Already the sunset is a half hour later.

The sun is this ridiculous red-orange ball and because of the haze today it is sinking behind Catalina but you can't see Catalina.  So when it is almost gone it looks like a ruby mountain tip sitting there alone against this sheet of mute blue.  I am laughing and the sea wind has wet my eyes.  Already the sunset is a half hour later than it was at the peak of winter, the solstice.  And yea, indeed, that was a whole month ago.

On my drive home I am delirious only the way January ocean air and beach mud can make me.  David Bowie comes on and the windows are down and it is a remastered version of Unwashed and Slightly Dazed.  I feel like the air is ruffled currents of ribbony light wilding up my hair.  I laugh again and think what in the hell, this is where I live?

And my people back east don't understand.  Hell most my friends in Calif don't.  Magical Laguna.  On Oak St where I go to write and do laundry and for pizza there is a totally out of place statue of Pan on the corner.   Across the street on the other corner is the first place in Laguna I ever went.  This is Olamendi's, frickn Wallace three years ago when I first got to town from Sonoma took me out that Friday night with pals of his from Billabong.  We go to some private party at some rando Mex restaurant.  Private DJ, makeshift bar, whole thing.  We danced our asses off that night.

Today I finished my daily writing and cruised across the street at Oak.  I walked forever, it was really low tide, I walked in my boots on packed mud, you could see the rocks where normally the water surges and flows.  The rivulets making marble designs of the sand.  I walked past the empty rich houses past Brooks, past Cress, past the Bobs Big Boy on the balcony of that one condo.  All the way to where the big circle hole in the rock is close to South Laguna, and landed up at Woods Cove.  I sighed and sat a nice while until I was no longer alone.  By the time I got back that big orange sun was sinking low.

What a day, unlike all others and also just the same.  God damn it when it does, seize how good it feels to be alive.