Tuesday, 03 July 2001 | Long Island

We walked into a bar into the middle of a story being told by the barman. He joked with us, he gave us directions, and then several people in the bar elaborated on those directions. We went to a local grocery store and spent way too much money, but it was the first-time shopping splurge, and therefore somewhat justified. So we had piles of groceries and no where to put them, ran out of bags, ran out of space. The people who worked there were oblivious and curiously unhelpful.

We went to the beach on the south coast, where there were waves and sand and throngs of people and, just behind the sea grass, a flat paved field filled with cars. Then we drove for 30 minutes to the north coast, hidden away behind thick trees and a hilly climb down. There were steep cliffs, a gentle swish of water that lapped at the shore, and pebbles and sticks and seaweed where the sand was supposed to be. The sand was instead hiding behind us, being held hostage in a vertical wall.

We saw several deer standing along the highway, standing quietly in the middle of residential roads, standing among armies of lightning bugs. And we saw overused roads, a network of bridges and the pounding of relentless traffic. Souped-up SUVs, people in need of dental work, greasy food, expensive and elegant fish. Long Island seemed to me to contradict itself in a hundred different ways, though maybe every place has that element and it's just more subtle elsewhere. Now that I'm back, it seems even more pronounced.