A Culinary, Cultural Adventure

A Night On The Beach

The night out on the beach was really nice. It was not nearly as precarious as the guidebooks made it seem -- yes, there were individuals lounging (alone and in groups) along the boardwalk of the beach, scrutinizing you as you walked by, no doubt assessing how valuable your cargo was likely to be, and how difficult it would be to take it from you. But there were also many groups of young people out, sitting in little groups on the beach, smoking, drinking, laughing, talking, or couples just laying out by the edge of the water. There were no lights on the beaches, leading to a sharp contrast between dark, dark shadows and parts of the beach brightly lit by the lights of the city. Up above, the old city rose on a steep hill, at the very top trees in a park or chateau, with their shadows cast upwards. I had a moment where I had a sharp realization -- I'm in Nice, in the French Riviera,on the beach at night. This is what people dream of doing and being, and I felt gratitude that I could be simply where I was.

I walked down along most of the length of the beach, watching those who were on it. Sharing the beach with the young groups and couples were locals fishing, casting lines far out into the water from the beach, and setting their poles into special cylinders propped on the beach for that purpose. For some reason, I felt the most affinity with these fisherman, or at least felt the most comfortable, and I sat there, watching them for a long period of time. What their stories were, I would have liked to have known -- who they were, what they did, and what fishing meant to them (given that they were fishing on the beach, after midnight). I saw what seemed to be a father/grown son pair fishing together, and I could see a father's favorite past-time being shared, creating a shared bond, and passing down a generation.

I lay back and watched the stars -- there were surprisingly many that were visible, despite the light of the city. At first, I thought some of them were airplanes, far up in the sky, since they seemed to flicker and move. For a while, I watched a few, convinced that they were moving across the sky, but after looking away to another set of stars, and looking back, I realized that they had not moved, only appeared to do so. I'm not sure what causes this phenomenon, perhaps moving air streams, high in the atmosphere, but it did give me the thought that maybe I was seeing UFOs. :)

In a conversation with Felice, she told me that one of her labmates made the observation that when you look at the stars, the photons of light that are hitting your retina have travelled millions of years and quadrillions of miles, managed to avoid hitting any obstacle along the way, just to be stopped and observed by you. When you see the star, you see the star not as it is, but how it was millions of years ago -- a glance back in time. And all we need to do to receive this ancient gift is to simply look up. She found that thought humbling... and inspiring, to make use of the gifts we are given. As an ordinary man enmeshed in the everyday world, I don't think of the stars much. As a rationalist, I shrug and think simply on the enormous quantity of photons given off by all these stars, that it is no miracle that some survive their intergalactic trip to our eyes, and yes, ok, so we're seeing them as they were millions of years ago. That's what simply is. But as a person struggling for meaning and purpose in this life, I see how beautiful and inspiring it is to live a life where one is awed by these things that we can see every day, that we can take for granted.

posted by chezdavid @ 9:23 AM