“Santa Cruz Coastline”
“Oceans move like immense lovers, with gentle, quiet, smooth undulations, which one cannot see coming; they rise from somewhere deep; they swell; they pick up mass and force; they move irreversibly, relentlessly onward, then they crest, break, and explode; they spume skywards and they are gone. This morning the waves moved in ridges of light bottle green. As they began their more rapid push toward shore, they trailed straight lines, water streamers, behind them. As they broke on the boulders at the foot of the cliff they attained at one moment superlative beauty – why, one wondered, did this one instant reveal the quintessence of their beauty? There was a rare hue of pale gray-green on display, something like what one would expect the Queen of Spring to drape herself in as she entered her season with all the hope and charms of new life shimmering in her gown. This pale gray-green rose up out of the churn beneath it and momentarily floated, suspended in a sort of forever above the spume, over the jagged rocks, removed from the furious chaos beneath it. That such delicacy of exquisite refinement and grace could hover there, just above a riotous disturbance, was unexpected, almost unnatural, and completely thrilling.”