Folly

January 24, 2026

Third floor of the Tides Hotel, Folly Beach. My window looks directly at the pier, against whose supports the sea dashes with considerable fury. The drive was long, but easy. In the opposite lane battalions of plows and salt trucks headed north, lights flashing, to aid in the expected disaster. Overhead the sky was a ruffled gray the entire way, like old cloth folded and darkened at the seams. Flat darkening steel now. The wind when I went out for a bite to eat was almost unbearable, far worse weather here–now– than what I thought I was fleeing back home. Still, a few walkers and joggers on the beach. Everyone at the hotel is kind and forward and eager to tell me their names and learn my story.  My mood was quite contemplative through the ride, picking up the theme of the last few days, when I’ve wondered if I’ve accomplished anything. Part of it was surely the gloom of fleeing my home in the teeth of a storm, rootless and a refugee, at least for the moment. But that was a house built on older, darker foundations,  God is not us, nor does He speak our language, so He must send any message he wants to convey a number of times. As I sat over my seafood platter at Rita’s, Shelley’s great “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” invaded my thoughts– “I vow’d that I would dedicate my powers to thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?” I wept over the cocktail sauce. I wept so hard I prayed the waitress wouldn’t see me. That was the message. Whatever the results, I have kept my vow.