Okay, well maybe
beginnings aren’t always easy, I’ll give you that. There are some beginnings we rush to with joy
and find our way through so easily it feels as if it was all of it meant to be,
as if the gods had a hand in it. I’ve
had a few of those in my time. And then
there are those beginnings we have to be forced to, kicking and screaming. Every damn bit of them is hard and you don’t
know until you’re will past them and can look back, that these too were meant
to be. Mostly I find my beginnings
bittersweet, joyous and painful, which suits something that always holds in it,
endings as well as fresh starts. (And
okay you could argue that after that first start out of the birth canal there
aren’t any truly fresh starts, and I would probably agree, but we like our
myths of clean slates and chances to start over and who am I to deny us that,
deny myself that?)
There seems to be in
the early stages of new beginnings, these points where you could go back to
what you were, where you were, and while not the same, never the same, you
could pretend or perhaps find close enough.
Maybe it would be better, that going back. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe your staying would be better, or maybe
not. You’re at a crossroads, that
powerful place ruled by the dark goddess Hecate, she who knows but doesn’t
always tell, she who is eternal but choses to spend that eternity as older,
wiser. It takes a special god to eschew
Olympus for decision points, for places where past and futures and present
meet.
Since I’m on the
“road” so to speak, with just my traveling shoes and a swim suit and without
the benefits of wifi and internet, I’m going to have to let go of research and
sources and write from the heart, from my own memory, from what I digested over
all these years of the gods and their dominions. Hecate is the least well known of the
goddesses, a major part of some important myths, including the Demeter and
Persephone myth that was the basis of the Elysian Mysteries, but secretive as
would befit a goddess of night and magic and places where choices are made. Some have called her the witch’s goddess,
although she has always seemed to me too primal for such a narrow realm. Hecate was never part of Zeus’ brother’s and
sisters; she’s older, maybe a Titan, maybe older still, like Hesiod’s Eros, an
original being, there at the beginnings of man’s creation.
No matter what her
beginnings, Hecate definitely made choices and let them mark her. There is nothing Janus-faced about her.
Several times in this
beginning I’ve considered going back, although, to be honest, there may going
somewhere else but there’s no real going back to what I was, to what I
had. These moments came, predictably,
when the reality of all I didn’t know about sailing hit me and I wasn’t sure I
could learn it all fast enough not to do something foolish and hurt myself or
the boat or Bryan. They also came at
those points where Bryan and I are trying to find our way of being
together. There was the reality of
anticipation and distance and this new reality of together that we both have to
find our way of doing and being. And a
few times, I just found myself missing my daughter, my dogs, my friends, the
predictability of that old life which I don’t have in this one, and probably
never will.
Which brings me back
to the Japanese proverb about the hard path of continuing with the beginning,
seeing it through. Sailing continues to
startle me with its metaphorical applications to living and life. You make your plans, prepare to the best of
your ability, and maybe it will happen just that way. Or maybe things will change some, the day of
departure, the destination. You must
find a peace in not getting what you want, or what you think you want, but
always getting exactly what you need. We
were going to go to San Salvador Island but because we needed to be guided out
of the marina in Turtle Cove, we had to leave earlier than originally
planned. When we did the calculations of
our average distance traveled, we realized we would find ourselves at San
Salvador at 2 am, no time to head in to find an anchoring. So we looked at the cruising guides and the
charts and came up with a new destination, Cat Island, and plotted our course
accordingly. When we arrived, there was
no place to anchor at our first destination, so we found a customs point of
entry and went there and then, sailed to a different place to anchor, off of
New Bight. Originally we were going to
stay in San Salvador Island just overnight, but we chose to spend a second day
at Cat Island for a chance at better weather was we crossed to Spanish
Wells. All through this trip there have
been changes – chosen spots replaced by new ones, timetables abandoned due to
sickness or bad backs, what seemed our rhythm replaces by another and another
-- and a dawning understanding that it all is perfect just as it is. I was a plotter and a planner and part of the
hard road of my continuing is letting these parts of me go, realizing they may
not be intrinsic parts of me at all, or that perhaps at this stage of life,
they just don’t serve me and so should be let go of, not always easy as those
of you who are plotters and planners yourselves know.
So this is where I am
in my Odyssey, continuing. Before I
started, I knew this trip would alter me in many ways. I have chosen at last to be a traveler and
not a tourist in my life, to let the journey and the places mold me, to become
what life want me to become as opposed to what I think I am or what others want
me to be. And I don’t know where it’s
going to lead which is why under the light of full moon, I offered up prayers
to the goddess of the crossroads, not for a set conclusion, not even for safe
travels, but for a good journey, for my journey, to become what I am meant to
become.
As for the rest, we’ll
see/sea, which is my new mantra these days.
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