When we drove by, it was tantalizing. "Right over there, over that wall, there's the beach," Gareth said. It was dark, and all I could see was a vast expanse of nothing that might, or might not, have held shifting shimmers of reflected light from the streetlights around us.

Gareth gunned it, and we were gone. The water would have to wait for the next morning.

Four-thirty finds me beachside, sprawled on Noah and David's multicolored beach towel, camera in hand, in the hopes of catching one of what Noah describes as Redondo Beach's spectacular sunsets. They're pretty picky out here, these sunset connoisseurs. Knowing that tomorrow, the sun will - yet again - set into the ocean means they're not nearly so excited by its daily happening as someone who will only see a maximum of six such occurrences before flying back east again.

Despite my laughter and my joking about California weather to my friends, it does get cold here, although not as cold as the locals would like you to think. The beach winds at sunset have teeth sharpened over miles of ocean; they chew past the breakers and roar onto the sand, looking for something to devour.

Me.

12.10.2003. Lunch in one hand, my little green notebook in the other.

David is absorbed in Vanity Fair, and Noah is in the other room. For all intents and purposes, I am free to sit here at the table and write what I like, without interruption or question.

* * * * *

"Close your eyes and picture a watch hanging in the air, dangling right at the level of your eyes. As your eyes focus on the watch, it begins to move back and forth, the first small arcs growing longer and smoother. Your eyes track the movements and adjust to them, until it seems that it is not the watch that is moving, but instead the room rocking around the watch.