The western side of the Atlantic. The New World. The Other Continent. Rockport, Massachusetts.
It is breezy in the mid-seventies (here we think in Fahrenheit) and this blogger is revelling in views of a sparkling azure sea. Also in seas of sparkling boutiques.
She's sitting on a wooden porch rocking in a pretty painted rocking-chair next to her pretty daughter, determined to blog. Her blogspot has been left to its own devices for a month, the filet de perche floundering in splended July isolation.
There have been readers from Ukraine, Australia, Turkey, Latvia, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan and India as well as Switzerland, France and the US. They may have stumbled upon it inadvertently: Offshoots of the Ottoman Empire may have given hope to retro political analysts but I enjoy watching readers watch this space. I don't know who they are, but this site offers group stats on countries.
It's different blogging from the seaside. Nerves are calmed, skin is caressed by cross-breezes, the eye stretches its vision, the soul dreams, All very well, but shouldn't this yawn of serenity bring on some mind-extending revelations? Let's wait another few days and see.
The Emerson Inn, an original hotel drenched in history, displays a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who came to Pigeon Cove in Rockport in 1856 and discovered beneficial effects much like the above-described. In his diary he wrote:
"'Tis a noble, friendly power and seems to me 'Why so slow and late come to me? Am I not here always thy proper summer home? Is not thy voice my needful music, my breath thy healthful climate in the heats; my touch thy cure?...........Lie down on my warm ledges, and learn that a very little hut is all you need. I have made thy architecture superfluous and it is paltry beside mine. Here are twenty Romes and Ninevehs and Karnacs in ruins together, obelisk and pyramid and giant's causeway---here they are all prostrate or half piled.'"
As for the ruins, Emerson's were no doubt the great rocks one sees on and off the shore, that actually resemble humpback whales and stranded seals more than the Roman Forum and Karnac.
Was "I have made thy architecture superfluous" sour grapes? He wasn't into traveling far that year. He was into appreciating the home front and just needed a vacation.
Don't we all.
