Today was boring, really.

We went out to dinner and to the bookstore, and I read a review of Helen Fielding's new novel in the paper today (less than glowing) and was anxious to read it for myself. It is titled, oddly, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, and I picked it up along with Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise for a bit of summer reading. We went to the cafe and had hot chocolate, and my father peered at my over the folded top of his art magazing and fixed me with a serious stare, his eyebrows slightly raised.

"We can't buy them both." I glanced down at the books, neatly stacked on top of one another.

"But this one," I patted Fielding's, "is for both of us." He put the magazine down and sighed taxingly.

"I just bought you Sex and the City four days ago."

"I finished it. Besides, you've always indulged me where literature is concerned." He snorted derisively. "It's not as if I'm asking you for money to buy pot. I just want a book." I saw the corner of his mouth twitch against his will and plunged on ahead, knowing that I was winning.

"Come on. I would pay any price for a book."

"You would." He looked away. It was at that moment that Danielle spilled hot chocolate all over her book, shrieking and looking horrified, as if she had accidentally eaten a child.

As we were walking out later, both books in tow, I paused and glanced at the paintings of the famous literary figures on the Barnes and Nobles wall, realizing that I had never really given much thought to who was up there. I wondered if Wilde was among them. I smiled when I saw him, looking appropriately bored and with a cigarette.

Liz and I moved through downtown like ghosts, laughing and talking and very aware of how our dresses trailed behind us and how glamorous we looked. We knew that we were turning heads and we needed to tonight, so we sat on an attractive but uncomfortable stool in one of the most fashionable bars in town - Le Francais. Neither one of us had money enough for a drink, so we merely sat, talking amiably, and keeping up the appearnce of looking unattached. The bartender glanced at Liz's long dark hair and revealing dress before asking -

"You ladies want a drink?"

"Oh no darling." she said in a way that clearly meant the exact opposite. She trailed a hand across her forehead and let it linger at her chest before resting it at her hip.

"On the house." he persisted. He was a mousy looking thing - surprising at a good club - and seemed enchanted with us. Liz looked bored for a moment before finally nodding.

"All right, but we're rather particular about our drinks. A bloody mary, darling, but mind you're careful mixing it." she turned to me. I looked back at her lazily. "Honey, something for you?" I turned to the bartender and leaned inwards.

"Vodka on the rocks. Something vintage. You look as if you have good taste."

Summer has approached with little warning, and so I find myself with months upon months to do nothing, like blank page after blank page in a book. Yesterday I went to the beach with Carrie. It's curious how much I disliked the ocean just months ago, how I hated the sea life lurking in the threads of waving seaweed and beneath the sand, and couldn't stand being hot and feeling the salt become sticky and dry on my body until my skin tightened and you could brush my face and a fine white dust would come off. But now I find its wildness comforting and its nature beautiful. I like hunting for shells in low tide, when giraffe fish glide under the shallow, lapping waves and crabs climb out of the sand and clap their claws. I like how the water is different colors the farther away it reaches the horizon or the shore, how it changes from blue to green to emerald and, when the sun is gold in the late afternoon, tinged with violet. I like how the withered trees bend and the dunes roll away into untended brush, and I like how the wind blows just enough to ruffle the feathers of sea birds. Once we went out far along the shore and a flock of large brown birds with orange feet, white faces, and curious aqua eyes stopped together on a sandbar to sun themselves. I got so close to one I could have reached out and touched it, but they merely blinked, rose into the air lazily, and floated back down into the ocean a little ways ahead. They were funny to see, because when they walked their webbed feet smacked wetly on the sand. I like it when the day is gray and rain clouds hang just threatening enough to block the sun, and the sea is misty and downtown in the distance is shrouded. We found a large conch shell once, orange and pink and with white markings, but it had a live conch inside so we had to eventually throw it back. The same day we found a smaller one, but inside that was a hermit crab, its little eyes poking out of the shell opening. I like the cry of the gull and floating on the tops of the waves and having them wash over my face and I have to splutter and wipe my eyes, but most of all I like looking out and seeing nothing but water, blue and moving and welcoming, somehow.
I like how for centuries people before us have swam in the sea and caught the fish and felt the sun beating down and turning skin brown and hair light, and I like dunking my head beneath the water and feeling the thrill of the unknown.