June 15. People gather here from all over the place, and it’s striking that almost all of them are slower than us New Yorkers, slower especially when entering and exiting the elevator, which happens in incredible slow motion.

Tall guys around fifteen with bored looks on their faces. I wonder if it’s justified for me to shrug in a mixture of disgust and pity, and under what conditions I could be wrong.

This is the first time I’ve seen it here, that men with unsightly bodies go swimming not only in baggy pants, but also in t-shirts.

The surf, it was to be expected, takes on texture. You can divide the days and the hours according to whether you hear individual breakers or a coherent roar. When you’re standing in the waves, it’s the varying degrees of ripples in the water that is moving up and down.

It’s not that now that I’m fifty I’ve crossed a certain threshold of having-been-to-the-sea-before, so that it’s now reached some new level of familiarity. It is my consciousness that has taken on a new state, one of all-this-I-know, and that is undoubtedly true, if unhelpful.