Robert Moses Beach Package

Is there a greater felicity than feeling your toes sink under the sand as the waves hit your feet? I have never found anything more profound than the combination of wind, sand and water (and gravity, of course).

I spent the day at Robert Moses beach, Long Island with my friend Tamar today, and a lovely day it was. We took the train in to Babylon and a bus to Robert Moses, and within 2 hours of leaving the city, we were hoofing it across the iron-streaked sand to reach the cool of the water. The MTA has set up some incredible getaway packages for day trips to the beach and other great spots outside of the city. Tamar and I are fond of the beach packages, we try to get out as much as possible during the summers. You go to the LIRR counters at Penn Station and ask for the Robert Moses Beach Package and pay $19 for a round trip train ticket and bus tickets that get you right to the shore.

Most of the day was spent lying on a blanket staring at the waves crashing into the shore wondering if it would be lonely to be out at sea. I was thinking about that girl who made the news recently with her attempt to be the youngest to circumnavigate the globe on a one-man sail boat. Like Odysseys on his raft, she spent her days without any physical human contact. I have never known how that feels, to feel alone with a world of life around you. Would I feel like I was the only living thing around me, or would I recognize the world of life that shared the water on which I float?

I have always felt the water to be a giant organism full of life and feeling, water connects everything: you can throw a bottle into the ocean and months or years later, it will end up somewhere completely different, in a different part of the world. In 1992, 29,000 rubber duckies broke free from a boat traveling from China. In the 18 years following this accident, the duckies have shown up in Australia, Britain, Hawaii and the Arctic, many traveling over 15,000 miles to get to their new homes. It is amazing that an object can go anywhere in the world with the help of one seemingly simple set of elements.

I packed my picnic basket with tomato mozzarella sandwiches, grapes, guacamole, a few bars of chocolate and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which I haven't read since high school, when I used to underline quotes for myself. In it I found this (which still touches me the same way it did when I first read it):

"Do you wonder why I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets. People will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to talk of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy - not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobstrusive in its manifestations."

My mind has been somewhat disjointed today, which accounts for the lack of fluidity in this post, but hey, I post them like I see them. I have often lost myself at the beach and falling into sentimental thoughts about the most disparate subjects, and it seems today is no different.