Over coffee this morning, alone at the dining room table, I sat inert staring out the picture windows onto a cheerless grey scene. A thin ribbon of white sugar rimmed the Ocean. I had languished in bed until after ten o’clock. My slumber was so complete that it required a moment to recover my wits. I have lately been released of an adhesive anxiety. As a result I willingly lapse into complacent dormancy at the least opportunity. Whatever the mainspring of this soothing restfulness it is an uncommon state, mildly liberating.  I cannot imagine what in particular may have changed. Perhaps it is an imperceptible adjustment to my hardened thoughts, dissolving or eroding with time. Which is not to say I am suddenly emancipated. It is an act of self-preservation, submitting to one’s platitudes, but a manumission nonetheless.

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Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. During his career, Jung furnished several slightly different definitions of it. Jung variously defined synchronicity as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, and “acausal parallelism.” He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.

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January on Hilton Head Island abides the same pattern of survival and revival that you’d expect anywhere else. At a plodding pace the apprehension and social imbroglios of Christmas and New Year recede. People are set adrift from obligation. Personal plans and business commitments re-engage. Preoccupation is replaced by purpose. Granted the resort atmosphere markedly diminishes as children and grandchildren abandon the southern hospitality of the older generation, no doubt a thankful deprivation. Bocce ball and frisbee on the beach are replaced by pensive solitary walkers performing their daily constitutional. A noiseless tranquillity descends, evenings are uninhibited, it’s that magic feeling with nowhere to go, nothing to do.

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Apparently there are some for whom a meal is at best an imperative, not exactly a take-it or leave-it situation, but neither an event for which there is any particular zeal.  Perhaps they subscribe to that prosaic rendition, “I eat to live, not live to eat“?  I can’t defend the subscription since most people who retail that advertisement are in no threat of gluttony, skinny rascals!  You’re more likely to see them jogging in the park than hedging the trough. Their interest in dining simply isn’t there. I am almost persuaded that dining is old fashioned, not what the younger generation considers integral to the social fabric.

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Politics and popularity have forever been conjoined.  It’s the name of the game. It was however disturbingly unfamiliar to hear Donald Trump’s press secretary Sean Spencer at the first media briefing of the new presidency deliver what sounded like a sandbox dispute amounting to “Ours was bigger than yours!” message.

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Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green…
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

Nature’s influence is not only undeniable, it is uncompromising and unavoidable. Consider for example the unfathomable strength of gravity. The inscrutable moon governs the ebb and flow of the churning tides. This remarkable power – dare I say like our own ungovernable constitution – is neither to be ignored, neglected nor diminished. The result though predictable is not for that reason alone to be discounted. The regularity of the tides prohibits stagnancy and assures refreshment. Nature’s persuasiveness can be just as salubrious for humanity. Something there is delightfully axiomatic about nature’s irrepressible force. In the context of the human persona, “You are what you are“. Yet in spite of inherent pushes and pulls the possibilities of discovery and expression are infinite. Nature is but the cacoon of personality, the compasses of our existence not the definition of it.

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Within hours of our return home yesterday we had unpacked, put away the suitcases, beach bags and computers, restocked the bathroom implements, creams and kit and washed and dried the dirty clothes.  It was as though we had never left. Tellingly we were however too exhausted from the day’s travel from Daytona Beach Shores to Hilton Head Island (with a luncheon stop in Atlantic Beach) even to consider dinner.  And we certainly hadn’t the time or inclination to shop for groceries. That we deferred until today.

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We propose a short road trip to Florida.  The fastest route from Hilton Head Island, SC is along Interstate 95.  That however is a four-lane highway, nothing but endless traffic usually following an 18-wheeler or jockeying with cars to get past the lines of trucks.  Accordingly we’ve decided to get off I95 as quickly as possible and head east towards the Atlantic Ocean so we can connect to the Ocean road through Florida’s historic small coastal towns.

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A former client of mine (whose wife curiously enough – though without any relevance to what I am about to say – walked with the plodding deliberation of a hippopotamus) was obsessed with computers. That was in the day when computers were still an oddity and certainly before anyone had even heard of fax machines or the internet. It was never possible to speak to him about anything other than computers (except perhaps fleetingly about his health and the weather). Everything for him revolved around computers. He was the original nerd. He reportedly spent hours and hours – late into the night and early dawn – at his work table in his office in a dusty, old and draughty converted woollen factory, trying over and over again to make things work.  I believe he eventually succeeded. He sold his intellectual property and left town. As far as I know his tromping wife went with him.

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While I would never pretend to be a food or restaurant critic, I would be remiss not to mention Sea Shack diner on Hilton Head Island.  Sea Shack is a symbol of good food on Hilton Head Island; it’s a place I would never hesitate to recommend. For me it captures an essential Island experience. Granted it is not a place whose furnishings or paintings provide any promotion; nor will you gain any traction in the society column for being seen there.  But it you’re hungry and dressed comfortably, you’re in the right place!

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