JOURNAL: July 3,2006

I suddenly realized this morning how fortunate I am to be renting a spacious, comfortable suite of rooms in a hotel right next to a lovely park and a short five-minute drive from one of the most beautiful ocean beaches in the world – and paying only $20 per night! Plus...I’ll be here for another full year, at least! Well, truth is, I’m just renting what’s usually called an “apartment”, and that’s the way I normally think of it – simply a small, commonplace apartment for which I pay a monthly rent of $600. However, today I’m thinking of it in a new and exciting way – as a hotel suite in one of the vacation hotspots of the western hemisphere. After all, people journey thousands of miles to stay a few days near the Rhode Island beaches, and here I am, nestled in my spacious, airy, clean rooms and looking forward to a stay of a year or more! At any given moment, I can take a one-minute walk to one of the most beautiful parks I have ever seen, or take a five-mile drive to spectacular beaches, or merely stroll down the street for a cappucino in the quaint village near my “hotel”. Strangely enough, my apartment building actually looks like it was once a small hotel, perhaps in the early part of the last century. There are three floors, each with a central corridor, and it’s not hard to picture tourists, years ago, unloading their bags from taxis and preparing for a cozy week’s sojourn near the shore. I, now, am one of those tourists. I tell myself I’m just “visiting” this lovely resort area of Westerly and Watch Hill (albeit for a year or more). I walk through my good-looking rooms, admiring the lovely flowers on the coffee table and wondering whether I should spend today at the beach, at the park, or just on one of the benches along the river, reading Dickens and Wordsworth and thinking pleasant thoughts. Lucky me.