The Pier (With Iraq Tributes and a Stormtrooper)

We wanted to get out of the house last Sunday. We wanted to see something. We wanted to have fun. But what? Nothing really came to mind. Well, actually, lots of things came to mind, but nothing so great that we were able to take action upon it. Finally, throwing the proverbial dart at the proverbial globe, we hop in the car and take off towards the sun. It was about 3:30pm. The sun was going to set at 4:52pm, so we made haste in our pursuit and chased the sun as far as we could before it disappeared.

We ended up at Santa Monica State Beach. We could go no further, there was an ocean in our path, and there was no crossing it. As we began to explore the beach we came across a temporary monument to the U.S. soldiers who had fallen in the Iraq War. The beach was full of crosses, all in rows like Arlington National Cemetery. There were 2,845 of them that day, one for each of the soldiers lost. The crosses covered the full depth of the beach, marching straight into the ocean, chasing the setting sun, but never moving forwards, for their stillness robbed them of their journey. It was a moving sight.




Santa Monica State Beach has a large pier that stretches far out into the ocean. It had restaurants and shops and even a carnival on it. We walked to its end and watched the sun set. On our way, we saw many musicians setup on the pier, singing and playing away. Next to them were many merchants, selling their wares. Fisherman were everywhere, throwing their hooks and bait into the ocean and hoping for a catch. The Musicians and Merchants and Fisherman all had that in common. It was crowded, and as we walked along the wooden planks beneath our feet neither creaked nor moaned. They were used to it all.

The sunset was clear and glorious.




We went for a walk next, looking for someplace to eat. We ended up walking quite a bit, but didn't find anything. We were both surprised by this. It was getting late, and we decided to head back to our car. However, as we were pulling out of the parking lot we met a stormtrooper. He almost didn't let us pass, but after waving my hand around long enough I finally got the force to work well enough to get him to say "I don't need to see your identification, these aren't the droids we're looking for, move along". (Though Dez thinks he just got annoyed with me and my waving hand.)




In the end, we made it out without any more obnoxious fines from the Empire (that is, California). We ate at a Quizno's, which took quite a bit of exploring to find, then proceeded to church.



Currently, we attend Mosiac, which is held at multiple sites. The site we attend is in the Mayan, a nightclub in downtown Los Angeles. Erwin McManus, the lead pastor and "cultural architect" of Mosaic, has been very refreshing to us both with his talks (or sermons).

A fairly happenstance adventure, all-in-all, that turned out all right and most of all performed its greatest task--it got us both out of the house to see something beautiful. A surreal sort of beautiful, however; with the blending of the Iraq monument and the stormtrooper revealing an internal disconnect between imagined fantasy and brutal reality that I'm not entirely sure what to do about. It just strikes me odd in a way how quickly we can go from one to another.