Within The Vapors Drift, Resonating With The Atoms

And spring, its sun warming your skin, the ridiculously loud cacophony of birds singing, calling, bickering, bees whistling, kids on bikes, hammers and lawnmowers, and dogs barking, people laughing, and music driving slowly by.

Everything green is charging higher, the bright bursts of color, engulfing sweet fragrance, light purple wisteria, dripping grapelike bunches, exuberantly climbing everything, streets lined with natures confetti, small petals of white and pink and purple… As my mother described snowdrifts, I watched petals whist into the air by a warm breeze, fall like whimsical feathers, collect against trees and curbs and plants laden with a vast pallet velvety figurines.

But spring has lapsed, and summer arrived now. Summer here, is not as it is sold in brochures.

The fog descended on Monday and, coming in from the ocean, took root on Tuesday.

The islands off the coast have been erased. The mountains to the north forgotten, and wisps of white air, like smoky traces, enchanting, wander.

The deep vibrant new growth, feverishly green, accented by the quiet, sleepy migration of aerial gray trails.

It is quiet, so amazingly quiet and you hear, clearly, sounds from miles away. Like the surf, the only sound heard at the moment, a distance from here and it sounds only a few steps away.

It is as if a day of silence has been instilled, not only of us, but of the birds, bees, barking dogs, even the cars sound quieter, best not to disturb the sleeping spring sprite.

I have spent a couple afternoons walking up the beach to my local surf spot, watching sea foam cartwheel down the beach, jiggle in the wind, or hydroplane steady at six or seven knots. At the point, I stand, where a creek gurgles between cliffs and over rounded stones before running into the ocean, the two waters greeting each other embracing, the reunion fond, contented, before scurrying away together, as the tide recedes. The waves, like children not yet taught the rules, don’t travel into the nook, into the beach, but rather sweep beside it. Looking to the ocean, is looking along the waves, as crests move from right to left, not at them as they reach for the beach, the customary, the mundane way to touch the beach.

The recent rains have left this spot still metamorphosing, rocks occasionally trickle off the cliffs. It is an amazing meld of soft contemplative sounds, a gurgling creep, trickling rocks, a wave not crashing, so much as completing itself, and gently at that.

There the fog, dark, as if night has already begun to fall, dissolving the world 100 yards from shore, both into the ocean and away from it, I watch six-foot, eight-foot, waves divinely sculpted, smooth, they wait their turn, before breaking for their worshippers.

Their worshippers. Each a distance from the next. Each sleeping on the ocean, feeling its murmurs, waiting for its sign. And when the ocean whispers, they turn, and they paddle, thrilled with anticipation.

The wave carries them, and feet firm, they ride with zeal and fervor and delight and ecstasy. It is strictly experienced shortboards, for maneuvers, for thrill, for zen, and some, for sponsorship.

Like flecks of black, the drift, the fog sometimes swallowing them. They reappear in an approaching barrel, in tune with it, like a dance partner of years, or a venerated lover.

It is their religion, made spiritual by the effuse fog.

So I sit here at midnight. The cool air, late at night, its droplets tickling my skin, it is giddy and sleepy and drunk on champagne. The foghorn reminds me that the world about is protected by the quiet, the stillness, all is absolved.

Under the blanket of a mystical nymph, I should sleep.

Fading into the sanctuary of the vapor.