Old Love

At the end of August, I got to go somewhere I haven't been in 8 FREAKIN' YEARS! No, not the dentist, you smart alec. No, it wasn't a shower, either—my personal hygeine is just fine, quit mocking me—no, it was the Pacific Ocean.

Carpinteria, California

My heavens, I love that place.

We went somewhere off the Washington coast, some place with "Gray" in the name—and it was, too: it was overcast, and the ocean was the color of lead—and quite frankly, I've never seen the color gray looking so beautiful.

It was Jake's first time digging his toes in the sand of the Pacific, and I dare say he enjoyed himself. Especially the jumping-up-and-down-and-splashing-all-passerby part.

My husband, the dear soul, does not understand why I love the ocean so much. "It's dirty, it stinks, you get sand all over you and in your food, and the water is too cold." (He just doesn't like the thought of sharing swimming space with seaweed, sand sharks, and human sewage.)

I love it because it's magic. The sound of the surf, the salty smell (as long as there are no beached seals or otherwise dead things rotting on the beach—very stinky), the vastness of so much water, and how much life it produces...and how much of that life is absolutely bizzare!

Have you ever heard of the sea cucumber, sort of like an enormous slug, that defends itself from a curious and/or hungry fish by vomiting its innards and scootin' away, leaving its digestive tract for the fish to nibble? (It regenerates its innards later.)

Or how about the starfish (or, rather, if you are going for the new fad in oceanic political correctness, "sea star"), which, in order to eat a shellfish actually pries open the shell and then injects its stomach inside the hole to digest the poor shellfish inside?

How about a "dinoflagellate?" If you are ever fortunate enough to take a walk down the beach at night, you might just look out at the breaking waves and see them GLOW a magical silvery color. Dinoflagellates are tiny lil' buggers that are capable of bioluminescence when disturbed (usually when the wave breaks). Absolutely gorgeous, and surreal to swim out in them: every stroke churns up silver light. And, of course, when there are that many of them, there is bound to be a red tide in a few days afterward that poisons all the shellfish in the area.

How about grunion? Grunion are a small silver fish that wait for a high tide at night, then whole schools of them ride the largest waves up onto the beach to spawn and lay their eggs in the sand. They have to work fast, of course, because the next big wave that comes in will take them all back out to sea. (It is, of course, a free-for-all feeding frenzy for anything that happens to be awake and hungry, because the fish, making the whole beach wriggling and silver, are rather defenseless and...er...preoccupied.) I've only seen them run once. So far.

The ocean is just awe-inspiring. I could sit and stare at it forever.

Not that Jake let me, of course. So we tried our hand at making dribble-castles* (these Jake immediately knocked over as soon as I got a decent number up), splashing in water, and keeping sand out of our picnic lunch. Oh, how I've missed the ocean!

Carpinteria again

And just because I'm feeling so sentimental about it, and because I am a big enough dork to do this**, I present you with another muska-delish bit o' poetry:

Gills and Lungs

There comes a time at twilight
when the sea
and the shore
have no difference between them.
The air is thick with water; the water
is smooth with air.
A wave cradling grunion sighs
ashore. The silvery fish flip onto the sand
in silence, and the beach is
alive with gills drinking air.
If a man swims into the water then
he would breathe the ocean.
His lungs would fill with the dark
tide and glow under his skin
until the heavens reflect him
in stars.

Carpinteria at sunset

*If you don't know what a dribble castle is...how can I describe them? You pick up a handful of the wettest sand possible, and let it dribble in a single stream out of your hand, and if it is the right consistency, it looks like this. I guess some people call them "sand trees," but those people are silly.
**Did you know only dorks write poetry and then publish it on their blogs? And I am the Queen of the Dorks, I truly am.