Moisture in the air. Memories. Breathing them both in in large gulps, going down hard, unaccustomed.
Driving along El Toro to Laguna freeway the road dips down into canyons just deep enough to filter out any of the peripheral light from the city. The trees lining the canyon walls are just hints off shade, black, but not the lightless black of the desert nights, but a black that hints at the rich, deep greens waiting to be unlocked by the day light.
Beach parking is easy to find this time of night, most of the people vanishing with the day’s light. Within half a block of hitting PCH I’ve got a spot and am leaving the car and its used trappings behind. The camera I’ve brought does nothing to capture the vague outlines of the crests and sand, so I pocket it and walk gingerly through the dry shifting sands nearer to the boardwalk that the water. There is a demarcation line dropping at a 45 degree angle from the dry stumbling sands of the upper beach down to the wet plain left by the receding tide; a line I am sure has been the downfall of many drunken beachcombers.
As I walk the ground feels like what I imagine walking on silk would feel like; if it were capable of being separated and reattached at random. I left my sandals at the hotel and don’t really dare walk barefoot in the dark, so sneakers it is.
The tide rolls in with the soothing sound so often referred to as a crash. Given the million sounds and occurrences in my day that disturb and annoy, the fact that this sound that soothes and wipes my concerns away like scribbling on a chalkboard is referred to with such a violent onomatopoeia makes me laugh to myself. Appearing to anyone watching a madman chuckling and talking to himself, I saunter on down the granular highway, content to be crazy tonight.
There is a mist surrounding the waterfront. Salty, ethereal, it adds a haze to the air not unlike smoke from a foundering fire, stinging my eyes unaccustomed to the saline. That same moisture clings to the sky far above. Clouds are all but filling the night sky, a slight shade of grey to contrast the rarely interspersed spots of black where the water has failed to congeal. In scanning all that I can see of the night sky I am rewarded with only two celestial points of light. Two stars far apart from one another sealed off by whatever mist the sky can hold on to. It’s stupid, I know, but I look at these lonely stars tonight as a mirror image of myself and a certain girl a long ways off; separated by nothing more substantial than our own cloudy issues… but that’s enough.
Walking past the point, there are rocks and debris strewn all around. Secreted away in darkened hollows in the cliff face I can hear couples giggling and see the occasional breath of movement from an odd colored scrap of clothing. After getting around the point, I can see a bonfire roughly a quarter mile up the coast. It’s impossible to get to though, unless I can walk on water. No matter what my ex girlfriends may say about my savior complex, I’m not delusional enough to try it. Doing my best to break my neck climbing around in the dark, I somehow survive long enough to make it back to a familiar portion of the beach, back to the car, and back to the hotel in time to get some sleep before class the next morning.
