Telling and Wasting Time

I’m a victim of Wednesday’s soaking rain. Everything is nearly dry now: everything but my watch. So I left it bedside while walking through town today and killing time at the Athenaeum.

I was drenched to the skin and sweating, somehow. I resigned to being wet, but my watch suffered more than I. Though still working, its band was saturated and peeling, so I didn’t wear it today while walking through town. After a brief stop to pick a book, I emerged from the old library’s colonial dimness to a typical Nantucket afternoon whitewashed by fog. I looked to my wrist for the time but saw only the reminder that a watch is usually there – the pink circle of dry skin constantly agitated by my watch’s main dial. Shrugging, I took several steps before a horn blasted. On the straight wharf, someone announces the whistle’s sounding before it’s blown so that others can block their ears. So from several blocks away, I knew it was four o’clock.

Though several churches on the island have bells, many residents here can tell time by these whistles. Those who work on the ferries themselves live by them. At school, time is told by those around me. The parade travelling through the hall signals it must be nearing a time at which I should go to class. When in class, their collective movement tells that I, too, should leave the room. At home, in Fall River, the city knew what time it was when the bells of B.M.C. Durfee High School sounded 23 times, each resounding tone signifying a year of young Durfee’s life.

Downtown, the people working in the shops and restaurants just out range of the announcement but close enough for the whistle remind themselves how much time remains before they are free to roam the street and spend time outside of the doors so many casually amble through.

Just another note.

Bus Trips and Darkness

I’m wondering how many of those I came on the ferry with returned later that day. They walked Main Street, browsed in Ralph Lauren, ate some fudge and maybe hit the beach. Great day. But I feel privileged to stay longer. Tourists can come away from a place with an impression, a summary of sorts. I’m hoping to soak in a bit more than the sun while here.

Already, I’ve learned quite a bit in my first half day here.
1. Walking back is always easier than walking there.
2. At night, rule one becomes more true.

I think I have a solid sense of direction. The skill is innate. But walking in near-complete darkness while looking for a bus stop at a rotary after passing a parade of rotaries first tested then laughed atmy skills. Mitigating factors include that there are no signs for bus stops here, just posts with a stripe of red reflective tape around them. Also, the street signs are brown in many areas. They give a great New England charm and seem to be painted on driftwood when seen from far away; but once the sun sets, forget seeing them outside of three feet without a cell phone to illuminate your surroundings.

I felt stupid, blind and crazy walking up and down the deserted street looking for the sign. However, now that I’m back, it seems I’m no worse for the wear. I have the feeling the reflective tape is now so deeply supplanted into my subconscious that I won’t be missing any more. Same goes for grocery shopping in sandals -- great Nantucket beach shoes but not practical for marching on the cobblestone downtown. Sneakers: my back now agrees.

So I tell these hard learned lessons like war stories and resist taking cabs. I consider it cheating or at least taking a shortcut that keeps me from really understanding how to get around this place. If a day tripper can walk back onto the ferry with a general impression of this place, those who stay longer, I feel, should leave here with something a little more personal. People my age often dream of changing the world; but now, I’m holding on and waiting for this island to change me in some way instead.

Arrival

I’m convincing myself that a song didn’t bring me to this point. Most of what I own is in a backpack to the side of me and in a trunk in the boat’s storage bay. It’s funny. I’m surrounded by tourists wearing light windbreakers and top- siders on their way to Nantucket, and I think about the two hour ferry ride a lifetime in the making.
Like most of the songs I like, this one is about living a different way, as if a select group, me included, are privy to a secret, fresh perspective. It’s phrased like an enlightenment of sorts. The songwriter cites the typical rat race and what happens to the psyche when saturated with sunshine and surrounded on all coasts by water. But I’ve never acted like this before. I’m not sporadic; my moves are measured and planned. I don’t have an addictive personality, don’t get star-struck and have no real obsessions of which to speak. The lure of the island, though, has proved irresistible. There is no beeswax around nor rope or mast on which to tie myself. Besides, the song is pretty cheesy, and I don’t like music that much.
But I’ve stared at Nantucket for the past two summers. I lifeguarded at a large south-facing public beach in Westport, MA and at a tiny, private beach that sits adjacent. For eight hours daily, I watched those swimming in water that formed the horizon Nantucket lays just beyond.
We would put up red flags on the lifeguard stands when the water was too rough for patron swimmers. On hot days, the tossing waters would taunt those laying on scorching sand. But my perfect day was when it rained. Many New Englanders see their paradise on a deserted beach, but mine is in the water on these days. Then, the water is so rough that I would body surf and come out of the water red and burning – the result a millions collisions between grains of sand and my speeding, surfing form. Walking heavily from the water, a man walking along the water’s edge approached. He asked about the weather and the water and the tide. At this time, a peculiar slope had developed on the shore – the result of a March Nor’easter. The last wave of a set would retreat quickly and collide with another one coming toward shore, resulting a spectacular water display we had earlier dubbed, “The Belagio Effect.” We marveled briefly, and strangely enough, neither of us introduced ourselves.
But this man said he spent a summer on Nantucket in his 20’s. He talked of boarding with complete strangers who would evolve into friends – similar folks leaving friends and family to approach life from a different tact. He said that during storms a person could ride riptides out for hundreds of feet and ride the waves back in for the best body surfing experience imaginable. He said his lungs would burn because he wouldn’t want to come up for air.
So I have high expectations for this summer and this period -- speeding while wrapped in an experience so good that I’ll first have to remember then force myself to breathe.