Tuesday Morning Beach Report: First Day of Summer

The crowds arrive! I've always wondered about these meetings of gulls. Dozens more arrived as if there was an appointed time and place for a big meeting.
Where are all the humans?

Looking towards Ventura, not a soul on the beach.

Looking toward the harbor, a lone beach walker.

Then just as I was leaving, this happened. A crowd of middle schoolers, struggling to set up beach umbrellas in the stiff wind. Flying projectile alert on Hollywood Beach today. Don't get stabbed by a beach umbrella.
Oh, and god bless the chaperones.

Breathe. Lift Your Hearts.

My mom and I in 1968 or thereabouts--which means that she was in her mid-40s in this photo--almost two decades younger than I am right now. 

Breeeeeeathe. Lift your heart. This is what the yoga teacher said.

Breathing. Hearts lifted. Then backs arching for the dive back into the water. This is what the dolphins did as I walked on the beach after yoga.

There were dozens of dolphins in clusters of five or six or seven cavorting more recklessly than I've seen before unless I've been out on a boat. Completely out of the water, splashing, and diving, their dorsal fins appearing and disappearing as if an immense paddle wheel was out there in the blue-green deep.

October here in Margaritaville is more summer than summer. June gloom--which can stretch on and on--has been blown away by the dry winds, and we are left with an infinity of blue.

My mother is thrilled when it's warm and sunny. She likes to sit in the sun in her tank top. When it's gloomy and damp, she wears long underwear under her pants and a t-shirt and a sweater over the tank. "Sunny California!" she scoffs then. "Ha! Where's the sun?" The temperatures listed in the L.A. Times give her false hope. It's always a good ten degrees hotter there.

This afternoon she chatted with her sister on the phone as I sat upstairs in my room reading. I was engrossed in "The Feast of Love" by Charles Baxter. Transported by the novel's big proclamations about love, transported my my mother's voice--louder and stronger than I've heard it in years--I found that I was picturing her in our house in Iowa, stretching the long curling cord on the wall phone in our kitchen as she reached for her coffee cup or her pack of cigarettes. I was in my girlhood room lying across the old four-poster bed, reading--but also thinking I should be listening. This loud voice, this enthusiasm--what was she talking about? Wasn't there something I should be learning from these grown-up women? But I was reading.

There's something in the air here. We are breathing, opening our hearts to our past and future selves, diving in and out of the present.

Post Labor Day Farewell to Summer, Seaweed, Sandcastles etc.

I will concede that summer is officially over now that Labor Day has come and gone. But not really. Not here in Margaritaville. Nonetheless, I will share with you a brief compendium of summer treasures.

long-haired mermaid doll

unicorn mermaid doll

mermaid baby doll

reindeer mermaid doll (upside down, alas)

the winning summer sandcastle

Local sandcastle architecture here is most unassuming--usually a mound with a seagull or pelican feather stuck in the top.

Now, back to work, everyone. 

Oh, and I think the sea things, a.k.a. my mermaid dolls might be macrocystis with the leaves stripped off. I'm from Iowa, folks. If you would like to correct my research, feel free. Honest to god, I wish someone had made science interesting when I was a kid.

My House: The Aviary of Desire

Yesterday I heard moaning. You know, "Oooooh, Ooooooh, Oohhhhhh." I was sitting in my living room with the patio door open, and the moaning seemed to be coming from upstairs. My upstairs. I was home alone...or so I thought. 


Two pigeons were perched on the balcony off the master bedroom, and well....they were in a rather interesting position. One of the birds was straddling the other bird's head while the cooing continued apace. I raced downstairs to get my camera, but when I arrived back on the scene, they'd separated.

This morning, as I made us fresh carrot-apple-kale juice, the man who loves me read an article to me that he'd just stumbled upon on the Internet. It  began like this: "Do these beetles have oral sex? By the window of a country house I found two celeoptera performing an incomprehensible dance for me: the ..."  I'd include the link, but have only been able to come up with this message when I search for it: "But the Requested data is not available Currently." Perhaps too many people have read the article and now no one is at work.


It's spring. As Cole Porter sang, "Birds do it. Bees do it. Even Educated Fleas do it." Soon the heat of summer will be upon us. Enjoy those balmy breezes now before the urge to eat ice cream and drink beer engulfs you in lethargy.


photo of cliff swallows' nest under my eaves

Just remember, this could happen to you. 
Not to me, fortunately. But perhaps to you. Baby birds will be peeping soon. Parent birds frantically feeding them. Defending them. Protecting them. Teaching them to fly. 

swallow's nest #2--with a third in progress

Have a lovely evening, dear readers. Look at the moon as she fills herself up. Savor the coming of the sweet dark before summer delivers its longest day.

July/Chinatown

Sometimes a night is so exquisite; the sky lavender, the clouds pink, the air just the right amount of cool that you wonder, have I been missing this? Taking it for granted? Because it's not like it's Christmas, or your birthday, or prom, or anything. It's just a weekend night, and you're out and about with the person who loves you, and the beer is perfectly cold and the waiter is so endearing, and you have to wonder what is going on here? Why is there so much beauty on an ordinary summer night? And at the end of the meal when the fortune cookies come, they confirm everything.

Soon you'll receive pleasant news, yours says.

And his: Look around; happiness is trying to catch you.

"I think that's the pleasant news I've been waiting for," you say. 

And it is. 

Because you want nothing but this very moment.