"123104" - Commentary by Tony Seton

123104

I was always a cheap date when I drank alone. A sip of scotch on an empty stomach and the facial muscles began to sag. Or as in this case of writing the 366^th day of 2004 into history, preparing a delicious dinner for one, sipping a glass of champagne. I waited until noon, and with no plans to leave, started a bottle of Piper Sonoma. It won’t make it to midnight, but neither will I.

It was supposed to rain the last day of the year, and probably would during the afternoon, but the morning wakened to bright blue skies. The clouds remained to the south and the west, demanding a walk through the emerald hills of Tennessee Valley to the Pacific Ocean. Where the valley drained to the ocean, the outflow of two days of heavy rain had cut a sharp path into the beach.

Where only a week ago the beach undulated to the ocean’s edge, the water had now carved out a five foot cliff in the sand. Before Christmas the stream was shallow and a few feet across, now it was a foot deep and twenty-five across. At the height of the flow, maybe a day or so before, the stream had been a river three times the width.

The waves crunched against the shore, feisty and impervious; a relatively soft reminder of what occurred a half-a-world away. How enchanting is the ocean, but soulless. Has Nature no heart?

Ten years ago, a few days before Christmas, I was perched on a bluff a hundred yards above this beach. I watched a man and woman and their dog approach.

The ocean was wild and dangerous, but the dog couldn’t read the warning sign and went into the water. He couldn’t get back to the beach. The man went in after the dog, and he too was trapped in the outflow. The woman went in after the man. Somehow they all managed to climb out of the surf, but just barely. I wonder if they remembered that near disaster as they read of the tragedy in the Indian Ocean.

Nibbling on some gruyere, sipping the champagne, molding the buffalo meat loaf, with a tape of My Fair Lady on the television. We can’t go back but we should never let go the hope and elegance and purposefulness that could be ours in the future.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.