Sand in your shorts and salt in your eyes.

Welcome to La Luz, last chance saloon for
heat-seeking cubicle dwellers.

I
did not find the sign welcoming at all, especially as cosmic forces seemed to
have connived that day to test our summer vacation spirits. (For more details,
hop over to The
McVie Show
.) Still, optimism and the scent of sunblock were hard to
resist, and I was forced to put aside my curmudgeonly ways. The beach was small,
but not cramped, and the water, even from afar, was the refreshment we had all
come for.

I
spent what was left of our first day reading R. Scott Bakker’s The Darkness That
Comes Before. Once in a while, I would leave the Scarlet Spires and look out at
the deepening-to-indigo sky.

People
would call up to me from below (I was reading on the veranda) and ask me if I
wanted to eat, or join them. I was very selfish and said no. It had been months
since I’d had uninterrupted time to read a book, and I wasn’t going to let
anything piddly like company bonding get in the way. (I finished it before I
went to sleep. It was gorgeous. I finished book two, The Warrior Prince, the day
after we returned to Manila.)

I did make
up for my lonerhood later in the evening.

The
next day I was up and about at 6:40.

This
is the light I like best.

It’s
the light that transforms the mundane into postcards, that stifles qualms and
invites quiet
gratitude.

Many
hours later, I was dark, even with flash.

I
shook out my bag the next morning and felt a tiny rush of happiness when sand
fell out. Now that’s what I call a summer outing.