"Verweile Doch! Du Bist So Schoen!"

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Most years, Marianne and I go "down the Shore," as we say in Philadelphia, and stay a week in Cape May Point.  Now, you can tell a lot about who somebody is by where he or she stays on the shore.  Young and crazy?  Wildwood.  Parents of a grown son and former owners of a Ford Taurus?  Cape May Point.

Nothing ever happens in CMP and that's its chief attraction.  When I first arrive, I'm jittering with energy.  We go down to the beach to swim and search for drift-glass and lie on a blanket and read.  And as long as I'm there, I'll pick up a fragment of shell and write in the sand.  Sometimes I'll get a story almost finished before the waves come in to erase it.  For six days I'll write.  Then, on the seventh, when I'm finally calm enough that I feel no desire whatsoever to write, I can come home.

This year it wasn't possible to spend a week in Cape May Point, alas.  But I played hooky yesterday and went there for the day.  That's why I don't have anything interesting to say today.

Tomorrow, yes.  But not today.

Above:  Me writing "Canute," the second of two stories erased by the sea.  Before that it was "First Draft."  Of the two stories, all that remain are a few fading memories.  They'll be gone soon.

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