Birthday Blip

today is my birthday.
early this morning i grabbed my mother's old coffee cup from the cupboard and went out back behind the house to watch the winter sun break through the fog and clouds shrouding the maple creek hills.
after breakfast, suzanne and chulo and i went for a long walk between the north jetty and driftwood shores, the land of 10,000 blips.
chulo ran up to and danced with every other dog along the shore. always looking for friends.
people were flying kites with their children all bundled up against the cozy chill of the pacific ocean on a sunny winter day.
an ultra-lite plane the colors of neon lights flew back and forth overhead.
the day reminded me of a passage in thomas mann's "the magic mountain."
"The line of the horizon lay high, its vastness seemed to climb. This was because Hans was gazing down on the bay from a considerable height. The mountains reached out on all sides, beginning with wooded foothills that ran down into the sea, then rising in a semicircle from a midpoint in the distance to where he was, and extending on behind him. It was a mountainous coast, and here he sat, crouching on sun-warmed stony steps; the ground fell away from him in tiers of moss-covered boulders and undergrowth, down to the level shoreline, where little harbors and ponds could be seen among reeds and shingled blue bays. And this whole sunny region, these easily scaled coastal heights, these laughing rock-bound pools, and the sea itself, as far as the islands where boats sailed past now and then, was populated in all directions: people, children of the sea and sun, were stirring and resting everywhere, intelligent, cheerful, beautiful, young humanity, so fair to gaze upon. And at the sight, Hans Castorp's whole heart opened wide. Painfully, lovingly wide."