An old friend from our South Santa Monica Bay days writes, “Did I hear that right? 5 day forecast for around here is in the upper 80’s. Visibility for miles. Air quality is wonderful. But, this is January.”
In the mornings we went surfing, and in the afternoons we played whiffle ball in the yard or in the street. Maybe we walked to the five and dime for a pack of baseball cards, but if there were no good cards in the pack there was still the bubblegum, the smell like a perfume. Summers we camped on the beach at Refugio and for days wore nothing but our swim-trunks.
We are reminded again of Camus’s “The Sea Close By”: “I grew up with the sea and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable” (p. 172). And this, from “Return to Tipasa”: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer” (p. 169).
Camus, Albert. (1970). Lyrical and critical essays. Vintage Books: New York.
The Coming of the Toads 