Behind the crunch of wine-and-cheese galleries, art shows ad nauseum, and the summer festivals that clog the only eastbound route out of town with headlights and anglo seniors, a forgotten artifact known as the Pacific stretches grey and white into a misty haze. It might be dark except for the Edison-induced eternal daylight of the coast, and the waves, I gather, would be black without a moon.

During sunny hours the beach serves as playground to chimp descendents and their detractors. Volleyball and surfing, a little swimming, people sunning lizardesque. Snorklers and their mechanized SCUBA cousins raise their goggled heads beside submerged rocks, then dive back under, while children casually risk giant waves and death while their mommies tap dance with them over the cramped tide pools, cautiously approaching anything pink, unworried about the undertow that at any moment could suck them out into the hungry abyss.

But this is night, lit haphazardly with white beams that protect porches and balconies from that which lurks. Confused birds swoop across the water and glean the surface. Cargo pallets and fishing wire tangle at the water's edge. Couples make out on square black blankets until the waves crash over them and contribute to their love life a natural mixture of salt, sand and kelp.

I stand alone, why not, watching all this and wondering if there is a fish, by instinct used to darkness, struck as I am by the electric lights where his environment ends and another begins, where the wall of the continent blocks egress like so many shuttle buses and elderly fans of manmade art.