Passages to Be Explored

Page 5:"It had been dark at the beach for hours, he hadn't been smoking much and it wasn't headlights--but before she turned away, he could swear he saw light falling on her face, the orange light just after sunset that catches a face turned to the west, watching the ocean for someone to come in on the last wave of the day, in to shore and safety."Page 340:"It was toward sunset, after some rain, the dark lid of clouds rolled back a few fingers' widths from the horizon, revealing a strip so clear and luminous that even homebound traffic out on the freeway was slowing down for it. Sauncho and Doc were out on the beach. Last apricot light flooded landward and brought their shadows uphill, past the lifeguard towers, into terraces of bougainvillea, rhododendrons, and ice plant."Page 341:"...yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to have the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever. May we trust this blessed ship is bound for some better shore, some undrowned Lemuria, risen and redeemed, where the American fate, mercifully, failed to transpire."