Winter Light

We arrived in Provincetown this afternoon around 3:30, and it was already turning dark by 4:45 as we wandered through town. It's a lot quieter than either D. or I expected for New Year's Eve (though we didn't expect excitement or crowds). You get a sense of what it would be like to live here year-round. You'd need to find your comfort and light largely from within your own hearth -- and the beauty around you. I joked to D., "Maybe we can get ourselves on the dinner-party circuit while we're here." (We leave day after tomorrow.)

We're back in the hotel room right now waiting for our 9:00 dinner reservations. And after? Who knows -- maybe that piano bar we walked by every night the last two summers, the rousing strains of "Memory" and "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine" never quite succeeding in tempting us inside.

As last summer's vacation wound to a close, I was overcome with a feeling of deep safety in the remoteness of Provincetown, the paradox of security embedded in what is truly a sense of being on the edge of the world, the outermost reach, the very tip of the crook of a beckoning finger.

Happy New Year.