After the Waves: Present Day, May 3, 2022
Picking up where I left off. Again.
I’m sitting by the pool at an entirely charming B & B in Provincetown, MA. It’s early in the season and chilly and overcast and the streets host barely a whisper of the activity they will in a few short weeks. Shoulder season looks and feels good on the tip of the fist of Cape Cod.
I booked this trip on a whim on Cyber Monday in 2021. An email offering a ridiculous rate was too good to pass up, and I figured I would book a few days away and figure out my plan as the dates became closer. I’ve always loved Cape Cod and hadn’t had the chance to visit in a while. I originally booked another room at another location, but I got a call a few days before I was scheduled to leave. The innkeeper informed me that the room I had booked was now unavailable because water damage had affected the entire inn and would I prefer to cancel my trip, or adjust my plan because they could accommodate me at another property. If I’d learned anything in the past two years, it was to take a breath, pivot, and not panic, so I agreed to let them move me and keep my trip in place.
I had a general idea of what I wanted to accomplish while I was here: art, books, beach, lobster rolls. Maybe fit in some birds too. A typical “getting away from it all” list. I wanted to have some time to myself in a place that I loved. But general ideas and Cyber Monday deals aside, the real driving force for me to take this solo trip was to try and shake myself out of the deep funk I was in. Blame it on our new Covid-changed world, or blame it on brain chemistry, I had been going through life in a fog for a while and was desperate to break out of it, so I packed a bag and headed north for a few days.
In my office I have a long credenza. And on that credenza, I have stacks of papers laid out in organized rows, paperclipped and Post-it noted within an inch of their lives. And on all of those papers there are nearly 10,000 typed and printed words.
They’ve been sitting there for years.
Above the credenza, and directly in my line of site when sitting at my desk, are six medium-sized whiteboards. And on those six white boards are handwritten lists of potential chapter titles, themes, draft outlines, and other thoughts and musings I didn’t want to forget about that trip to Thailand.
From time to time I flip through the pages, maybe jot down another idea or two, and then promise myself I would get back to finishing this project one day – if I could only figure out how to pull it all together.
I look directly at those stacks of papers and those whiteboards for hours each and every day. They used to taunt me – I’m sure I put them in my sightline on purpose – and now they just blend into the background.
It wasn’t until I realized that I was forgetting a lot of the details I swore I would never forget that I would recommit to propelling those pages back into the foreground. Now I’m in a race against my memory. A race I hope – and intend – to win. @@@
© 2022 Kim Selby, All rights reserved. All photography © Kim Selby unless otherwise credited.