in the evenings on long island, when the colors start to fade

Again, I must go to bed immediately; I didn't intend to stay up this late, and I may have drank at least a bottle of wine over the past seven or eight hours of nonstop socializing. So much for a writing retreat being all about the writing, right?

But I have no regrets, even if my head will in the morning. I slept until ten, thanks to my earplugs and a strong desire to overcome the effects of sunlight, and then spent several hours banging my head against Thorington's story. I took a walk with my friend Grace to clear my head, which worked wonders, and it also meant that I got to see a bit more of the lovely town of Montauk and all that it has to offer (not much, but all charming). Then we came back to the house, where I showered and considered writing again.

Instead, I joined a couple of people on the deck, overlooking Fort Pond, with a bottle of wine and a gorgeous amount of sun, and ended up talking for the last eight hours. One of the women here had a birthday today, so I was hanging out with her and her best friend, and then some of the others joined us, and then we had dinner (thanks to the efforts of someone who was cooking instead of drinking), and then we continued the conversation into the wee hours. This was probably better for me than any writing I might have eked out in those hours; I truly loved getting to know the women I was talking to, since they were the only ones I hadn't met before the retreat, and the birthday girl in particular is a total delight. And we ended up discussing the themes we keep coming back to in our work, which was fascinating; I think that one of my big themes is striving, combined with the desire to find someone with whom striving is no longer quite so necessary. What was really fascinating is that the woman I have come to really admire picked up striving as my theme even though we hadn't met before yesterday and she hasn't read my stuff - clearly she is a student of human nature (although I use that truthfully and not annoyingly).

sssanyway, now it's two a.m., I'm sure I'll have a red wine headache in the morning, and I need to sleep or else nothing will get done tomorrow. Goodnight!