When age lands and California strife wanes: you’ve woken up at five in the morning, made coffee, and headed down to the beach to write before the kids wake up. A soft blue hue caresses and slowly turns into what would be a central coast navel orange mixed with a violent smear of an I-5 roadkill. The sky’s exploding, and a soaring shrapnel of birds silhouette the morning sky’s cotton structure. I am getting older so it’s all the more precious to me: a new swell clawing at the shore, memories of stopping at old gas stations to last minute feed my older kids before school in whatever town we were living in for that moment, my wife’s coy and sleepy smile, and these little ones breathing in my ear, four of us to a bed, as I lay there in a heavenly paralysis saturated with the swaying breeze that is them. I am getting older and all of it sings like tripping upon Pavarotti for the first time in Central Park in ‘91 when my chaotic, heavily dramatic brain levitated. And now, as I swallow the age that is me, I look around and exhale, the shadow of my feet again trying to grab playfully at the sand below me. Photo by @brianbowensmith @emg_cigars @thepitmartialarts @choppersmagazine