Category: Words

A Two Hour Smile.

8/11 Waves.

It was a good dream.   Vague and mostly forgotten, not at all unsettling, a slight smile in my sleep.  I seemed very young, maybe seven, still free with innocence, unencumbered by later life.  It was a hot day, summertime, and we were, or had been, at the beach, where I had spent the entire day engulfed in waves.  Diving under, jumping up, turning so that the back of your head had the wave break over it while you looked through to shore, maneuvering for the next one, on and on.  Bodysurfing.  Giggling underwater all the way to the sand when you got caught.

Then came the post stoke relaxation and good sleep.  Warm breezes, full moon, abundance of life and living.  The August cicadas were singing away, celebrating the season.  Something then turned, the timing too early.  Soundwaves getting louder and louder, threatening my sleep and dream state.  The dream faded, like youth, or a good summer on the first day of school.  My alarm was blaring, no longer a cicada’s song.  I hit snooze.  Ahhh, crickets….

This new silence was not feeling like more real sleep,  so I grabbed my camera bag and water housing and headed down to the beach.  There was a slight North wind, which is always good, but heavy stratus cloud cover prevented any sunrise light.  Scanning the ocean for whales and dolphin, I waited, enjoying my 7-11 large, dark coffee.  Didn’t see any, but noticed the waves were actually curling a bit, first time in a while.

When I opened my bag to grab my 16-35mm, the lens was missing.  In its place was my 24-120mm.  Wasn’t sure if it would fit in the housing and with no collar on the lens there would be no zoom, but I gave it a shot and got lucky.   24mm, not bad for leaving the house half asleep. (EDIT:  looking at exif data, the zoom slowly shifted towards the longer end.)

Patches of blue started peaking through the grey.  I headed down toward the Fire Island Lighthouse.  Bare feet in sand, coffee in hand.  The next two hours brought changing light, one long smile, a few giggles, and the focused, alert, wake-full-ness of salt therapy.  Living in a dream.  It comes in waves.

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Always, Always, towards the Light.

Happy Easter!

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Habitually, continually, building ego-castles in the sand is the crucifixion of your Light. It’s vice. It’s human.

Attaining contact with and living with your inner Light is your resurrection. It’s virtue. It’s Divine.

That is your cross to bear.

Rebirth starts moment by moment.

Love, Compassion, Grace, …Light.

  • “We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.”  -Dwight L. Moody
  • “Easter is not limited to the passion and death of Christ; it also includes the dismal tragedy of life unlived by the many, and all the loss of passion and truth that goes with it.”  -Michael Leunig
  • “Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life.” – Janine di Giovanni

 

Also.  The Sun always rises…

 

(Thoughts and comments welcome!)

Spring Equinox

Half-way over that mythic sunny bridge… A little more ocean warmth, some warmer breezes, sun, sun, sun.. salt water baptisms, and lively stirrings of the soul…..

Monday, March 20th at 6:28am on the east coast, was the vernal equinox. Picture the imaginary plane upon which the Earth revolves around the Sun. The Earth is always tilted at an angle of 23.4 degrees. All winter, the southern hemisphere was tilting towards the Sun. This kind of sucks for the northern hemisphere if you don’t snowboard. It even sucks if you have a wetsuit. On the equinox, however, the Earth’s tilt is such that the Sun shines directly on the Equator – the half-way point between the southern and northern hemispheres. “Equinox” – “Equi” meaning “equal”; “ox” meaning not the 53 point Words with Friends move, but the dyslexic Aussie down-under “kiss”. (Their toilets flush backwards too, xo.) More Sun kisses further into the night. Lord knows we all need some more Sun kissing our faces.

Astronomers often mark this equinox as the beginning of a new orbit around the sun. Astrologers start the year with the Sun entering Aries. Since ancient times, it has been known as a time of new beginnings. Think of the great traditions – Easter, Passover, Spring Break, or the bloody human sacrifices of the Mayans at their main pyramid El Castillo at Chichen Itza, Mexico. The main staircase of the pyramid is constructed at such a precise way that, on the day of the equinox, the sun aligns perfectly to create a serpent of sunlight, slithering down the staircase. Ancient Aliens??? Illegal aliens???? No. Stop. Their calendar ended, died, on the winter solstice of 2012. Sometimes people get out of bloody control and too wrapped up in their own customs.

Easter is a nice myth symbolizing rebirth. Kill a savior. Resurrect him. Rebirth. He planted a pretty big seed there. More symbols… Easter eggs. Eggs. Birth, fertility. Someone planted the seed that on the Equinox, you can balance an egg on its end. Well, don’t try this at home. You will die trying. Some myths are out of bloody control. Some are even co-opted by bloody control.

Spring is green. Its not just a fresh coat of paint on new and burned bridges. Green is chlorophyll harnessing the sun and allowing life for billions of years. It ramps up in Spring, rests in Winter. Every year. For billions of years. We are intimately, genetically, directly, connected to this past, its pattern, rhythms, cycles. (And yet, if you want to think esoterically, your mind should die to all past internal and external noise, and be born again with each new moment. This idea, however, gives everyone but the gods, a freaking headache. Which is fine because Spring isn’t a head thing like bloody dogma. Spring imposes its own new prism, new perspective, lessening the need for a good esoteric game.) Go to the beach or walk through town around happy hour on the first sunny 75 degree day of the year. You feel it. You feel the source of Myth. Warmth on your face, ease in your smile, vitality in your core, spring in your step, blood-pumping, aliveness, buzz in the air.

And, clams come out of their shells.

 

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Rock Hopping

…slowing the whirlwind, not one step at a time.

…a short piece of writing by Dean Potter, ex-Flow king climber/base jumper:

***Cold air from the valley drifts upwards. It’s predawn and I’ve been moving on the north Nose of El Cap through the night, focused on the rock in front of me in the faint light of my headlamp. Suddenly, I think of how tired and exposed I am, alone, ropeless, far past any point of retreat. A surge of panic courses through me. I try to think of the summit but that thought, too, is dangerous.

An image floats into my mind. I’m following my father in the early through a pasture in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He strides towards Moosebrook, his favorite fishing spot. I’m not even half his height, and the frosty grass brushes all the way up to my waist.
We reach the river. My Dad skips from rock to rock, downstream to the first hole, and looks back for me. The water is freezing, and the rocks are covered in slime. I’m afraid to follow. I burrow painfully through the thickets of pricker bushes, swamp, and blackflies as my father calls for me. The bugs chase me back to the river’s edge. and I timidly wade in and try to catch up. Tense and anxious, I lose my footing, and fall into the river. I gasp for breath in the icy water, but manage to scramble onto a rock where I bawl until my father comes back. “I don’t like fishing. I want to go home”.

My father shakes his head at me, and his eyes sparkle. “Dean, put everything else aside. There’s nothing to be afraid of, except a little cold water. Just focus on the next step you are taking. I feel so happy running down the river, the sun reflecting off the water, my body naturally going where it’s supposed to. I almost don’t think at all. I just respond to what’s in front of me.”
He stops talking and heads downstream again. We slowly pick our way across the rocks, catching rainbows and brook trout. The day passes quickly and my confidence rises. Soon, I’m playing and racing down the rapids with eyes wide and senses alert, not knowing I’ve just received my first lesson in Zen.

The air drifts over my body. I grasp the immediate. I reach for the next hold.****

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This story struck a chord in me. I vividly remember being about 6 or 7 years old, visiting my Grandma in upstate NY. There was a gully with a stream rushing through it, complete with rocks at all angles, slippery moss, and icy water. I used to love hiking in that stream as a kid. It was beautiful, serene. Fairly quickly, I learned the art of sprinting from rock to rock, without any distractions. As you pushed off with your right foot, your body already knew where your left foot was going to land, and the precise angle you should land on to prevent slipping, while sending you in the direction of the next “pre-selected” rock. And it was all so effortless. It exhilarated and calmed me at the same time. I guess my addiction to the state of “Flow” started here. In one way or another, I’ve been pursuing this state ever since.

In the moment, harmony, complete concentration without effort, zoned in. When you experience this deeply, there is joy, a smile on your face for days. You have tapped into a great state of consciousness that is not always easy to do.

OK, enough rambling… Go back and read the article again. Instead of reading about climbing and rock-hopping, read it as a metaphor for life. Life as it should be, not the whirlwind of stress it often becomes. Life can be a rock hop if you allow it.

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A Light Tenacity

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Empty My Cache

(If I was a pirate…)

During the Carboniferous Period, 290 million years ago, the Earth’s churning mantle and other forces of nature forced a large mass of igneous molten rock into the more ancient metamorphic rock already in existence. The result was the granite bedrock underlying much of the lakes region of south-western Maine. As the molten rock cooled, crystals of quartz and feldspar and slivers of reflective dark and light mica formed, giving the granite its colors of whites, light pinks, light tans. Varying fluid pressures allowed for variable grain size of the crystalline structure. Higher pressure and slower cooling time allowed the individual crystals to develop larger in size. There are also dark colored rocks, the result of Mesozoic Era (225 to 65 million tears ago) intrusions of a new and different composition of igneous molten rock. These dikes can be seen as the narrow bands of basaltic black, cutting through the light granite. Some of these rocks and formations are quite beautiful, but they are only foundation upon which the glacial ice sheets carved their art.

The last ice sheet retreated in melt over 13,000 years ago. Glaciers are immensely powerful rivers of ice. They flow downwards at an exceedingly slow pace, but the weight and pressures created by the flow over the landscape is enough to carve out and pulverize the existing granite bedrock. This was this process that carved out an area that is today, roughly 47.5 square miles wide, reaching down to a depth of around 325 feet.

Sebago Lake is large enough to now serve as the public water supply for the city of Portland and surrounding areas. It also serves as Vacation Land, due to its beauty. Surrounded by the evergreens of the Maine woods, the shoreline of the lake consists of coarse sandy beaches, granite outcrops, boulders, cliffs, and marshlands. The fresh air smells of pine, and the water of the lake is possessed by magical properties of which you can drink. In summer, surface temperatures are pleasant for swimming. Dive to 100ft and you will feel yourself pass through five to seven distinct thermoclines. Your bubbles will sound oddly crystalline. It is cold. The clarity of the water and the geological artwork allow you to endure shivering.

522092_10150854859692275_1097173206_nDown there is this boulder, the size of a huge house. It is cracked open in the middle – a split of three to four feet. Within this split opening are lodged many smaller boulders that didn’t quite make it to the bottom. Fun swim-throughs. But what most people miss, hidden in the deep bottom shadows – is the Cave. Its at the base of this split rock. You enter a small dark chamber which leads to a small opening. You’ll need to take your tank off and feed it through, then follow. Your flashlight now reveals another small chamber that has a small drop-off ledge on the far side. Be very careful not to stir up any silt. A dive partner can place his arm into the opening to remain in contact with your fins. However, if you wish to explore a little more, you must break contact. You go alone. Proceed to the small drop-off ledge on the far side of the chamber. With full arm extension, you can almost reach the bottom of the drop-off. Breath. Reach. Move slowly. Feel around. There you will find a pillowcase. Breath. Be gentle. The contents of the pillowcase were hermetically sealed in a long fire-side night’s worth of candle wax, almost ten years ago. I have forgotten the brands and vintages, but I recommend the White with a Maine seafood dinner. The Red will work, chilled on a cool fireside night under the planetarium of stars. But don’t wait too much time after the dive to celebrate with shots of some good, smooth, aged, tequila. You won’t need any rocks.

Cheers…