Oh man.  This morning.  It was 6 a.m. and my friend and I were out walking our usual route which takes us around the neighborhood and gifts us with ocean views from several angles.  Each day the view is unique as the weather and light make up their minds as they go along, never the same from one nano-second to the next.

This morning I walked out and the “June Gloom” of the SoCal coastline was gloomier than usual, actually misting.  I love this, of course, tiring as I do of too much sunshine.  As Chris and I walked, we came around a bend and looked out to the sea.  It was an artist’s palette with but a single color – every possible color of gray.  Gray ocean, gray mist, gray sky, each linear swath containing its own value variations.

“Doesn’t that look cool, that one sailboat out there?” Chris asked.  Indeed it did.  I am going to have to start carrying a camera on those morning walks, along with my vitamin drink and kleenex and dog poop bag and the dog on the other end of a leash.

The boat was barely visible and appeared as a bit of mist itself, sail and boat melting into each other and into the water and sky surrounding it.  It didn’t seem to be moving from our vantage point.

My vivid imagination went into overdrive.  It was surely a ghost ship, not really there at all.  The more we watched the more it seemed to taunt us.  It was impossible to imagine that there were human beings sailing it.  I squinted to make it come into sharper view, but no. I can’t help think if I had taken a photograph…it wouldn’t have shown up at all.  It was that ghostly, that surreal.  Alas, I will never know…