Santa Cruz Solitude: Ocean Evenings

As I walk near the ocean on West Cliff Drive, the college kid strolling with his girlfriend asks me if I have a cigarette to trade him in exchange for some weed, as if cigarettes were harder to obtain.

The ocean. The ocean is our god, a vast and measureless presence, measureless to our eyes if not to our science. At twilight, you see fifteen or twenty surfers, just waiting, just floating between waves, all looking in the same direction, out to sea, waiting for one last silent, steely, stately wave to carry them aloft, a slowly-building swell that rises from the depths. Their vigil is a quiet one.




And another man sits on the cliff, silhouetted against the sun, curled over a book, motionless.





Still others gather in their rusted trucks and vans, smelling like pot and talking of inner dramas and profound adventures of the micro kind.

And just like that, the weight of the work day has fallen from my shoulders, and I can breathe quietly and deeply, filled with a moment of stillness, cold and clear like an ocean wave.