The hatch in the main cabin is somewhat leaky; two drops hang expectantly from the corner where the wood-joints meet. Perhaps I've come here seeking boredom.

15 June 20:10

On the night that I decided to experiment with the floating life, D. and I drove the boat down to Coney Island. I recall an incisive moment: I was up on the bridge, alone, turning into the wake of the Staten Island Ferry, rocking hard twenty feet above water; Lady Liberty aglow to my right, and the Verrazano Narrows shining in the distance; a dark mass of a barge approaching fast astern and the Hudson frothing around the bow; I was suffused with a combination of fear and exhilaration—I can't believe I am here, now, doing this. I felt simultaneously horrified at being so out-of-place and thrilled by the fact that I was managing it without passing out or whimpering. It's these sort of moments when one realizes, I am having a great adventure. Turning away from it would be foolish. Something in me decided, then, to turn into the wind and leap into the boating world. It's not so much a passion for boats as a terror of them that draws me in.

Later on that same journey, as we sailed near Breezy Point, into a deep blackness that seemed to erase even the horizon, D. and I huddled together, magnetically electrified, it seemed, and drove silently into the dark until it became unbearably surreal. On the way back, tooting a tiny air-horn at barges and tugs, the clanging of the buoy bells was a loping, laughing song to welcome the little trawler to the safety of Harbor.

[interrupted here by yet another cheerful evening run with Denis, up to the Newport Marina and back, complete with youthful antics on both of our parts: hurdling chains, running around fountains, playing chicken with the streetcar. It seems that just when I find my train of thought, I have to get off at yet another station and idle, drinking tea with the locals]

And this morning, the harbor-water does swirl with my inner chaos as I fight heavy currents off Brighton Beach in south Brooklyn, wave-tossed, a clear snotgreen around my hands. The water is cold for early June; it seems to have dropped five degrees since my ocean swim last week. It is clear enough to see bottom and choppy enough to encounter some quantity of brilliant emerald seaweed, which, brushing against my legs, causes a flush of shock to radiate out from my chest. It takes my breath away for a few moments, but I keep swimming, blowing out bubbles underwater to calm myself. Half a mile of this and I will have straightened out my mental turmoil.