As you will have guessed from Walking in between, I decided to take a few days to let the wind, sand and waves leach the last few months into a new order, and to let the sun melt my bones. Lots to eat, read and better yet kilometres of beach for walking meditation.
One should be precise in the use of language and I did deliberately use the word “leach” hoping the stress and sadness would drain away.
One thanks the weather goddess for making real with adroit precision one’s desire to be leached, cleansed and washed.
One however wishes with due deference to point out that it was meant as a metaphor.
Within half an hour of standing in bright sunlight and expressing a desire to be leached, I was buffeted by a squall. Three guys raced past on kite boards, riding on the tops of great smashing waves, flying with the wind. I gazed seaward facing into the wind and stinging rain. Within moments I was utterly drenched, but smiling under a full rainbow. One cannot complain if the goddess is feeling literal, and your rainbow, well then I knew.
“Beyond this shore
into the darkness.
Beyond this shore
my boat may sail…And if I sail beyond the farthest ocean
Or lose myself in depths below
Wherever I may go, your love surrounds me
For you have gone before, beyond this shore” … Iona
I had a simply fabulous, relaxing time breathing in the salt. Walking. Thinking. Not thinking. Five days at the beach: three waist deep wave walking wetnesses, two skin deep squall soaks, one sparkling starlight sprinkling.
This morning I went to the beach early. It was a king tide and I was there at full tide. I hope the turtle eggs in the dunes survived the pounding. Poor baby turtles.
Staring east to the surf and sun I stood again immersed in between, on the cusp of a portal, teetering, poised, balanced between worlds. Solid and fluid. Cloud and mist. Temporal and timeless. Substance and ghost. Tide pounding. Spume and spray flying. Towering grey clouds rising out of the mists of time. Waves huge and glacial green flecked white, breaking and racing at the shore like a herd of wild water horses.
“I had a dream, I saw you walking
Down the road in a gathering storm
Wind on the rise, a black crow was flying
You alone, in a gathering storm” … Paul Kelly
I could have been alone in all the world. Translated. Waves thrust themselves at the shore but somehow felt soft, warm, welcoming as they flowed around my feet. Today I didn’t need to walk, I just stood and stared. Breathed. Spray filled the air, I was already drenched when the goddess sent another squall. This time gentle, kind, cleansing. I stood, streams of silent tears merging with spray and squall, sinking into the sand, surf on four sides. Salt water within and without. Leaching.
I will always miss you. But this time and tide has helped take the rawness from the ache.
And then the sun broke through, and I cried some more. I may be an atheist, but that doesn’t mean I wont accept the coincidental comforting harmony of the universe when I have eyes to see her blessings.
Wendy's Out of Station 