One Good Thing

California is banning single-use plastic bags. THIS is from the L.A. Times

Friday Morning Beach Report

Today's Ocean

Green and cross-hatched with waves, frothy fireworks explode over the breakwater.

Gulls fly drunk while I search for treasure.

I pocket beach glass and covet pieces of driftwood too heavy to carry.

I cheat the great Pacific garage patch out of two toy shovels, one blue and one green, matching the clothes I'm wearing.

I might look ridiculous. 

Trudging into the wind, I think:

It's the walk itself that is the treasure.

And this very breath, and the next one

and the next.

This Morning

The islands are sinking into the mist as the sky's curtains draw across the setting moon. Footsteps sinking into the cold sand, I stoop for plastic. Into my empty coffee mug I deposit drinking straws, their stripes faded like old circus tents. A rainbow of plastic caps. A shotgun shell. Remnants of wet cellophane, each piece gleaming like a jellyfish in the angled morning light. Flaccid strips of bright ruined balloons mimic worms, and I wonder if the willets and curlews I watch at the water's edge gobble them up sometimes by mistake, their bellies filling like those fated birds on that far away atoll whose innards are stuffed with  caps and Bic lighters and Barbie parts, gestating death. An impromptu burial mound materializes in my path. Feather and shell and bone. A beak. I keep walking. Later, half washed away, is a child's construction of driftwood, stick, and stone--proof, I guess, that we are better at building than maintaining. Just steps from the last trash can, I find him. A blue plastic soldier, missing an arm and most of a leg, his gun still clutched in his remaining hand. Not sure if he's evidence of childhood innocence or  destruction's harbinger, I put him in my pocket and carry him home.

Boats, Bok Choy, and Berries

"Wanna go for a boat ride?" My real estate agent rang my doorbell and caught me having a beer and carrots and hummus lunch. I was pretty much done with the food so I grabbed the beer, found the key to my boat dock, and we stood in the sunshine waiting for her friend to pick us up. But the friend got anxious steering the boat in the wind in the narrow channel, so we dashed through the neighborhood to another boat dock where a friend of the friend was waiting to pilot us through the wind.

This was a preview, I think, of what owning a boat could be like for me. I'm going to have to practice. Maybe a lot. There's that part when you're coming in, and you get close to the dock, and you have to jump out with the line in your hand, and then tie the boat up before it scoots away. I saw a lady on a giant tricycle today with a dog in its wicker basket. I need the giant tricycle of the boat world.

The boat ride was wonderful though. We saw seals playing in the harbor. If you have a boat, you can take your boat to the Sunday farmer's market. (You can take your boat to the Vons, and to restaurants.)

I had already gone to the farmer's market earlier by car, so I rode on with the nervous friend and her friend, got out at a boat dock in an adjoining neighborhood, and had a nice long walk back to my place. I'm figuring out the lay of the land--or the marina, actually.

This evening I walked to the beach. It's amazing how few people there are on the beach here--compared to, say, Santa Monica. There were a couple of joggers who plodded by, but otherwise it was me and a lonely blue bucket, which I picked up and carried away so it doesn't end up in the The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Oh--and the seagulls picnicking on a small sea lion or seal carcass. I startled them when I approached. "It's all yours," I said. I'd already feasted on baby bok choy, shrimp, and berries and ice cream.

I'm lonely here though. As lonely as an abandoned blue bucket.