And rain it did, shortly after I practiced the art of doing nothing at all by eating a bag of chips at the corner of the Morris Canal and the Hudson, resting on a concrete block surrounded by City beach detritus: bricks, paving stones, bottles, and their pebbly offspring; ocean kelp, sail-tie kelp, and trash kelp of shredded plastic; unidentifiable materials reminiscent of a carousel horse; the remains of a magic marker; and hundreds of paving stones that I gradually realized are all stamped with the names of companies. I could make out a GREEN, an ASH, a WASH, and a PIRSE among the fragments. In fact, there are few stones along the rocky beach which have not come from some building or seawall. Each seems to bear its own particular stamp. WASH. BURN. If the Hudson's underbelly could speak, it might materialize in these strange, half-remembered words, the language of fallen bricks forlorn.

A large piece of rubber piping snakes out of the canal and ends, broken, at my feet. Two Latino men in white T-shirts come by and say hello; an asian woman is walking a dog. There is a tall, thin middle-easterner on the beach just west of my perch, picking his way among the strange rocks on shore, perusing them as I am. I eat my chips and make it back to the marina just as the first drops are falling.

Something about the rain just asks me to sleep, and eat. After dealing with some business, I set out to read a few magazines and promptly fell asleep for at least two hours—I'm not really sure. It may have been three. There is something about being on the boat that does ask you to give it up—your awakeness, your day-ambitions, your sense of productivity. The best thing to do is to lay on the floor, flop on the bed, and read to the sound of the rain on the boat. This breeze is clean and oxygenated and far cooler than the marina has been in weeks. I let the wind wash my feet and pretend that I have nothing to do, nowhere to be.

It's such a simple leap, to unify oneself with the rainy weather and surrender to the hushed wet world.

Swimming the other day in Coney Island, I came across yet another thick patch of primordial soup—a seasonal collection of invertebrates and their eggs, or so it seems, that feels like swimming through tapioca. It squeezes in between your toes, and bounces off your collarbones. Occasionally, I spear one on my finger. It's disgusting. At the same time, it is harmless—just another environment, however weird. When we swim in the ocean, it is everything that we are, and everything we are not—all at once.