And I didn't really think before saying yes. I'd grown up visiting my great grandparents on the Cape, but I'd never been to the islands off of Massachusetts, I didn't need to have seen it to know it was where I needed to be that Summer though, so I just went. I picked up and moved to the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Lived in a verified 3 bedroom house we called The Hourglass:
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| here it is in all it's 4th of July at sunset glory |
Worked mornings as an agent and split my afternoons between time on Cisco, Surfside or Nobadeer beach and spent writing parts of my great American (teeny bopper) novel (estimated publishing date 2016).
Got over my college bf once and for all. Drank way too much, and gained an annoying amount of weight. Got a gig hosting an airband competition on Sunday nights. Had half a hundred friends and family members visit for memorable weekends of whimsy.
Had a time, really. It was the summer we were 24 and 25 - there were no rules but our house rules, there was no rush, but there was always somewhere to be later that night...the Chicken Box for Donovan Frankenreiter, the Wauwinet for a tasting at Toppers, in town to pick up so and so or whoever it was that was getting in that night on the last ferry.
But anyway - I bring it up to point out the way it ruined me. (The ways it gave me new life are obvious I think - I was so independent: picking flowers in a field to put in the wicker basket I'd brought from Elsworth to spruce up our living room, unavailable to be at my family and friends' beck and call for the first time in my life - Nantucket Naugs was the ultimate free spirit and throw your hands up at me sort of sisterfriend). It ruined me because my two roomies and I lived in said 3 bedroom house sans furniture, sans a full set of utensils, sans cable, sans over head lighting, sans a full length mirror, sans so many things... But we lived soooo fully and had so much fun, and we were always in the moment, whether we were out on the porch in sleeping bags staring up at the stars or secretly off-roading in the jeep my roomie bought on a whim one afternoon. And we wanted for nothing. We thought we were going out ther in search of ourselves and of answers and of the things we would realize we should do next, but we wound up content just treading water. We made it work in so many ways and with so little effort.
And ever since, I've just reveled in this knowledge of the ability I acquired amidst adapting to a minimalistic existence - the ability I have to float. I need so little.
I deserve so much (we all do, bright lights that we are, good hearts that we have, generous spirits, talented selves), but I need so little...
Hence - how and why I was fine sleeping on the floor for my first 10 days in LA this January ;)
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