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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Day 211 - Plane ocean

Yesterday was our "meat snacks night at the beach" (this is our loving nick-name for the Korean BBQ that Ellen cooks up for us). The night was just perfect: no wind, a clearest sky with no moon and a myriad of stars at first and then a bright red crescent appearing on the horizon and slowly turning into an orange marmalade slice as it was climbing up, Jupiter's casting a path of bright light on the ocean's surface (by the way, it surprised me to realize that in English there seems to be no special word defining this phenomenon; in Russian, for example, such a path cast by the moon is called moon path, in Spanish it's camino de plata - silver way)… In between snacking on the delicious fire-grilled morsels of Korean-style marinated meat, we played with fireworks (a somewhat illegal activity in North Carolina, yet you hear this distinct blasting sounds all the time from all directions here), sat around the fire chatting or just walked on the beach.

I came very close to the ocean and stood still for several minutes with my eyes closed. I took in the awe-inspiring splendor of the ocean at night. I listened to the roar of waves. I thought, "You can enjoy this sound literally forever, it's the most soothing sound on earth…" It was so peaceful and beautiful… All of a sudden I realized though that the sound of breaking waves is exactly the same as the sound of an airplane taking off. And I know for a fact that if I were standing next to the airport hearing to this same roar, I would be annoyed by it beyond belief. Go figure…

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