Not A Day Goes By

When “love” is reduced to “warm regards,” all is lost.

It is the first anniversary of the death of my marriage.“Hope you are well,” read the card she sent.“Warm regards,Jan.”

In times like these, I search for peace of mind, if not revelatory insight, by walking the beach. At around this time of day, with the tide low and the footing at the water’s edge firm. The weary sun descends toward the misty horizon. The air is redolent and evocative of the sea, the proverbial cradle of life.

I am aware, as I trudge southward with the remnants of waves washed ashore caressing my bare feet, of my oppressive fatigue. My body is heavy with the unforgiving weight of days and nights not far enough in the past to relent.

Artists, it is routinely observed, and writers in particular among artists, find prolificacy in their pain. They also, it is routinely observed, toil in solitude. Loneliness is a byproduct of making art.

Burying my feet in the cool sand up to my ankles, I settle in about 50 yards from the shore in possession of a spiral notebook frayed from false starts, a ballpoint pen visibly running low on blue ink and the title for an anthology – “Vista In The Wind” – that needs a book attached to it: characters, conflict, setting, the works. I’ve got dozens of untethered titles awaiting novels or at least stories; provocative, manfully conceived titles, too: “The Threshold.” “They Jumped So High, They Hit the Sky.” “A Parliament Of One.”

I cross out “Vista In The Wind” in my fading blue ink and scribble below it: “Warm Regards.”

It won’t be long before I will no longer be able to afford residency at Hotel Marisol. This morning I found a note shoved beneath my door informing me that I was a week’s past due on my long-term rent. Little wonder that they’d like me out of here. Tourist season will begin in earnest in a couple of weeks and they can get twice or even three times what I’m paying for this same mini-suite of rooms on the second floor.

They should be more understanding. I’m a model tenant. The most “noise” I make is typing on a laptop computer,