sovay | And I enjoyed the world aright for the sea itself floweth

spatch and I are on Cape Cod for the weekend. The cuffs of my jeans are full of sand.

We are staying in the spare house of my father's friend who lives here; normally she rents it to summer people, but there has been a dearth of those this summer, and since we both re-tested negative at the beginning of this week, she feels safe with our presence. This afternoon we went to Corporation Beach.

We were not the only people on the beach, because Massachusetts has begun the second phase of reopening and I feel just as ambivalent about it as I do about the concept of reopening at all, but they were scattered widely enough that we could go without masks in public for the first time in three months. Rob took this picture of me as soon as I took off my shoes and socks and waded into the water by a spit of rocks, as the tide was coming in.

I felt like a heliotrope, turning my face to the sea's sun.

I like this rather captainly picture of Rob in turn. We agreed that if we were going to build a house within sight of the sea, we would not skimp on the widow's walk.

I once had a vivid dream of an unraveling edge of water like this one spilling across the threshold of an empty room, turning floorboards into sea. I have never managed to turn it into a story, except that it is so many of the stories I tell.

I would appreciate any help in identifying this jellyfish, which I had to snap as the waves tugged it in and out among bubbles and sand and thin ribbons of bright green weed. We saw a couple of moon jellies both bobbing and beached and a larger gelatinous puddle farther up the beach, but this quite alive specimen resembled none of them.

This was just a lovely piece of bladderwrack.

The tide flows in and the tide flows out.

Twice every day returning.

The beach is full of memento mori: shells of clams and snails and limpets, crab claws and carapaces, the spines and in one case the silvery, slippery, folded-out skin that had covered the head of a fish. I still find them beautiful.

Shell, stone.

My father had advised me that the water was too cold for wading or swimming this early in the year, so I left my swim trunks in my duffel. I forgot that my ideas of reasonable water temperatures are at least ten degrees colder than my father's. I believe in this photo I was retrieving a small white clam shell. My jeans are still drying.

The waves were thick with seaweed. It felt suddenly astonishing to be holding this piece, slick and rust-gold, tooth-white fragments of barnacle still latched to the root.

It is not a dramatic picture, but I like this one. I liked what I was looking at.

I did not appreciate that we were eventually chased off the beach by a large and noisy birthday party converging on the picnic benches, especially since not a one of the children or adults was wearing a mask, but we came home and my father had made us deep-dish pizza from scratch and then we ourselves cooked a piece of salmon we had brought from Boston, very simply, in a pan, with butter and lemon pepper, and it is strange not to have had little cats insinuating themselves into the kitchen, but I trust they will forgive us when we return. We will have more sea first.

And I enjoyed the world aright for the sea itself floweth

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