Saturday, September 14, 2024

Hilton Head Island: Saturday evening. The view from the deck


 Not a dramatic sunset, but subtle beauty.

I am sitting here listening to music.

Wind rustling live oaks and Spanish Moss.

We have a Small Craft Advisory for waters out to twenty miles as we have had for more than a week, daily renewed.  As always not as much wind on this side of the island.

Just after high tide.

No sound except my music,  Presently ‘The Lord’s Rough Ways’ from the soundtrack of the movie, THE HOSTILES.

I gain strength from such moments, as I gain strength from knowing that a few of you appreciate my words and what I am doing with my life.  I pause, for I tell myself I should need no strength from others, and I am certain I would live and write as I do if no one knew, but I am glad that a few of my fellow misnamed species do care and understand.  The present tense is deliberate.  Not even at eighty-two:  what I ‘have done’ with my life.  I sometimes think:  this has gone on too long.  It does not matter what I think.  I have no choice.  I am not yet over.

I am on that part of the bell shaped curve of life where on the far right the line parallels and does not ever touch the baseline, but of course in reality the moment comes when it does.  I started to say I face that without regret, but I do have regrets.  Yet the regrets are details.  Mistakes I made in ignorance and inexperience.  I have done what I was born to do and still am.  It takes more effort now.  Yet I have time, until I don’t.  And as I have written the secret to my success—which presumes that I have had any—is that I do so little.

So I will gather what strength I can and continue doing little.


No comments:

Post a Comment