A Beer With the Pacific

I have one piece of advice for those of us blessed enough to live within sight of the Pacific Ocean. Never waste an Autumn sunset. It truly is the best time of year. Nobody really considers the Winter to be prime time due to the cold, which is understandable, and those who live in LA are will be more than familiar with the “June Gloom” associated with the spring months. Summers may be considered prime time, but honestly who can put up with the great influx of tourists that the season attracts? That of course leaves us with the fall. Just as other parts of the country are settling in and hunkering down for what they know will be a long and trying 3-4 months of winter chill, we Californians, specifically Southern Californians from my perspective, give a relaxing sigh of relief to know that the beach has returned to the locals while still maintaining a comfortable enough temperature for all the regular beach life that we know and love. Now being the Irish/Italian descendent that I am, I love to acknowledge and celebrate these extra special times with a touch of the dirty water to lift spirits and fill voids, so that is just what I did. 

Finding a spot to share a cold brew with the most powerful of the four oceans isn’t a difficult thing to do, but finding the right spot? Now that’s a bit tricky. I won’t pretend to believe that I know what spot would fit you best, but to find my spot I had to do a little bit of searching. I could easily hit the Venice or Santa Monica Piers, two historic spots with bar scenes that could make the transition almost seamless, but that’s not really what I wanted. It couldn’t be a place that just anybody could get to. I needed my rendezvous to be special, a place that only we could find and a place that only we would remember. For that reason, I won’t tell you exactly where we set up shop, but if you’re ever cruising up (or down) PCH in a more remote section of Malibu and can hear a gentle “Kershhhhh-shhawwwwww” bank onto the coastline calling your name, then I highly encourage you pull over and stop to share a cold one.

I popped a squat right at the edge of the land with a twelve pack of bud light (just in case it was one of ‘those nights’) and gazed dreamily out over the waves as the sun began to set.

At first she was quiet. I was quiet too. It was probably the beauty of the rays reflected off her glistening white caps that left me silent, but I was content to just stare deeply into her magnificence and contemplate my own existence rather than to press her for answers. I don’t think we spoke at all through my first two beers (I wasn’t counting how many she had) and I only mustered up a comfortably relaxed sigh midway through my third to try to break the awkward silence in the hopes of a journey into deeper conversation.

She answered my sigh with nothing but a brilliant explosion of red orange and pink as she swallowed the bright burning orb of light into her essence. Her movements then became darker, more mysterious and somehow more enticing. Everyone gets to see her dolled up for daytime in the summer, but I was getting more.

As the beers rolled back I got more comfortable and, to my dismay, brought up old lovers. Guys, you know how it is. We’re not supposed to. We’re really not, but when you begin to feel comfortable with a new romantic interest, you can’t help but to bring up previous ones who have hurt you. It’s a weird mix of vulnerability and puppy-dog longing that makes us do it, but my girl handled it like a champ. I told her about the first girl I loved, who I thought would be with me forever.

“Sherrrrrrrrrrr wahhhhhhhhhhhhh sherrrrrrrrrrr” was her reply.

I went into the dynamics of the dancer that had moved across the country, breaking my heart in the process.

“Pershhhh kerrrrrr shawwwwwwww” she sighed understandingly.

I even broke down and discussed the reasons my most recent love interest had not worked out, something you should never do by the way.

She answered with a long silence. Took all that I had said into her mind, meditated on it and…..

“Kowwwww raahhhhhhhh shhherrrrrrrrr”

Every time I threw her the wrongs that someone had done to me, she threw them right back on my lap. I had begged her to tell me that the responsibility for these failure had lied elsewhere and rather than a misplaced agreement (something that some women seeking approval will do) she threw it all back in my face for me to decide. Sure she had been there to witness the so-called wrong doings, she was always presents. She was the ocean and I lived five blocks away, but that didn’t mean that she would place judgement on a situation from a perspective that was not her own. I really couldn’t thank her enough for that. 

Once we got all of my shit out of the way, the conversation turned into something of much more substance than misplaced adolescent heart break. She told me about the moon. How they had loved each fiercely in the early days of our planet to the point where now the mere position of the moon in the universe could make her calm as a clear mirror or vicious as a raging storm. She was scared that she would never truly get over that relationship. I won’t say that she cried, but you could feel the emotion was there with the way her waves started to crash harder out from the shoreline. I couldn’t comfort her, the best that I could do was listen. 

I must have listened half the night. We lost track of time as you will when you find deep conversation with beings that share the vibrations that you have chosen for your existence. I didn’t finish the full twelve, but more were gone than were left and I the cold of early fall told me it was time to go. She waved goodbye and I left with a deeper understanding of her life than I had begun with. It may not have been necessary, but the alcohol had left us both vulnerable enough to share and we had connected in a way that would not have been possible without it. 

As I got back into my car and pulled back onto PCH, I looked out my window and thought of the immense pressure she must feel. To be the ocean? To be the Pacific? We expect a lot from her, and that cannot be an easy task.