The (almost) perfect Fire Island life

This week I was caught up in the rhythm of island life. Surrounded by water, the rest of the world seems infinitely distant there. I found to myself, lived just for the moment and became open for new, creative ideas.

The days in the city are easily forgotten in our little house on the beach at Cherry Grove. I’ve also lost track of what date it is or what day of the week. None of it matters. I go to bed when I’m tired, listen to the sound of the waves for a few minutes and fall asleep. I wake up at dawn, write morning pages, have a cup of coffee and go for a morning run. The landscape of the dunes and the Sunken Forest are so uniquely different from what I know from Switzerland. So is the humid, salty air, which on some days appears as fog early in the morning and bathes the landscape in a fairytale light.

The island routine

After breakfast, I sit down at the small table next to the window and start working. At some point the chime of Big Ben’s bell sounds from a loudspeaker in town and it’s noon. Lunchtime. Then a nap and some more work. Later in the afternoon, a few steps down to the beach, clothes off and feeling the sun, wind and water on my skin until evening comes. The evenings can be different. Out for dinner with a sunset view over the bay, for drinks, drag shows or other fun or just at home with a book on the bed. All around perfect days. Almost.

Small and larger sized annoyances

There are two not so great things here this year that are not apparent in the photos: Sharks and mosquitoes. The sharks do not come every day, but when they do, they make swimming in the sea impossible, or at least with a very queasy feeling and with some tension. The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are omnipresent and active around the clock. Despite fly screens, they often make it into the house and the smell of anti-mosquito spray on the skin is a constant companion these days. The universe doesn’t provide for perfection. You arrange yourself, scratch yourself and curse about the annoying beasts.

Bringing order into chaos

My work this week mostly involved changes to my website. I’ve always been a bit dissatisfied with the thousands of images in my journal. Navigating gets tedious and it takes way too long to scroll to a particular image you want to see. The division into years didn’t bring much relief with the number of pictures I publish. By playing around I came to the solution with the archive widget, which displays posts by month. This makes it really easy to quickly navigate to images in the past and I am now happy with my journal.

Remember the times

I have been keeping the journal for many years. But since I switched to a new website three years ago, only the photos of the last three years have been online so far. Now that I have found a solution for the navigation, I can import all the old pictures into the new site. This unfortunately involves some work, but I can do it piece by piece. It is so interesting to look at the photos of longer past years. To see how the places change, new towers growing in the cities, in New York as well as in Basel. Or simply evoke memories and feelings of moments captured a long time ago. For this reason I would like to have my photos online in one place. As an archive, so to speak.

A bit of marketing

I also got the flyers I made and printed last week for my Birds of Fire Island prints and I walked the boardwalks of Cherry Grove to pin them on the announcement boards.

Creativity as well

I can’t paint on the beach. The house is too small and I don’t want to drag out all the material for the little time I spend there. But at the beginning of each painting is a creative process that I can tackle anywhere, if I have my MacBook with me and internet. Now that I’ve pretty much finished the Still Life images, I’d like to do a series again with kings. For this I started to collect material and to work out a first painting. 

So the week was a perfect mix of relaxed and creative moments, enriched with sports and fun, and a pinch of itchy misery. Definitely a week on the sunny side.

For all Photos of the week click here