Tuesday, May 09, 2006

sweet nothings



"dolce fa niente" - translation - "it's sweet to do nothing"

my parents, my children and my husband and i, and my brother are going to the beach this summer (in 29 sleeps!) hooray!


it will be a long week of sleeping on porch, making sand castles, eating ice cream, playing scrabble, laying out, and maybe even going to see some of the famous NC lighthouses..although that comes perilously close to 'doing something', so i'm not holding my breath. every time my mom calls, she says, 'i'm dying to go to the beach!', and i agree with her. it is the sweet nothing that spurs us on through all of our 'somethings'...the light at the end of our tunnel. coming from western canada, the beach is the closest thing to God on this earth for us...what a good God, to put such luxury here for us! what a wildly creative God to fill the ocean with whatever living thing a sand dollar is, the millions of things that fill shells before we collect them, to give flight to rainbow painted buntings and gigantic, graceful pelicans. last time i was there we saw porpoises everyday, and it was like watching the fingers of God trail through the water...the ocean is the music that soothes the savage beast...the busy-i-must-do-it-now-get-it-done pulse of life. there is no way to hurry at the shore. dolce fa niente, indeed!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot to mention, "My kids, my husband, my parents, and I... AND MY DARLING BROTHER AND PROBABLY SOME RANDOM BLONDE CHICK THAT HE BRINGS WITH HIM." I am offended.

JV

Anonymous said...

The idea of the sweet nothing is very Whitmanish. "I lean and loafe at my soul's ease, observing a spear of summer grass." He was very relaxed. A sweet nothing is anything but nothing. Thoreau would have argued that nothing is the best thing a person can do.