Salted air in southern california where the sun-bleached wooden patios and orange rusted nails led to soft burning sand. The flesh on my feet begging for shade while I linger in the sullen light of the sky watching the murky polluted water rise and fall like some angel turned demon in a war of wages.

Pascal in yellow grim pages clasped tightly in water-warped paper, black text fading grey said – ‘What is more difficult, to be born or to rise again; that what has never been should be, or that what has been should be again? ‘

Closing the blue binding of the worn book – pages echoing in the silent streets of hermit crabs and sand pipers with thin narrow beaks breaking through the surface of the sand that had turned to glass from the crashing waves. Seagulls floating above, not barking as many people say, but singing in broken cords as if looking for a way to break through the vision of sky and fall into a world which would free them from fighting over bits of broken picnics left behind in wired trash bins.

I keep thinking while the bright orange signs of Oceanside lean back against the wind, wondering about the Indian couple who live in the stone brick house and carry bags of birdseed to their lawn daily. Watching them from across the pavement as they feed the hoards of birds that come only to them. Rising and falling as their arms spread seed in great sweeping arches over the close-cut green lawn while the sky remains a solid grey. The birds are clouds, rising and drifting in the summer sky, which never seemed so cold with the small winds crawling over flesh from their fanning wings.

Then crouching down in stiff sand, like knees that had been bent low to the ground for too long, making soft noises of tired movement as the poisonous waves crash staining the sand a darker brown. Dead jellyfish rising from the depths in masses of semi-transparent mucus-like pillows.

The soft paper covering of the book leans with the orange signs towards the water: ‘Is it more difficult to come into existence than to return to it?

The waves blind the sun in response, bubbling white foam as if rabid with fury, dragging the sandy shore out into the horizon – each representing a person lost in a tidal.

Highlighting text with the velvet tip of a red marker – ‘Habit makes the one appear easy to us; want of habit makes the other impossible.

Marking the place with the pen and closing the text tightly into itself for comfort of wisdom or thought. Watching as the waves calm themselves into slower movements, gentle on the surface falling into a lake-still sleep as the low tide pulls itself out, baring hidden rocks and shells as if finally a mutual trust had been reached. The depths of movement revealing itself through cleared water, sand settling as if weary with journey, and fish swimming lazily in the shallow remains of waves which once crashed against the shore, now lapping its wounds.

‘What reason have they for saying that we cannot rise from the dead?

I remember being warned to drag my feet through the sand while walking at the edge of the water, for fear of stingrays. No one ever followed that advice.

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