By the Sea...

What would the world be like without beaches? Just ocean and land. No transitional place.

I live two blocks from the beach. Not too close to be inhaling ocean scent all the time, but less than three minutes away. It's a good distance. This requires sunsets.

Perhaps it's not coincidence that orange and blue are my favorite colors. It probably is for most people. At least, while they're watching a sunset.

Ocean sunsets are different from mountain or plain sunsets. Growing up in an ocean-way I tend to prefer them to the others. There are more than subjective aesthetic differences, though.

Horizons have been a big thing for me, all of my life. When in Vermont I consistently looked to the hills in the distance, wanting to trek through them and find the neighboring kingdom.

Dusk gives us that power: imagination begins to seep increasingly into the realm of reality. Night is a different feel, a different story. Except Halloween and some other rare occasions.

You know what I mean.

Dusk, like horizon, means something of possibility. Another day due. A moment of primal curiosity for the morrow. The setting sun reminds us of the terrestrial position we occupy. The reflective, what-is-my-place feeling.

There were more people on the beach than usual. Couples, especially, were prolific, reenacting a romantic tradition hundreds of years old. We all looked out to the Pacific, the horizon, and sun's vanishing reminder of possibility.

Beyond the Pacific lies my future: a job in a foreign land. Working in a country whose sunset alights on thoughts of Africa. For the others on the beach the horizon was wistful. For me it was a looming reminder that I was in a transitional place, and soon would be on the other side.