calling which J.K. Rowling (think Harry Potter) wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Very good. People occasionally go bob in the surf or look for shells or don't.

Not a lot of 'doing' going on.

The ocean waxes and wanes and purrs. The birds fly up and down and stop to eat. We can see a mile in either direction and right now, in that two miles, there are maybe 30 people to be seen. On the beach, not much going on....At the Andromeda Stand, more 'being' than 'doing'....

"Being" is what makes it 'being there...'