A Parade of Horses

There is a parade of horses outside my window distracting me from writing this blog post. I wonder how they feel trotting down the beach with their high-stepping gaits and good manners carrying tourists with souvenir t-shirts that read I Need Vitamin Sea, wearing bright-colored flip flops which don't seem like the ideal horseback riding footwear. The tourists have disembarked. Did they get their money's worth? The horses look bored, one goes down on his side and squiggles his body in the sand - like my dog Max does.

There's another line forming outside the circle fence. More tourists who have paid to say they went horseback riding on the beach. Is this the highlight of their vacation or the thing they're doing on the last day when they no longer like the people they're traveling with? The parade of humanity outside my window is even more fascinating. But I didn't come hear to people watch. I'm here to write.

One of the many things I love about my husband, David, is that he gets why sometimes I just need 24 hours with a view of the ocean, an evening stroll along the beach to dip my toes in the ocean, and one night where I can stretch out on a big bed without a dog taking up my spot and farting his old man dog farts. When David wants to get on his Triumph and ride the Skyline Parkway, I get it, too. It's his version of my ocean. Tomorrow night I'll be back in bed with David and that stinky dog and will know I'm right where I'm meant to be.

The desk in my hotel room is facing the ocean. My belongings are carefully set up there. My laptop in the middle, phone charging in the computer port. I've got a deck of cards for playing Solitaire, which my therapist recommended I do instead of playing Solitaire for cash on the internet. My reMarkable paper tablet is to my left. There's a cloth bag of writing instruments, including a mechanical pencil I'll use to do a crossword or Sudoku before bed. The Mermaids Oracle Deck reminds me I'm here to write - I use tarot not to divine my future, but to free my mind to write.

And, of course, there are books. It's easier for me to eat just one potato chip than it is for me to pack just one book. I've got a mystery - The Sleeping Nymph by a new-to-me Italian writer, Ilaria Tuti. There's a book that my therapist recommended - What Makes Love Last? Secrets from the Love Lab by Dr. John Gottman. And then there's the special book, the one I'll take with me on the balcony this evening when the sun starts to set. A book of poetry I'm re-reading. Her Dark Everything by Courtney LeBlanc. I have a crush on this poet laureate of Arlington, Virginia. Not that kind of crush necessarily, but the kind where a poem washes over me and I think I want to write like that. And if I can't write like that, I want to be near the human being that can write like that.

The horses have been fed now, and have rested. This next group of tourists who have paid for their sixty-minute lope along the sand have mounted, and the parade of horses starts it's slow trot along the water's edge.

I get goose bumps when I think that maybe this time next year there will be a writer sitting at a desk in their hotel room waiting for the twilight hour before they go out on the balcony to read A Date with the Fairy Queen - maybe even for the second time - and think I have a crush on the human being that can write like that.