Birds of a Feather
Project 365, Day 133/365
Last night (well, my “tonight”), Charles and I headed to the ocean to watch the sunset in the name of lillordag. We shut off our work computers promptly, changed into warmer clothes—it gets chilly by the water at night here—and headed out.
As we settled into the sand, we quickly realized Los Angeles’ famous “May Gray” (to be followed by none other than June Gloom) would cast a thick haze over the horizon, with very little chance of seeing much of a sunset at all. You could see the sun rays cutting through a cloud near the mountains that wrap around Santa Monica, but it wasn’t much of a show for anyone. But no big deal, I was in it for the sound of the crashing waves, the chilly sand between my unpedicured toes.
Charles pulled his camera out of the backpack that tends to be attached to him when we venture out into nature and busied himself trying to inconspicuously take photos of the surfers waiting, hoping for even the subtlest of swells. A few minutes prior, as we were flattening the sand in the spot we claimed as our own, a set of friends with surfboards tucked under their arms planted down 10, maybe 15 feet away from us, one confident and experienced, the other one fidgety, nervous, clearly a novice. I listened as the confident one tried to explain to his friend what they were going to do when they hit the water. How to break through the waves, when to stand. He spoke Spanish in an accent I pegged as Argentinian, though he could have possibly been a Spaniard. The wind deafened my innate ability to peg a Spanish-speaker’s nationality. I’m a nosey creep by nature, loving listening in on snippets of other people’s conversations around me, filling in the blanks of their life with my imagination.
They weren’t the only surfers out there, so Charles had his pick. As he settled into his shutterbug ways, I just sat and breathed in the sea spray, watching the Ferris wheel off in the distance spin, the colored lights dancing within it. Then my eyes moved upwards, watching flocks of seagulls flap and soar and sincerely hoping none of them decided to grace my face or mouth with a very unpleasant surprise. I quickly found myself mesmerized. Somehow, they all knew where they were headed even without an evident leader.
It was amazing to see the synchronicity; it was like they were all in a coordinated dance…like a flash mob that had practiced in secret. All at once, a handful of the birds would decide it was time to soar, and the rest would follow suit. When it was time to flap, they all knew it…flap, flap, soar. At one point, all the seagulls dipped down from the sky and all by skirted the surface of the water, none of them actually touching it, until it must have been whispered between them all that it was time to go back up into the sky. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap….all together now…soooaaarrr.
What a wonder, huh? There’s no “lesson” here or anything like that. I was just taken by this congregation of birds and wanted to share. I had an idea earlier today that sometimes, I’m just going to share little wonders, little happy moments, little “sighs” of peace and joy. Things we catch and ingest when we’re not nose-deep in our phones or tangled in anxious thoughts in our heads. And yeah…that’s kind of it for today!
See you tomorrow, friends. Thanks as always for being here.