Nocturnal Delusions

I love the beach at night.  It's amazing during the day, yes, but there's just something magical and special about the beach at night.   And it is not due to the lack of people, although the solitude is nice.   It is just that at night the beach takes on a new connotation.

The day beach is alive. It is about people watching and children playing and splashing waves while young people soak up the sun and parents play with children building sand castles and digging to China.   The parade of hotdog and iced cream vendors and parasailers and jetski renters: this is the spirit of the beach and it is a beautiful thing to both watch and be a part of, but the night beach is magic; solitude without being alone.

The nighttime beach is where the vast darkness of the sea meets the vast darkness of the sky.  During the day the two always meet, but never entwine.  The blue of the ocean keeps itself separate from the blue of the sky and the specks of white from the waves never interacts with the splashes of white from the clouds; not so at night.   Night they meet, they dance, they become one.   The only separation between sea and sky comes from the flashes of glowing crests of waves as they answer back to the moon and from the twinkles of stars far too often hidden by city lights.   The single blackness hinting at larger mysteries that will never be solved as unknown life dances both above and below.

I'm not sure there is any other place at any other time that really puts everything into perspective as the beach, any beach, at night.   The idea that there are billions upon billions of lives happening both above and below, each with a myriad of problems all cataclysimic to a group of individuals, but meaningless in the vastness of existence makes any and all hurdles I encounter seem quite silly.

 I don't, for example, have something trying to eat me 24/7.   Might seem trivial and almost comical to point out, but pretty much every other living thing on this planet and I'm sure most of the living things above us all have to worry about being a meal for something else and I don't.   Perspective!   Oh joy of joys to never have to worry about being dinner!   Trouble with co-workers or family really doesn't seem to matter in comparison.

"Brenda took the stapler off my desk again!'

"At least she didn't consume you."

PERSPECTIVE!

And the beach at night reminds me of how little I know (to repeat a theme).   And the little I do know, I probably don't really understand.   Standing on the shore looking out at the sea and the stars and I can't stop imagining all the wonders and sights and experiences I will never have occuring just beneath and above me.   It is a wonderful and a humbling moment.

I love the beach at night.