Yesterday afternoon I had some time. There were things that had to be done, but as long as they got done when they needed to be done, it wouldn't matter when I started working on them. I guess that's a definition of having, if not free, then flexible time.
Since you're reading this blog, you know what I did. Of course. This time, though, an hour or two in early-to-mid-afternoon stretched into, well, very late afternoon. That may have had to do with having the wind at my back and mild (at least in comparison to the past week or so) temperatures as I pedaled down through Queens to Rockaway Beach.
Of course, when I'm riding with the wind, I know that I'll have to pedal against it to get home. But I was feeling so good that I just wanted to keep on going. Which I did---to Point Lookout.
I hadn't planned to go swimming. Still, it was a bit of a surprise to see the beach closed, even if it was for work to ensure that the beach is still there in the future.
So I hung out for a bit by the bocce court. In contrast to the boardwalks of the Rockaways, Atlantic Beach and Long Beach, where I saw more people than I expected, I had the court and playground all to myself.
By the court, there are stones commemorating family messages and with messages of hope. I couldn't help but to notice the juxtaposition of these stones:
The one on the left reads, "Mangia bene, Ridi spesso, Ama molto"--Eat well, laugh often, love much. Will those things lead to, or result from, the top-notch lawn care in the slate on the right.
Even though I was pedaling along a route I've ridden many times before, I felt as if I were being guided to, or through, something--the wind that had grown stiffer, perhaps--along the Rockaway Boardwalk.
As I photographed sun rays coruscating through clouds, I chanted some lines from the Sardinian writer Salvatore Quasimodo:
M'illumno
d'immenso.
Maybe that should be engraved in one of those stones by the bocce court on Point Lookout.
