The Circle’s frenzy increases in pitch and rhythm. Everyone is facing me now, basked in a golden glow. I turn around and witness the sun shimmer as it melts into the horizon. A group of overweight women dressed as gypsies open their arms and scream at this vision. They belong to a roving band of hippies that seem to worship the sun. Every Sunday you can come here and watch them freak out as the sun’s last rays fade into the evening. They throw their heads back like they were having orgasms and laugh and dance around like Greek witches. I have privately dubbed them “The Sunset Junkies”.

“Shit, I missed it,” Bonnie tells me, having finally arrived.

“Yeah you did. But rumor has it, it’s going to happen again tomorrow.”

She smiles and grabs a seat next to me. I don’t know Bonnie too well, aside from the fact she is a cool chick who likes to smoke copious amounts of weed. She pulls two brownies out of her bag and hands me one.

“This is my first brownie, you know?”

“Wow, really? I’m popping your cherry!”

I eat the brownie, which is quite good — if not a little dry — since she saved me this piece from last week. We sit in the sand and admire the scenery – God dips his brush into more cobalt blue and dabs the canvas, drowning out the burnt orange. Before we know it, it’s night. We meet up with my brother and a couple of his drumming acquaintances and head to Sidewalk Café for some food and drink. It’s not until we’re seated that I feel the brownie kicking in. Pleasant vibes. Upon my insistence, Bonnie and I share the Chicken Nachos which she has never had. They are, as always, amazing. I wash them down with a cold Tecate and the simple beer seems to trigger the rest of the brownie… It means business and I go from sober to Fucking Stoned from one moment to the next. Pretty soon I’m engaging the table about the manipulation of Daylight Savings.

“Why? Why does it have to be so dark so early now? It’s just wrong!”

Someone says something about farmers, and I retort, “Great! Let their farms be in their own time-zones! Why should growing fruits and vegetables affect the rest of us? Leave us alone!”

“You know, Arizona doesn’t have any time changes,” Bonnie informs me.

“Ever?”

She shakes her head and sips her Red Stripe.

“Do you know what this means?!” I feel a revelation coming on, “Arizona has the only real time in the world!” Everyone laughs but I insist, “I bet you Arizona is actually in a different year than us. Think about it. All those hours over all those years adding up, shifting them completely. We think we’re in 2009, but it’s probably something else!”

After a brain-scrambling ten minutes trying to figure out the bill, we exit the patio – passing The Sunset Junkies who take up two long tables and are clapping their hands in a psychedelic sing-along. Outside, I hug Bonnie goodbye and thank her for the treat. She walks back to her car while my brother and I walk back to our bikes. As my brother attempts to affix his drum to his bike, and as I attach lights to mine, I am approached by a phantom of the night: a man in a tattered leather jacket with the head of a HAWK — the stoic beak, those menacing eyes. Surely this can’t be happening. Bonnie must have mixed the brownie with LSD or I am totally losing my mind…

“Heyyyy! You’re right on time!” the Hawk Man declares. He removes his head, revealing an old, bearded face with missing teeth framed by a head of grey, shaggy hair. He is ten feet away and I can already smell him: the Venice musk of urine, cigarettes, booze and insanity. He gets close and extends a gloved hand to shake. The last thing I want to do is touch this mythological creature, but I do so quickly (and discreetly wipe my hand on my jacket).

“I might be on time, but the rest of the world isn’t,” I respond.

Hawk Man grins and nods his head, “You get it! Alright! And you know that being right here, right now, is all that matters, man! All that matters! You can take your politics and taxes and news shows and wars and traffic jams and gods and shit and none of it matters, man! None of it!”

I nod my head politely, not wanting to have to deal with a crazy man who wears a hawk head in my current mental state. I desperately want to jump on my bike and ride through the peaceful Mar Vista night, but my brother is fumbling with his drum in the background, failing again and again at fixing it to his bike like some character in a silent-film.

Hawk Man steps closer, and in a conspiratorial tone tells me, “They need us, man. The rich and the poor alike. We’ve got to be here and be now and get the message out there, man. Out there!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” is all I can come up with. Maybe the more I agree with him, the faster he’ll go away? Hawk Man is speaking to me with an intimate intensity that makes me question whether or not the universe has sent him as a personal prophet, and if he is actually speaking some sort of wild truth that I should heed… Either that, or Mr. Presley could be working overtime and the joke’s on me.

Finally, my brother is good to go and I wave goodbye to my prophet. He insists on one more handshake and offers me some final, parting wisdom, “Don’t give up on them, and they won’t give up on you. Spread the message, man. This is our time!”

The boardwalk is mostly deserted at this dark hour, smooth-sailing.

“I couldn’t get away from that guy fast enough!” I express my relief.

“Hawk Man?” my brother replies, “He oversees the Drum Circle. He’s the shaman. Crazy, but harmless.”

That definition could apply to most of us: crazy but harmless. We are all sharing this epic hallucination called life. We are, in affect, all Sunset Junkies. We eventually cruise passed a condo with its front door wide open. Inside the slick, wood-floor pad: two surfer-girls who look like models dance with each other, rubbing their bodies in unison – one of them wearing only her tank-top and panties. Sensual hip-hop is blaring on the sound-system, helmed by some dude who is apparently playing host.

“Someone’s living the dream,” my brother says, chagrined.

The rest of the ride back – down Washington Blvd, through the Marina (where nocturnal sharks prowl the still, black waters around the boats) and finally into Mar Vista – is a death-defying adventure comprised of stamina and coordination. Cars and buses seem to veer around us within inches, and I nearly find myself under their tires on more than one occasion. By the time we get home, I feel like Odysseus. We are greeted by the dog — a German Short-Haired Pointer named Hans — and he stands up on his hind legs and walks around like a person to greet us. I hug him like I would a human, his giant nose sniffing my face like a wet Dust Buster.

I look deep into his brown, murky eyes and ask, “Hans, you don’t care about Daylight Savings, do you?”

Of course, Hans’ response – and the only sane one I have encountered this Sunday — is to simply wag his stubby tail as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.