Our stuff - all our stuff - now temporarily resides someplace in Atlanta, and we are set to spend the summer at Emerald Isle, while our house is under construction. While living at the beach for a summer has great promise, I can't help but wonder if my furniture will recognize me when we are reunited?
It's a time of transition, and I think life at the beach will facilitate my acculturation - getting my sea legs as it were.
I don't think people are different, although there may be differences in the way coastal people relate to their environment as opposed to mountain people. Everything is so broadly open here, as opposed to being so hidden and tucked away in the mountains. Can't pee off the back porch here. Does that affects one's psyche? (Exposure, I mean, not the peeing) Are coastal people more open? Don't know.
I'm primarily concerned about my adjustment to place. My sense of place, and my feelings of belonging in a place are so acute, I just plain wonder how I am going to feel about living beside the ocean, in a glaringly bright sand scape with a few trees. Everything just feels so exposed.
I've made one adjustment already. I first thought of the landscape here as empty. I've adjusted the adjective from "empty" to "spare."
It's a neutral palette, and not just in color. Wide beaches, wide skies, and wide waters are "spare" of intrusions.
There is a lot of space to be filled - either by your own thoughts or by those who put up a grandiose "Pepito Bismal" house, which can be seen from the moon and beyond. Possibly they have no thoughts to insert.
I'm beginning to see that "spare" leaves a lot of possibilities for contemplation. A wide expanse lends itself to contemplation of both the very grand and the very tiny.... the size of the universe or the size of a grain of sand. (Oops, bordering on cliche here, but then a grain of sand is what we have).
I can look up into an umbrella of stars more numerous than I could have imagined in my tiny opening in the canopy of mountain trees. Or, I can look down at the immense number of things (beings) in a square foot of beach. My perception of size is challenged by this place, and I have to find my place on the scale.
Ah, the lessons begin.
