Sunday, August 31, 2008
Living at The Kismet
kis·met: Fate or fortune. That which is inevitably destined. The will of Allah. [Turkish, from Persian qismat.]
Megan & I stayed at the Kismet in '95. We must have tested the limits of what The Kismet's proprietors wanted for clientele when a couple of college age friends came down & took a room for a night. Kismet liked fishermen who got up early & went to bed early. We weren't noisy but the proprietors probably figured out from our general high spirits what we were smoking. But it turned out to be our last boardwalk trip together. She finished her art degree, we broke up, she moved to Jersey City & was married within a few years. I don't begrudge former girlfriends their subsequent happiness.
I enjoyed the new routines, the quiet nights, the convenience of being so close to an interesting beach & inlet, going there several times each day. I saw birds I had never seen before. I could hear the ocean from our room when the breakers were splashing. It was a minor matter to drive a mile or so down island, park on a side street near the The Grey Manor, where I had stayed, & pick up the boardwalk there.
A small edition of my poem Boardwalk was finally published in'98 & to celebrate I spent a week by myself at The Kismet. It was a worthwhile if solitary vacation, giving me an opportunity to explore Cape May at my own pace, stopping wherever & whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted. If The Kismet owners liked quiet guests, they must have loved me that year. As pleasantly & quickly as the week passed, having someone with me was better. But I did not want to come home. Weekend rates & a scheduled radio show forced the matter.
I returned once more, during May, with a new friend, a woman from Virginia I'd gotten to know pretty well online. Since we were meeting for the first time, we booked separate rooms, but we arrived in the same car. I was a lot more anxious about this than my friend, who was taking the far greater risk. She was a smart, attractive, unpretentious woman who had grown up near Monticello & learned a good bit of American history the same way I had - by osmosis. She made me smile. We had a good weekend. She liked The Kismet & loved the sandbars at the inlet, still littered with large clamshells from winter storms. She knew how to walk on a beach, as she often does in the old Potomac River resort town of Colonial Beach, which she visits several times each year. The roughness of the young pre-season weekend crowd on the huge Wildwood boardwalk made her nervous, & I didn't care much for the atmosphere myself. In a way, I think she would have felt more comfortable on a packed August weekday evening when the families come out to play & you have to dodge baby strollers. She loved Victorian Cape May City. Tears came to her eyes when she had her first close look at the Cape May lighthouse, suddenly towering over us as we drove into the state park. I wanted to surprise her. I'll always remember that moment. She went home with many souvenirs. I haven't seen The Kismet since. It's still there, with the same simple amenities of air-conditioning, cable TV, a picnic table out front, a grill if you want to cook burgers outside; hopefully the colorful Lurae Motel still in business across the street, a Wawa store nearby with ten flavors of coffee; the beam from Hereford Lighthouse flashing overhead at night, & an ocean close enough to hear & smell.
I believed that if I could live at The Kismet I'd give up most of what I own - which isn't much - to fit myself into a single room. Emily Dickinson reputedly made due on three books: The King James Bible, Collected Works of Shakespeare, & a dictionary. I have a computer & the internet. The boardwalk season begins & ends on schedule, but the natural seasons seamlessly change with ocean temperatures & migrating birds. I have never had a walk by an ocean or bay as part of my daily routine. It has been my dream since I was child. The closest I came was living next to a narrow, urban tidal stream miles from open water. I am a fool.
I'm a different person down there, perhaps a better person, if that means liking who you are. Maybe it's the higher ozone level. Would I be that person all the time if I lived there, comfortable in myself, or do I just need someone around me all the time who understands why I would imagine it?
(The orange dot in the photo is The Kismet. Hereford Lighthouse is three blocks up, just to the left. As the tide falls, long sand bars emerge extending into the inlet at top, with a wide, shallow tidal pool near the shore that traps schools of small fish & attracts wading & diving birds. Kayaking is popular. The inlet itself has too many shifting shoals for most power boats. )
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Megan & I stayed at the Kismet in '95. We must have tested the limits of what The Kismet's proprietors wanted for clientele when a couple of college age friends came down & took a room for a night. Kismet liked fishermen who got up early & went to bed early. We weren't noisy but the proprietors probably figured out from our general high spirits what we were smoking. But it turned out to be our last boardwalk trip together. She finished her art degree, we broke up, she moved to Jersey City & was married within a few years. I don't begrudge former girlfriends their subsequent happiness.
I enjoyed the new routines, the quiet nights, the convenience of being so close to an interesting beach & inlet, going there several times each day. I saw birds I had never seen before. I could hear the ocean from our room when the breakers were splashing. It was a minor matter to drive a mile or so down island, park on a side street near the The Grey Manor, where I had stayed, & pick up the boardwalk there.
A small edition of my poem Boardwalk was finally published in'98 & to celebrate I spent a week by myself at The Kismet. It was a worthwhile if solitary vacation, giving me an opportunity to explore Cape May at my own pace, stopping wherever & whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted. If The Kismet owners liked quiet guests, they must have loved me that year. As pleasantly & quickly as the week passed, having someone with me was better. But I did not want to come home. Weekend rates & a scheduled radio show forced the matter.
I returned once more, during May, with a new friend, a woman from Virginia I'd gotten to know pretty well online. Since we were meeting for the first time, we booked separate rooms, but we arrived in the same car. I was a lot more anxious about this than my friend, who was taking the far greater risk. She was a smart, attractive, unpretentious woman who had grown up near Monticello & learned a good bit of American history the same way I had - by osmosis. She made me smile. We had a good weekend. She liked The Kismet & loved the sandbars at the inlet, still littered with large clamshells from winter storms. She knew how to walk on a beach, as she often does in the old Potomac River resort town of Colonial Beach, which she visits several times each year. The roughness of the young pre-season weekend crowd on the huge Wildwood boardwalk made her nervous, & I didn't care much for the atmosphere myself. In a way, I think she would have felt more comfortable on a packed August weekday evening when the families come out to play & you have to dodge baby strollers. She loved Victorian Cape May City. Tears came to her eyes when she had her first close look at the Cape May lighthouse, suddenly towering over us as we drove into the state park. I wanted to surprise her. I'll always remember that moment. She went home with many souvenirs. I haven't seen The Kismet since. It's still there, with the same simple amenities of air-conditioning, cable TV, a picnic table out front, a grill if you want to cook burgers outside; hopefully the colorful Lurae Motel still in business across the street, a Wawa store nearby with ten flavors of coffee; the beam from Hereford Lighthouse flashing overhead at night, & an ocean close enough to hear & smell.I believed that if I could live at The Kismet I'd give up most of what I own - which isn't much - to fit myself into a single room. Emily Dickinson reputedly made due on three books: The King James Bible, Collected Works of Shakespeare, & a dictionary. I have a computer & the internet. The boardwalk season begins & ends on schedule, but the natural seasons seamlessly change with ocean temperatures & migrating birds. I have never had a walk by an ocean or bay as part of my daily routine. It has been my dream since I was child. The closest I came was living next to a narrow, urban tidal stream miles from open water. I am a fool.
I'm a different person down there, perhaps a better person, if that means liking who you are. Maybe it's the higher ozone level. Would I be that person all the time if I lived there, comfortable in myself, or do I just need someone around me all the time who understands why I would imagine it?
(The orange dot in the photo is The Kismet. Hereford Lighthouse is three blocks up, just to the left. As the tide falls, long sand bars emerge extending into the inlet at top, with a wide, shallow tidal pool near the shore that traps schools of small fish & attracts wading & diving birds. Kayaking is popular. The inlet itself has too many shifting shoals for most power boats. )
Labels: jersey shore, love, mental health, motel hotel, Wildwoods NJ
