I saw tarballs.

Walked on the beach in Long Beach on July 3rd, and saw a few tar balls. They looked like coffee-colored jellyfish, only much smaller.

I was pretty near the spot where almost five years ago I stood on the beach and cried over all the hurricane damage, and the loss of my favorite restaurant/hang out.

I once sat on that beach at night when I was 19 and tried to understand the death of my best friend's father--a man I was close to.

A couple years before that I kissed an old girlfriend near there. She was grieving the death of a friend of ours. She had been walking on the beach with him, and he left to go back to a party across the street and was hit by a car. I held her while she struggled with it. I kissed her.

It's a beautiful section of the beach. Long Beach never allowed casinos, and this was near a residential area, so it's a dark beach at night, and less commercial during the day. All beaches are different. This one has a barrier island you can see from the shore, and so the waves are gentle, almost calm.

Now tar balls. The news says that a lot more has washed ashore in the week since then, that it's getting bad.

Sigh. I miss living there.