Rock Rainbow

The Meaning of Life

What is life all about? Why are we here? Is it to seek truth? To gain wealth and status? To create beauty? To propagate a religion? Reduce suffering? Devote yourself to your family? What do all those things mean?

Those deep questions are best addressed by someone a lot smarter than I am. But it occurred to me today that it might be interesting to consider how various civilizations, cultures, nations answer the question of the Meaning of Life. I thought it would be fun to look at it from the point of view of individual cities: what they really have say about the Meaning of Life, and what they say they say (for instance, I'm guessing that the denizens of Washington D.C. would claim to be dedicated to things like Freedom and Equality, when I think the reality of the matter is more along the lines of manipulation of wealth. But that's another box of wine.)

I'm on the subject, because I think that Miami Beach would freely acknowledge, if it thought about such matters, that the meaning of its life has to do with the celebration of eroticized beauty and sensual pleasure. Which, for the last grand gesture of the Month of Mick, is just fine with me.

Now you might be thinking that I'm about to hit you with a bunch of spicy and saucy photos. Well, that ain't gonna happen. There are plenty of places on the internets where you can see that stuff. But I do have some pix from our stay for your amusement.

For instance, check out the Fontainebleau, Morris Lapidus' masterpiece.

And a shot of its tower, the edge slicing into the sky.

A couple days were windy enough that the parasurfers were out in force.

Thought I had more and better shots of these guys, but here's one catching a little air.

While the sort of philosophical questioning I was referring to might not exactly reach its fullest flower in Miami Beach, there is certainly some artistic expression. These are from the apartment where we stayed.

I like this one because it shows a chunk of the place, our gear thrown all over. Hey - it was meant to be a relaxing visit, right? Also, if you close up a little, you can see Cory tucked in behind the sculptures.

Here's a shot of the view from our balcony.

As if this weren't luxurious enough, I also had a spa day (!) as a birthday present, at this place:

Can't take credit for that photo, but I certainly enjoyed the day! A workout, a steam shower, some time at the pool, a Balinese massage, then out to the beach. Amazing. Mmmmmm... Balinese massage...

'Twas a good few days.

And back in New York, of course, we just had Halloween. This guy on Cory's block looks like he's had a rough time of it.

Think it's too late for a massage for him...

Back from the Beach

Ok, I've been a less-than-religious blogger lately. Part of the reason was that I was down in Miami Beach for four fun-filled days in the sun. I'll post some pix from that trip before long. Suffice to say it was a fab trip.

There was one little wrinkle...

Late Monday night/Tuesday morning, there was a small fire in the store on the ground floor of my apartment building. Nothing too serious, as these things go, but still - a lot of smoke, people were freaking out, the cops called my cell in the middle of the night (I didn't get the message until the next morning, which is actually a good thing) and the firefighters broke my door down. They actually broke down a bunch of doors in my building - it's just what they do when people evacuate without leaving their doors open (a number of people have doors that just lock automatically when you close them - those got busted into too.)

Sooooo... that'd be the other reason I haven't been so attentive to this blog. I've got a bit of a mess to clean up, and my place smells like smoke a bit. All tolled, things could have been a LOT worse. We're all pretty lucky.

On the other hand, what is it with me and vacations and fires?

tick... tock...

What are you doing this weekend?

The Vineyard

Monday, I had to choose between getting up at dawn and making a ferry at 9, or sleeping in a bit and catching a boat at 2. Given the night we had on Sunday, it wasn't a particularly hard choice. Teeny bit of drama in Woods Hole when the main parking lot was full and I had to go to an alternate lot, but I caught the shuttle to the ferry to the island just in time to make the 2 o'clock departure for Vineyard Haven.

That first afternoon, after a delicious lunch courtesy of SaraJane, we drove to Edgartown and had a good walk on and around the main strip. Got some really good iced coffee, and headed to the coast.


The 'On Time' Ferries to and from Chappaquiddick, passing in the canal. (They go back and forth pretty much constantly, so timeliness would seem to be a fairly manageable factor.)


Isabella and Madeleine watching the ferries.


A lighthouse near where SaraJane got married.


The kids had a bunch of fun playing near that lighthouse (and during the whole downtown venture.) You can't really tell, but this photo shows Isabella during one of their favorite games du jour: throwing around a teddy bear. The bear did not seem to mind.

Fish tacos and good wine for supper. The next day, SJ, Cory, Madeleine and I took a jeep to one of the beaches where you can, well, drive a jeep on the beach.

This, it must be said, was tremendously fun.

I'd never gone four-wheeling before, and there aren't any photos because, well, I was in the jeep. We all took turns driving - too inexperienced to do anything fancy, especially given that we had a 2 1/2 year-old with us, but still - way fun.


Here's one of my favorite shots from the trip: Madeleine in all her beachy glory.

The rest of the trip was full of lots of the kinds of things you'd associate with Martha's Vineyard: farmers' market, Boggle and Scrabble, more good food and wine (I made a lobster feast one night), more time on the beach, in Chappaquiddick this time, ice cream and iced coffee, blowing bubbles on the deck.

It was a pretty estrogen-y household: 6 gals, ages 10 months to 41 years, 5 of them related to each other, and me. It's been said that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Now, I don't hold much truck with that proposition, but if we grant it for the sake of argument, I'd like to think I speak Venusian as well as the next guy, and better than most. But even for me, this was a lot of chick energy. This is not a complaint! It was a great vacation. In fact, it was kind of wonderful - exactly the thing for a long summer weekend.

We also took a walk through a quaint and well turned-out town square, ending up at one of Madeleine's favorite places of all: the Flying Horses carousel.



Here we are getting ready to ride. It was fun - very old school. There's a spot inside and one outside where the riders try to pluck rings off the wall. Now I'm not saying that I was the best at that game or anything, but only one person on each side of the carousel gets the coveted brass ring that wins you a free ride, and guess who grabbed it on the outside?

No, I didn't keep the free ride for myself! I gave it to Madeleine, of course.


Given the opportunity, what wouldn't you do for this one?

New England Dreamin'

Seriously experiencing New England envy today. I know, I know - I was just there a few weeks ago, but I didn't get to the ocean at all. I'm wanting to be away from the fluorescent cubes and the steamy streets and the control freaks, swimming in that cold water.

It's unlikely I'll get up there again this summer. However, a beachy day-trip closer to home is a must!

Meanwhile, half of my face is numb and my jaw is throbbing from a trip to the dentist. Ugh. Don't know if I'm going to be able to rock the Shakespeare tonight.

Cabanas

Up the Beach, a burst of color.

Abandoned Beach Patrol

No safe-keepers; no one to keep safe.

The Bocce

You know bocce, right? The old Italian game where you toss a small round stone to one end of a court, then try to get larger stone balls as close to it as possible, while knocking your opponents' balls away? Well, it was an important part of T-day this year.

But we don't play that polite bocce, where you just toss the pallino from one end of a pleasant smooth sand area to the other. Ours is more of an extreme bocce...
Also known as all-terrain bocce, it involves using the whole beach - the smooth sand, the rocky parts, the shells and the driftwood, the lawn above, even - at one ill-advised point - the water. That's Kevin hurling a bocce ball in one or our 'long bocc' rounds.
And now I'm having some trouble with uploading images - more later...


Alright - more bocce madness.

Here we are prepping for bocce among the beach chair obstacles:

And this is us getting ready for Extreme Bocce Action (can't you tell?)

The characters in this boccerific image are, from left to right, Crispy, Kevin, Rudy and myself. That bottle in the sand is, um, probably caffeine-free diet coke.

Finally, we have a shot of Water Bocce. The pallino rolled down the slope of the shore and ended up right at the edge of the water. We hemmed and hawed and thought it might not be such a good idea to play that lie. But then we were like: they're rocks, right? They're not going anywhere...

So we played the round. Sure enough, the balls stayed in plain sight at water's edge. We had serious control issues trying to work the slanting sand, but this was All-Terrain Bocce, after all. And when all the stones were rolled, two were almost tied for closest to the jack:

That would be Pike, Kev, Chris and I closely inspecting the situation to determine the victor of the round. We paced it off, allowing for waves, then gathered the rocks and got ready for the next round. But as we did, Rudy said "Um, guys...? Do you have all the balls?"

Ummm... nope. While we were engrossed in the competition aspect of the game, Neptune claimed two of the Bocce balls for himself.

This was followed by about 15 minutes of us all wading up and down the shallows in a vain hope of finding those rocks in the ocean. Which was itself followed by another 10 or so minutes of the four of us just staring out at the surf, muted, scanning for glimpses of red-paint and wondering what we were going to tell Jen (who brought the bocce set in the first place). Gulp :-)

It didn't spoil the party. Fortunately, this was not an heirloom set from Jen's Italian Grandfather or anything. Her attitude was the best - "they couldn't have gone in a better way, or to a better place." And we adjusted the game for the remainder of the weekend.

But if anyone knows where I can find some good Bocce balls cheap, lemme know...

The Beach

This is the view of the beach on Edisto Island as seen from the downstairs porch at I'm guessing about midday. It was perhaps cooler than would have been truly ideal for swimming, sunning and such, but all in all it was kind of wonderful for November 8-11.

Here's a look up the beach (Northeasterly), including shots of more neighboring houses:

And here's one that cannot possibly do justice to the scene, but props to Rich for capturing it:

It's a dolphin! There were lots of them swimming up and down the beach every day. Ok, ok, it wasn't a constant thing or anything, but at least a couple people saw dolphins every day we were there. And one day, three or four of them swam very close to where we were hanging out. A few of us walked closer to the shore, and they swam back and forth a few times - which I took to be an invitation to go out and swim with them (yes, ok, I know - they probably weren't actually inviting anything, but i couldn't resist)

Not many people did much swimming at all that weekend, but I have been baptised in the ocean waters of Maine, and therefore have less fear of the cold. And although it's an exaggeration to say I swam 'with' the dolphins, I was in the water near them. But rather than swim up to me and take me for a ride on their backs, they, umm, kinda swam away. Still, it was pretty amazing!

And also amazing was that my friends resisted the temptation to bust my balls for scaring the dolphins away (again, they were probably just looking for food and not the least concerned with me or any of us), and instead totally cheered me on for going out there and taking the chance.

Which is one of the innumerable reasons why I love them.

The House

This is the house where T-day 007 happened, as seen from the beach. Felt pretty stylin', I must say.

Here's a shot of the kitchen, where so much of the magic happened:

Don't know how well you can see it, but notice the granite countertops and the tile; also worthy of appreciation are the combination of hanging fixtures and recessed lighting (anb what a ceiling! the detail work and superfine wood really blew us away)

Here's the downstairs patio:

From left to right, we have the darling Cleo, Rudy, Kevin and Pike. Would you say this is sun-dappled? I'd say it's sun-dappled.

We didn't take any shots from the street, I guess. Probably because we didn't spend any time there at all - we were pretty beachy, except for the trips to the shrimp shack and the Piggly Wiggly (which is not, as some Northerners think, a mere convenience store, but a full-out supermarket.

One last shot for now, from a bit farther away, with the peeps assembled in front:

One of the things I like about this shot is the candid nature (thanks to Rich for all of these, I think) Fairly certain that none of us are aware there's a guy down by the water snapping away.

And speaking of that - beach shots next time...

new pix

Got some photos from rachel from the weekend on the beach. Like one of them enough i think i may go ahead and change the ID pic for this blog. What say you?

Kismet, Fire Island

Exhausting, as my 'vacations' tend to be. And should be. No sinking into the sand for this group.

First time to F.I. for me - i can't remember ever having gone to a beach in New York at all. Other than Coney Island and Jones Beach, but I didn't go in the water in either case.

So, LIRR to van to ferry to Kismet to the house, which was then our home base for the next three-and-a-half days. Sun and rain vied for primacy, but we danced with the choices they gave us. Which included actual dancing, at a bar called 'the out.'

Speaking of 'out'... we did visit a couple 'clothing optional' beaches, which yielded one of the funnier sights of the weekend: a guy who wore a hat, shirt, shoes AND socks, but no shorts of any kind. Yeah, takes somebody pretty specific to rock that look. One for the ages.

Highlights of the trip:

• Warm sun, clean cool water
• Tennis with Rashmi, Susan, Aaron and Sherin
  
• Yahtzee on the beach, Celebrity, Loaded Questions, Phase Ten, Scrabble and Poker, Poker, Poker (this group was pretty game)
• Sherin and Johnny Thunder dancing at The Out
• Good beer, wine, and gin & tonics (plus that bloody mary that showed up in the nick of time...)
  
• Visits from Shannon's folks and Rachel
• Great music at the house
  
• Meal after amazing meal
• Huge waves after the storm - way fun!
• The long walk to Ocean Beach
• No TV the whole damn time

Hope to post some photos soon. Also hope you had a good weekend yourself.