on cannery row

The word is a symbol and a delight which sucks up men and scenes, trees, plants, factories, and Pekinese. Then the Thing becomes the Word and back to Thing again, but warped and woven into a fantastic pattern. The Word sucks up Cannery Row, digests it, and spews it out, and the Row has taken the shimmer of the green world and the sky-reflecting seas. (from: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck)

It speaks to me. It is as if a sea-side town had been written down, as if blue twilight had been captured between the pages of a book, my memories altered to fit into an older version of a scene so serene and absorbing that it just blows my mind.
That morning in Shoreham I could not sleep. I walked down to the small port and tried to make out the French coast across the sea, but I was too far in the west. The sky was a stale stainless blue; the mist was the only reminder that it was only four o’clock in the night. A cool breeze was blowing from across the continent, and it carried the shrieks of the seagulls that where hovering over something far out on the Channel – a smack, probably. The restless circle of birds was the only hint that others got up before I did.
When the first sunbeams slowly sneaked across the streets and the sea, noises swept waveringly into the scene and turned into the motor of a car and the footsteps of an old lady picking up pebbles on the beach. The world seemed so perfect I did not dare dropping my cigarette butt on the concrete of the pier. The circling birds slowly moved with the ship that was somewhere out there, beyond the horizon. I stood and watched them for half an hour, then followed the now forthcoming, then withdrawing line of the water. The algae and the seaweed stuck to my shoes, the salt from the sea settled on my face, and I walked until, after four miles, I saw the Palace Pier that was still asleep and quiet. Standing under the West Pier I watched the sun rising behind the helter-skelter above the sea. The tiredness that had clasped my thoughts since I woke up was gone and I felt every little fibre of my body, of my clothes. I felt the sand between my toes and the salt in my hair, the sleep in my eyes and the remains of last nights mascara on my face. The urge for a coffee got stronger, so I left the beach and paced slowly past the Odeon on my way to the North Lanes, in search of a café. A bakery had just opened, and the woman behind the counter sold me a tea; I drank it quietly. Through Royal Pavilion Park I strolled to the bus stop, got on the one back to Shoreham. As I arrived at our house, Bob had already left for work. Kathy was still and bed, so I tiptoed back upstairs, into our room and found Anna lying there, fast asleep, a bunch of red hair under a bright-white blanket. It was summer in England.
To see the sun rise over a sleeping town makes the world a different place for a split second. It is like stepping into a parallel universe where everything that can go right goes right.