Vacation time in Monterey and northern climes

Arrived here -- after some fumbling about -- around 4 p.m. Gosby House is lovely and we're happy with the room. Went on a looooooooong walk; meandered really, to Cannery Row and thru neighborhoods, just familiarizing ourselves.

The colors here are impossibly more -- just cleaner and brighter and more hyperreal. I am so completely in love with this coastline and the water. I could take 1,000 photos of it and it still would not be enough. I want to swallow it whole -- to push the tidepools, the black & brown rocks, the lichen, the algae, the crystal white sand, the multi-hued starfish, the black & white murres, the sassy otters, the tangled kelp, the turquoise & indigo sea -- all of it into my gaping maw and let is slide, whole, into my gullet, to settle, so I can always *feel* its rush and glow and know its intimate vibration there in me, every waking moment.

ALIVE. This is what it means.

I cannot open my eyes enough. I cannot drink enough of the air. I am not a starving man, merely one consummed by a fire that is this seascape. I snap photos because I do not want to forget -- yet they fade already, and pale beside this overreality.

No smell of brine? No calling of plaintive gulls? No feel of moist wind? No warmth seeping from Lover's Point boulders into my skin? Bah!

What is the point of remembering one dimension? Yet, and still, I must shoot. And hope for the possibility of the trigger, much later, when I need to feel this alive again.