We escaped the heat for a while.

Now rather than heat hanging in greenest green trees, it’s fog rushing adrift overhead. It’s yellow grasses waving east, billowing and ragged like the ends of my hair after nine months without a haircut. Other plants are bulbous and Seussy. All of them make an alien impression no matter how many times I see them.

Cold breezes through the windows. Water rushing frigid over my toes washing the sand off.

The sand shining like flecks of gold, like motes of onyx. The beach strewn with endless kelp and weeds, as though the ocean herself had a nice haircut and strewed the leavings on the shore.

Birds soaring in grouped Vs, then bending their wings into a V to soar into the greygreen surf.

These days I write a lot. There are various journals for various purposes. This is sort of one of them. I often find myself in the middle of an entry writing: “I don’t know what else. I don’t know what there is to say.” But there’s always more, eventually.

And other times, there’s just the horizon and the teacup in my hands, and sitting rather too far away from the people you love best in the world.