Friday June 22. 2001

almost home

This is what you do when you get to Cape Cod. You remember what Beach Time is.

Beach time is a time zone that surrounds you. Things seem to speed up and slow down as you want them to, a sunset can last a lifetime and a 7 hour drive is like a moment because you know you're with someone you love. You stop. You smile. You inhale the air and know you won't be coughing out car exhaust. You can stand in a long line for a restaurant and not mind, because you are on Beach Time.

I marvel at these little tourist towns. Everything miniaturized, everything so small and personal and carefully crafted and taken care of. The complete antithesis of the existence I live in now, where there's a Starbucks or McDonalds on every corner. The latte you taste in Albequerque will be the same one that you taste in the East Village. Everything is the same, everything is a small cog in a bigger cog in a great vast machine bent on taking your soul, or at very least your disposable income.

But here that formula flies apart, you are left without the comfort of a 24 hour Rite Aid down the street that can satisfy your craving for Ben and Jerry's at 2 am if needed. The girl that waits on you at the resataurant is here on her last summer at the cape. In the fall she's going to pursue her master's degree in criminal justice. She smiles and talks to you as she pours your coffee, not because she's supposed to According to Company Policy, but maybe because she wants to.

And you get to a time in your life when you're sure that everything you could ever want is encased within a few small square miles - every club, every gallery, every show, every restaurant, everything you need to satisfy your desires is right here - until you meet Beach Time. And then you think, maybe, everything I need is not in New York City or Philadelphia. Maybe what I need is to sit out on the beach and hear nothing, nothing at all, no cars, no people shouting, no police sirens - nothing except the wind blowing past your ears and the waves slowing washing themselves ashore.

Maybe you don't always need to be on top of it all, maybe you don’t need to always be where it's all happening - maybe you need to be where nothing in happening, so something can finally happen to you.

It was grey and cloudy. Appropriate weather for leaving. I was really depressed, as we drove away from our vacation. Across the Cape, across Massachusetts, across Connecticut, stopping for food and to switch driving, down into New York and back into the city. As were caught in traffic on the LIE, I could see the skyline of Manhattan ahead of us. "We're almost home," I said, I felt like I was. Because home isn't a place, it's the people that are there. And I feel like I'm home.