To the sea 海へ

　急に夏が惜しくなったので、カミさんと一緒に海に出かけた。行き先はFire Island。電車とフェリーを乗り継いで片道２時間半。別荘地なんだけど、野生の鹿がうろうろしている。
　海辺が出て来る映画や小説は数多いが、僕はなぜか、夏目漱石の『こころ』を真っ先に思い出す。『こころ』の冒頭では、鎌倉の海辺で「私」が「先生」に出会う。鎌倉から遠く離れた大西洋岸で『こころ』を読むのは、時間と空間を超えた旅をしているようで、何とも不思議な感覚だった。
　日帰りだったけど、いい休息になった。

All of a sudden, I realized that the summer is almost over, so I and my wife Kiyoko went to a beach. It is the Fire Islands, two and a half hours trip from New York City by trains and a ferry. We found wild deers walking around.

There are many movies and novels which have scenes at beaches, but to me, KOKORO (1914) by Soseki Natsume comes to my mind first when I think of the sea. In the first scene of KOKORO, "I" met "Sensei" at a beach of Kamakura, Japan. I felt I was traveling time and space by reading KOKORO at a beach that is hundreds of miles and 93 years away from Soseki's Kamakura.

It was a one day trip, but I felt quite refreshed.