,

...can’t complain too much about going barefoot on the beach the day before Thanksgiving...even in long pants, t-shirt and sweater under rain jacket, knit cap under hood...just a few drops falling, blown by wind that, along with the tides, has so dramatically shaped hills and runnels in the sand...clouds light, dark, and in between, seeming to move in all directions at once...a bundle of half deflated party balloons floating past unintentional driftwood sculpture into the waves as I move slowly along....finally deciding to turn, head inland, put shoes and socks back on to walk the road back....some kinds of beauty can only be taken in for so long...

Whelk Procession

...a line of broken whelks placed like some holy procession the day before Thanksgiving...where, a couple weeks ago, water whooshing back to sea created a kind of sand ridge intersecting the shoreline....some say anything can be a sacred object....I don’t know, but see no particular reason to disagree...

...too cold to go barefoot...battered hiking books press down in wet cold sand...some seepage through worn out soles...but hardly more than the idea of wetness and cold... though that might change if I don’t keep moving....barely anybody else out but the metal detector guys...one in Bermuda shorts, though I’m wearing three layers, and the strong icy wind makes me doubt I’ll get anywhere near the point...but no worn out soul, as yet...still walking... dark tumultuous, thoroughly ominous cloud roof looming above yet ending in a straight but bumpy line just a foot or so above the horizon, where there’s no blue but an odd species of luminescence...clouds, still...but glowing...bare gilded outlines in white light....rotten wooden pilings so dark against the water lapping down below...all that light and dark in sharp distinction but what lines are in between gradually fading...

...had a deep sad thought last night...like someone wrapping me in a chilly, damp quilt...but then watched it dissipate, like a winter rainstorm...

...in better moments I think I’m on the road to enlightenment...then drop the pretense, think maybe I’m just not depressed...though, really, at this point, I can’t say the distinction matters to me much...