Mindful-fun-da-mentals

Explorations of mind, paths, and life

In the Solitude

Posted on May 12, 2010 - Filed Under beach, healing, husband, Photography, sad, thoughts, water

In this space I have been in I am really starting to learn quite a bit about my moods, cycles, fears, and levels of self reliance and inner strength. The fluctuations are much like the changes in the moon… in fact, I think I am pretty synced up with that bright white goddess in the sky. I have continued to harbor timid hesitation about writing, finding that I do better taking photographs lately… and I have so many judgments about possibly rambling on, and on, and on… Yet here I go…leaf on sand

Last Saturday I had a late workout at the gym. Returning home, sweaty and tired, the kid off at a friends for the night, and the dog visiting with Pito, I felt the urge to do something with myself. I promptly ran away to the beach, arriving close to 6:30 in the evening. I rolled down the windows of the car during the hour drive there… letting thin wisps of hair torment my eyes and tickle my face… all for the sake of breathing the air. By the time I had my toes in the gently cooling sand I was wind-swept, tired, and conscious of my skin. I really need to run away to the beach more often. I usually keep so busy that I forget what my skin feels like. Standing with my feet in the ocean, sand squeezing between my toes as the waves moved the ground beneath me, I let the tirade of sadness simply drip from me like a slowly melting candle. I brought my camera along, and my favorite beach chair and I snapped away at the scenes until I had 247 pictures before the sun finally set.

beach - I ran awayI have been sad. There is a deep sense of loss sitting in my heart, followed by disappointment and a touch of anger. I know everything is about choices, and life doesn’t always happen as you plan it. I know that I am in the place that I am for a reason… a big reason… learning to listen to what I need, getting clearer about who I am, getting clearer about what I need. Figuring myself out some days is treacherous. I make so many mistakes trying to stay piloted, or should I say, I make so many decisions about myself in an effort to find my pilot. I don’t have the answer, ever, just an ongoing dance of choices that follow from one moment to the next, and decisions about what each choice means. And, as my relationship to Gary changes, there are new levels of letting go that I struggle through, new efforts to be aware of the dynamic and do something different, new decisions about what I observe, what I hear, what I feel… and this ongoing depth of sadness that if I didn’t keep distracted could easily well up and swallow me whole.

So the waves moved around me, occasionally creeping up and under my seat creating a coolness that felt refreshing. I stayed plugged into my music… something I rarely do when at the beach… but the melodies created all kinds of stories as I watched children splash in the fading light, families gather up to leave, babies stomp in the sand – arms out for balance or a hand,  the creation of last minute sand castles and trenches, individuals walk and pause to plug in to the hypnotic trance the ocean evokes. I watched couples move up and down the beach, talking and holding each other, and even listened melodically as a couple married in the orange glow of dusk. But perhaps most entrancing was watching a leaf blow down the beach to the waters edge, then get tossed about without resistance, letting swirls of water move it, fold it over, carry it out and back. The sand around it adjusted with each wave, settling in with patterns and showing trails where edges of the leaf had scurried along with a wave. No resistance, just movement with life. Eventually the leaf was carried away to deeper waters where I lost sight of it. I imagined being that leaf, for a brief moment, moving with life… letting things come as they do and wash over me, then releasing it all as easily as it had come. Tumbling and rolling, breathing and dancing.

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