I descend and transcend – and marvel at how the two can intertwine so freely. I can be at the lowest ebb and also running along the exalted heights. I can be so low that I want to die and so close to ecstasy that I am beyond death.

In short, I live like the sun rises and sets and rises again.

When I came down the stairs in the morning after a long sleep, she was there, breakfast ready, scones freshly baked. I embraced her fully, deeply, hungrily though there were others with us – my wife, her daughter. That morning embrace was like two lovers meeting, though we were not. We were only new friends just met but that did not matter as the ancient stream of love ran strong between us.

The four of us had a lazy breakfast on the deck that looked out to the Pacific Ocean. Morning stretched into afternoon.

Beyond the desire to copulate is the desire to meld, to join, to fuse… and then transcend. There is no feeling as rich or as fulfilling as that unity that binds spirits together. Sex may be a path toward that fusion when it is not a dead end. Often as not it is a distraction from the real vein of gold that we could be mining.

It is that bond that I seek and which makes me rich.

We must dance sometime, I say to her without words, and her eyes sparkle back to me in answer.

We walked along the ocean, the three of us arm in arm. “Was I wobbling?” she asked, as I took her arm. “No,” I said, “It’s just more fun this way.”

This coast is being worn down steadily by the waves. There is less and less of it after each storm. Those with houses on the cliffs are living on borrowed time just as the old Costanoan Indian settlements are rumored to be submerged miles out at sea.

One day researchers may dive under the waves and find this promenade and the crumpled remains of houses. They will wonder about the people who walked along here on moonlit nights and what were they like.

I will tell them that we defied death with every step we took.