On the porch

All of a sudden I'm swimming in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast. The sea's surface is calm, but big waves roll onto the steep sandy beach that quickly slopes up into a bleached grassy duneland. The sky above the sea is misty-blue, but above the land it's dark as ink, threatening to blot out the sun, which is fighting for a small strip of sky between the horizon and the looming mass of cloud above. The town underneath - southwest, toward the end of the beach- is draped in an orange-purple mist, apocalyptically hanging on the horizon, about to fall off the edge of the earth.

Gentle drops of rain come falling down, whipping up the sea like thousands of minute lashes at one time, though mild and unagressive... just turning it into a serenely disturbed surface in a shatteringly beautiful light.

And then I'm back on the porch. With kids, or breakfast, or maybe with a beer and a brother at night.
Chateau Nooga is the name of our house and I still nearly get lost in it. We were planning to have girls over in one of the empty bedrooms, but it never worked out I guess.
I have one of the rooms in the staff quarters and the smells from the kitchen come right up through the windy back staircase. It makes me sweat a lot, but I do that anyway.

So that's kind of what life is like in Newport... can hardly imagine what it used to be like when the Vanderbuilts were still around.