Some Beach Pictures.

Hopeless ennui, yes.
Hopeless boredom--not hopeless.
I hope.

Before we left our things were stacked in the garage. Food, bags, bicycles, atlas. We loaded them not into the BMW sedan whose hubcap you see there, but the old van. She's white, we call her Vanna White. As we all got in Abigail asked, "What if we break down?" and I thought of The Grapes of Wrath.


We got there and explored. My sister and I leaned against the rail of one of many decks, and the pretty skirt Abigail was wearing blew through the slats.


The sound, where I and some others went crabbing. This was a hazy day. One a few occasions I hesitated to go outside because the air smelled so smoky--from a fire on the mainland, I believe.


I have many more, and better pictures of the ocean than this. Even ones that don't have faces in them. Meh, it's always the ocean.


One of the other guests, an old family friend. (I liked him the best on this trip because he reminded me of my math teacher, who I've been missing. Same patient, slow tone and crinkly kind eyes.) Also, I like the picture.


In lieu of swimming or drinking, I collected some shells. And photographed everything. Official count is 784 pictures in eight days.


Oh, have I not mentioned the drinking? Yes, all the adults were very on-vacation. I think I was the only one who didn't have any alcohol.


On a not-hazy day, we gathered on a deck to watch the sun set. Alas, this and every other time, it disappeared behind a bank of clouds before truly going away.


One night, our hosts went to visit other friends and came back with flora. This passionfruit flower was beautiful (if I was an obsessed-with-presentation cook I'd get some to put on perfect individual servings of lavender-honey ice cream) but smelled only of the gardenias it had been chummy with.


This was the closest we came to the Hatteras lighthouse: driving by, going home.


After a long time, a seven hours, a ride that was me thinking "Samuel Samuel Samuel" over and over until dizzy, trying to drown it out with ever-louder music, avoiding food--we reached our own region. That song, "County Roads"? Not geographically far from us. We passed beautiful fields that I, of course, had to muck up with my camera and the reflections of the van window.
But it was so prettily familiar.