Friday, July 4, 2008

Fourth of July



** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** At sunset a huge smoke plume from fires north of here obscures the Santa Monica Mountains: Big Sur and Goleta are still burning, as well as areas in the Sierras and around California.

I also see a black layer of smoke at the foot of the mountains, extending from today's fires in Malibu eastward toward Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica.

The air is pungent with fires and firecrackers, cigarettes and marijuana.

Tonight's tide is two feet lower than on July 1, giving me enough room to jog on wet sand, but at 8 pm there are still hundreds of people on the beach. The air is 75 degrees, the water probably close to that, though the sun has set.

I dodge soccer balls and frisbees, sandcastles and excavated pools, families, children, lovers, elderly women walking alone.

I'm wearing a light jacket that has two inner pockets, my cell phone in one and my car keys in the other, but it's too warm so I tie it around my waist, hoping nothing will be bounced out of those pockets.

About a hundred yards down the beach, I realize the phone is missing. Yikes--all my phone numbers, four days before I leave for a big trip. As I turn and start running back, the keys fall out of the other pocket and a big wave erases footprints where I had been walking.

My cell phone, somewhere down the beach, being washed out to sea? Not again--this happened two years ago. How could I be so careless?

Slowing down, I study debris on the beach in the growing darkness: clumps of seaweed, food wrappings, the handle of a broken shovel.

Suddenly I see a young Latino man coming toward me with his hand outstretched, my cell phone lying in it. I must have just jogged past him.

"Oh, thank you so much!" I cry, taking the phone.

He smiles and turns back. I open the phone and yes, it's still working though a little wet and sandy. He must have picked it up quickly, before a wave covered it.

Brimming with relief and gratitude, I start jogging south again, keys in one hand, cell in the other.

The Venice breakwater is fully visible today, though tide's still high and I can't walk out there.

I take a photo of the red and smudgy sky and start jogging back, illegal firecrackers exploding around me on the beach and in the sky. I'm jittery, startled by each one, resolving to jog in the morning on the next Fourth of July.

Dogs, also illegal, and their owners appear on the beach as usual after dark, and the scent of marijuana wafts past me more often.

A thin white sliver of moon appears in the sky, turning orange as it descends into the smoke. Later I check and see, yes, we are two days past the new moon.


I stumble into a hole filled with loose wet sand, probably dug for a child and just now sloshed with sand by the waves.
The sky glows a deeper rose now, and the ferris wheel on the pier in red, white and blue changes from a pinwheel to a rotating Gothic Cross to a rumpled American flag pattern. With blue and red in the sky, white in the crashing waves, I don't need any more spectacle than this.

At home John and I celebrate the Fourth by eating hotdogs grilled outside, and I don't tell him about losing my cell phone.

1 comment:

roz said...

beautiful. the beach is so inspiring. dad should stalk u on the internet so he knows what u don't tell him LOL jk