Rocky Point Weekend

This weekend I had the good fortune to spend the weekend with my good friends at their family's summer place in Rocky Point, on the north shore of Long Island. We decided to fly in the face of the weather reports and go regardless of the thunderstorms in the forecast. We made it out at a snails pace, my friend driving for almost four hours, our backsides adhering to the car seats from the humidity. When we did make it to our destination we ate and unpacked, prepped for the next days barbecue and slept.

Saturday turned out to be not as wet as the MY9 news team predicted, but it did thunder and rain. We went to May's farm to pick up some more produce and they sky, pictured above, was pregnant with rain and hued in impending doom blues and grays. Gorgeous. Soon after this photo was taken the heavens did open up and intermittently showered down on eastern Long Island.

Later in the afternoon, friends caravaned from Brooklyn for the barbecue. We slept, read, walked and picked at cheese, crackers, fruit and other good stuff before the real meal began. While out for a walk after the rain seemed to have passed I spotted this lawn fawn stepping out of a bush of echinacea for some sun



















Back from the walk around sweet Rock Point, everyone awoke from slumber and rest and my friend and hostess got down to business on the grill. Eventually we all sat down to a great meal with many dishes, plus beer, wine, some really sweet sparkling wine concoction and other good stuff, leisurely becoming sated from all the food and good company.

Eventually the day guests left, going back to their houses, spouses and pets. Being newly single and having a house mate taking care of my cat, I was able to spend two nights with my friends. All I had to do was stumble into the bedroom and fall into a deep and restful sleep.

Sunday morning I awoke to sun and the promise of a trip to the beach. My friends got up and we drank some coffee, and played some badminton in the yard. Being of sad hand/eye coordination, I was able to play in, what I think my friend called it, a "judgment free zone." Or maybe that's what I thought of it. I forget how easy it is to play badminton and how much I enjoy it until I pick up the featherweight racket and the birdie and whack at it.

Eventually we make it to the beach later in the afternoon. My favorite time of the day on the beach is late afternoon into early evening, when the light changes a mid-afternoon glare to a golden-orange glaze. When we arrived, my friend and I took a long walk on the pebbled beach, and not wearing our footwear, toughening the soles of our feet on the tiny rocks. While on the walk we came across an impromptu shrine for a fallen bird, what my friends thought to be a Plover.

















On first seeing the dead bird I thought of paintings of the subject by Albert Pinkham Ryder and Morris Graves, and I also thought of Manet's "The Dead Toreador," perhaps because of the white breast of the bird and black wings reminded me of the toreador's uniform, or because of the way the bird was still plump and alive looking. With "The Dead Toreador" I always felt that if I turned away from the image, the toreador would get up, brush himself off, and saunter off out of the ring. Somehow there was something a bit unreal about this bird too, as if it were posing for a shoot, my shoot I guess. I was also moved by the act of someone inspired enough to weight the bird down, write "R.I.P" in the sand and leave a cross made of twigs above the beak. Perhaps it was a child or a teenager, I believe an adult would have been too self conscious, or if they weren't they would have added some ironic touch, too inhibited not too.

The rest of the afternoon we spent eating, reading and napping. We returned back at the house, which once belonged to my dear friends grandmother, who I had the good fortune to have spent time with when she was alive. One of those people you don't forget, diminutive, forceful, and very generous. I am grateful to be asked by my friends to return there in the summer.

After showering and having some coffee, we packed things up and loaded the leftovers and our weekend gear into the car.
















I was happy to be going back to Brooklyn, despite all the uncertainty in my life right now, a weekend in Rocky Point renewed my faith that I will find those things that I'm looking for, that things will be alright and that although everything I tried to make work hasn't panned out over the past few months that there new people and opportunities out there waiting for me. I just have to be open to them.