It’s been a month since we were on the island–and how good to be back again!
The house survived Sandy very well. There were just a few loose roof shingles, and yesterday Dan climbed up there and nailed them back again.
Then…a lot earlier than it used to be, and a lot farther to the south…there was another glorious sunset.
Life is good, here in the island. I’m glad to be here all this week.
After a long, hot summer, it’s great to be back at our home on Block Island again. It’s warm, humid, cloudy, a bit rainy today, and beautiful. As always.
The sunsets the last two days have been lovely.
As always.
Here’s September 2, 2012.
I’m assuming you all saw my nifty new tripod in the immediately previous post, with which I took this last photo!
“How would you like a new camera for your birthday?” Dan asked me shortly before my birthday in July. This was obviously a follow-up question to the question he’d asked me shortly before Christmas last year, namely, “How would you like a new camera for Christmas?”
“Why?” I responded both times. “I like my camera.”
To be clear, my current camera is a nifty little Canon that weighs about two grams and fits absolutely anywhere. It’s full of fancy controls, more than half of which I’ve never used, but which I’m sure would help me take better pictures if only I knew how to use them.
My camera is an old 3- or 4-megapixel camera that I bought for Dan for Christmas in December 2002, and which I inherited when I replaced it with a new 7- or 8-megapixel camera he wanted in 2006. Like me, it’s steady and reliable; It’s good at what it does; and it ain’t getting any younger.
“You take really good pictures,” Dan said now, “but some of them come out kind of blurry or grainy sometimes. I thought a new camera would help.”
Hey, my eyesight comes out kind of blurry a lot of the time.
I think about the kind of blurry, grainy, low resolution, bad pictures I take. Some of them come about because I put the camera on “manual” to adjust for dim lighting indoors and then forget to put it back on “automatic” when I go outside again. Or the other way around. I forget. “Most of my bad pictures are not because of a defective camera,” I told Dan. “They’re because of a defective photographer.”
Other blurry pictures result from my trying to take pictures with the lens all zoomed out, after sunset, without a flash. “What I really need is not a new camera, it’s a tripod.”I concluded this in both conversations, but I guess Santa didn’t believe me back at Christmastime. “A portable, lightweight tripod that I can easily take with me wherever I go.”
And voila! I received, for my birthday, the world’s cutest little portable tripod that looks like it was invented to take pictures on Mars.
It took a while before I had the need to try it out, but now that I have, I can say that this tripod, in addition to being an inherently funny object, works really great after sunset, too!
Sunset, May 31.
Another long near-solstice day. When you’re this far north, sunset takes a long time. Which gives the photographer many views and angles to choose from, lots of photos to take, and abiding gratitude that she no longer has to pay for film.
7pm
8pm
The other night I couldn’t get to sleep. I had been writing, or thinking about writing, and a scene between two of my characters was simmering in my mind, spiced with some emotional component that had me alert and deeply engaged. So after maybe an hour of lying in bed, I got up to take an acetaminophen, hoping to relax enough to sleep.
The moon was shining in through the skylight, surrounded by clouds in dizzying patterns. There would be no sleep for me while this remained unphotographed.
This is the part where a camera with more pixel-depth would have helped. Or at least a tripod. But perhaps this photo will give you a small idea of the magic of that moonlight.
I love these long days near the summer solstice. We sleep less. “Late afternoon” means 6pm, and the light is spun silver; the water is shining mercury.
May 27th. We wrap up a day of work around the house and go for a quick ride into town. Silver light turns the Great Salt Pond into magic.
Roses!
The island is swimming in rosa rugosa. Mounds and masses of them line Corn Neck Road near Crescent Beach. Each flower is a gem.
The breeze blowing up the island past our house smells like heaven. Like a room full of roses, but it’s the outside air. We throw open all the windows.
May 18, 2012. After a day of hard work (by Dan; me, I’m still writing) we get to play mojitos-on-the-deck redux. Another clear day, another gorgeous sunset. Today, though, there are fewer clouds, so the sun sails out of the sky round and even and glittering in the water.
May 17, 2012. We get to spend our 32nd anniversary on the island. Mojitos on the deck watching the sun shimmer out of the clouds and set full and red. It’s north of the lighthouse now. Official sunset time: 8:01. Official reservation time at the Spring House: 8:15. Great location, great drinks, great sunset, great meal.
Happy anniversary, Dan, my partner, my friend, my love!
My friend Steve Heikin sent me this photo with the caption, “Where Am I?”
Where am I?
Except for the impressive signpost, the place doesn’t look particularly noteworthy, but from the signpost alone I’d bet someone could find it and answer Steve’s question.
The more interesting question, it seems to me, is his other one: “Where am I going?”