"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again." Ecclesiastes 1:7
I may have been born in the Midwest, but water has defined me. Milwaukee, my birthplace, is located on the Southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. From my beginnings, I bathed in those waters. From there, we migrated, like so many in the early sixties, to sunny Southern California. It would be a few years before I found my way to the Sunset Beach at 7, and in the time between I spent hours in the pool whenever weather permitted, braving wrinkled fingers and chlorine-red eyes for a chance to be a water creature. It is said that I so loved the water that one night I slept walked out of the apartment to the pool and fell or jumped into it. There's no way of knowing whether I would have swam in my sleep; I was "rescued" and the story became one of my apocrypha. Still, when my mom started dating a man who lived on the beach and my weekends became filled with sand and sun and ocean, I think that was when I was truly born.
I don't when I began to remember my watery origins. Maybe it was when I began to follow an old friends journey back to himself. I missed the start of it, caught up with him a month or so into it. He had bought a sailboat, one that needed a reminder of what she was and could be again, mired in fresh water, poor thing, anchored, still, in a way a sailboat is never meant to be, not for long. Sailboats are born to wander as are the people who call them home. She needed work, lots of it, to make her seaworthy again, and bit by bit he gave her his blood and sweat, trusting her to help him find himself, she trusting him to do the same, working on each other the way we do in the best and truest loves. In his tale of seeking and finding, of making "his vessel," the literal ship, Susurru, and his body, as well as his metaphorical heart and soul seaworthy, I found deep resonances. And I vowed I think, in the wordless way we sometimes do, to make myself seaworthy again, to sail as I hadn't in 30 years.
Bryan's journey brought me to a new understanding of myself and my path. If we are water people, then a land-locked life, even when it's willingly chosen, demands a heavy price from us. If you are a water creature then you understand the little mermaid's curse when she assumes human form -- "But every step you take will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must flow." The sea called. I felt it at Pacifica, not just the beauty of the ocean, but how it brought me back to myself, put me in perspective. Being at the edge of water and land, I found a peace I rarely knew in the city I called home the last 30+ years. Nothing seemed too much; ebb and flow became the rhythm of life. I felt myself turning through the wheel of the seasons and the wheel of life and knew a peace I hadn't for so long.
I think all of us are elemental. We possess natural proclivities that draw us toward land, air, sea, fire. And I think our goal as we move toward individuation is to live as each for a span, growing comfortable with each, so we can call on them as we need to. It's not so far off from Jung's typology, actually, the goal to be able to circumnavigate the bowl of Self, to call on our superior and inferior functions as needed to become whole. I was born of air and fire (Libra with Aries rising), and came during my first 30 years to water and land (Scorpio, Taurus rising). Now I am in thick in air and fire but it won't be long until water rules my rising, probably for the rest of this life.
One thing my fifties are teaching me is this: We forget ourselves at our own peril. I found myself so lost in a dark wood, so unsure of my way, unsure if I wanted to take another step, tired down to the very heart of me. That was my wake up call. That was when I realized things needed to change, I needed to change. It took me a while to find what that meant for me. And I will admit that more than once I found myself treading the same well-worn path I had been traveling, as if nothing had happened, as if everything was the same, as if I was the same.
Perhaps what has made living in Sacramento tolerable for so long, is the way it is situated between two rivers, the Delta where fresh and saltwater meet, the Pacific Ocean a mere 90-minutes away. I could be a river, like the Sacramento and American, and it was almost enough. I forgot the hyrdrological cycle, the evaporation of us, the rain of us, the watershed and fiver flow of us, the ocean of us. At some point, I'd have to find my way back to Mother Ocean. It seems, I have. Yes, this river has run, like all rivers, back to the sea and I know the ocean's calm, and the ocean's power, and the ocean's peace of being. May it always be so.
The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time
begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the narrative
sea, or dawn when its pull is strongest.
What has brought us here
will lead us away; our ship
sways in the tinted harbor water.
Now the spell is ended.
Give him back his life,
sea that can only move forward.
I may have been born in the Midwest, but water has defined me. Milwaukee, my birthplace, is located on the Southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. From my beginnings, I bathed in those waters. From there, we migrated, like so many in the early sixties, to sunny Southern California. It would be a few years before I found my way to the Sunset Beach at 7, and in the time between I spent hours in the pool whenever weather permitted, braving wrinkled fingers and chlorine-red eyes for a chance to be a water creature. It is said that I so loved the water that one night I slept walked out of the apartment to the pool and fell or jumped into it. There's no way of knowing whether I would have swam in my sleep; I was "rescued" and the story became one of my apocrypha. Still, when my mom started dating a man who lived on the beach and my weekends became filled with sand and sun and ocean, I think that was when I was truly born.
I don't when I began to remember my watery origins. Maybe it was when I began to follow an old friends journey back to himself. I missed the start of it, caught up with him a month or so into it. He had bought a sailboat, one that needed a reminder of what she was and could be again, mired in fresh water, poor thing, anchored, still, in a way a sailboat is never meant to be, not for long. Sailboats are born to wander as are the people who call them home. She needed work, lots of it, to make her seaworthy again, and bit by bit he gave her his blood and sweat, trusting her to help him find himself, she trusting him to do the same, working on each other the way we do in the best and truest loves. In his tale of seeking and finding, of making "his vessel," the literal ship, Susurru, and his body, as well as his metaphorical heart and soul seaworthy, I found deep resonances. And I vowed I think, in the wordless way we sometimes do, to make myself seaworthy again, to sail as I hadn't in 30 years.
Bryan's journey brought me to a new understanding of myself and my path. If we are water people, then a land-locked life, even when it's willingly chosen, demands a heavy price from us. If you are a water creature then you understand the little mermaid's curse when she assumes human form -- "But every step you take will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must flow." The sea called. I felt it at Pacifica, not just the beauty of the ocean, but how it brought me back to myself, put me in perspective. Being at the edge of water and land, I found a peace I rarely knew in the city I called home the last 30+ years. Nothing seemed too much; ebb and flow became the rhythm of life. I felt myself turning through the wheel of the seasons and the wheel of life and knew a peace I hadn't for so long.
One thing my fifties are teaching me is this: We forget ourselves at our own peril. I found myself so lost in a dark wood, so unsure of my way, unsure if I wanted to take another step, tired down to the very heart of me. That was my wake up call. That was when I realized things needed to change, I needed to change. It took me a while to find what that meant for me. And I will admit that more than once I found myself treading the same well-worn path I had been traveling, as if nothing had happened, as if everything was the same, as if I was the same.
Perhaps what has made living in Sacramento tolerable for so long, is the way it is situated between two rivers, the Delta where fresh and saltwater meet, the Pacific Ocean a mere 90-minutes away. I could be a river, like the Sacramento and American, and it was almost enough. I forgot the hyrdrological cycle, the evaporation of us, the rain of us, the watershed and fiver flow of us, the ocean of us. At some point, I'd have to find my way back to Mother Ocean. It seems, I have. Yes, this river has run, like all rivers, back to the sea and I know the ocean's calm, and the ocean's power, and the ocean's peace of being. May it always be so.
ODYSSEUS' DECISION
By Louise Gluck
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time
begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the narrative
sea, or dawn when its pull is strongest.
What has brought us here
will lead us away; our ship
sways in the tinted harbor water.
Now the spell is ended.
Give him back his life,
sea that can only move forward.
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