Wherein I embark on a long walk on the beach and God goes with me.
OK, I get it now. I get the long walk on the beach thing. This is a most momentous occasion.
Santa Monica is its own municipality, and the TAP [Transit Access Pass] I bought doesn't work down there. The bus driver was very kind about it. "You mus' be a tap dancer," he said. "We don't tap dance down here." The buses are otherwise much the same, but the beach is wildly different. Broad and flat and sandy - real sand, not the rocky kind we have at home. Twisty grey trees of indeterminate taxonomy line the edge of a steep cliff with steps carved into it, leading down to the flat plane of the beach.
Once you get down, the enormity of the whole place strikes. On a Thursday morning the beach was fairly quiet, a few runners trudging along near the strandline. I took off my flip flops and immediately sank a good three inches; I had thought perhaps my feet would act as small snowshoes, but the sand is so fine and soft any weight just plummets. Anakin Skywalker would enjoy it. As I trundled slowly down the beach, a parasailer wafting overhead, one of the few sunbathers caught my eye and I smiled.
"Come here, sweetie," she called, and I could see her front tooth had been replaced with a silver one. She was wearing a bikini and worn-out running sneakers. I hurried towards her. "It's okay to smile!" she said happily. "You having a good day?" I nodded and thanked her. "God bless, God go with you," she said, and I turned away to walk and watch the parasailer.
I hadn't gone more than a couple dozen feet when the voice called me back. "Sweetie!" The woman was waving at me; I turned around. "Do you have any money?" she asked when she got close.
I am fairly used to this at home. "A little," I said, and reached into my purse. She had a bag of her own, and was rummaging in it as well. I paused, curious, and she pulled out a wad of dollar bills, proferring them to me. "Here, take this. Take it and go with the Lord." I politely told her that I had plenty of money to get home. She shook the bills at me insistently.
"Do you live in the desert?" she asked.
I did not know what to say. I nodded.
"Only take the money if you need it. Do you need it?" I shook my head and closed her hand over the bills. She smiled, turned to return to her blanket, then ran back towards me, her untied sneakers kicking up sand.
"I just want you to know, that - I didn't, you know, give you that because of anything about you. The Lord is in me, is all. He just got up in me and told me to give it to you." I opened my arms for a hug - she beamed. "God is good!" she said. "I love you!"
Nearby, a man in a full-on Ghostbusters jumpsuit was shuffling up and down the beach with a metal detector.
Writing notes from a windy beach.
Too much to see, not enough time to write. Point form for now.
- Walking down the shore was kind of like playing real-world Where's Waldo. Lots of weird stuff.
- Four separate mom-and-baby-outdoor yoga classes under the trees on Ocean Avenue. Everyone appears very fit here.
- Line cooks, still in their kitchen whites, playing soccer in the covered parking lot of a hotel.
- A store with beautiful pottery in the window and no entry door that I could find.
- Three men in beige jumpsuits and yellow plastic rain hats ducking in and out of the surf with metal detectors.
- Huge brown pelicans swooping over the waves at the shore. One landed a couple of feet away from me near a beach umbrella and eyed it balefully before bobbing its neck and ascending with a weird clumsy grace. They are really enormous.
- More bird sightings: cowbird, what looked like it might have been a curlew, and mystery tracks in the sand. The pigeons on the beach struggled to stay on top of the sand just like me, especially a club-footed one that left uneven tracks. There are also a bewildering assortment of gulls - of the red-billed, mottled, and enormous varieties.
- Los Angeles squirrels are much braver than the ones at home. They are brown underneath and have smaller, rounder faces.
- A couple dug into the sand like a reclining chair alone on the beach.
- At the Santa Monica Pier Amusement Park, the World's First Wind Powered Boardwalk Game.
- Along the pier itself, two carts side by side, both selling hand-drawn depictions of people's names. The proprietors were glaring daggers at one another.
There was more, but it is already being whisked away by the fog. Next time I will bring my camera.
Cheers
Julia
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