I've been doing a bit of note taking, scribbling, rambling of words on paper really but with the hope to put some thoughtful, provoking words here for you, my reader. I have always wanted to write and I've always lamented the lack of time to do so. I often wonder what I'd be able to do if I devoted a considerable amount of time to it instead of giving it less time than moisterizing my face every day. Writing consists of 10% stabbing out letters and words on paper or keyboard, and 90% deep thought, pure open mindess to any perspective. It's the blood-sweat-and tears and the joy-love-fullness of what I'm living. I do an awful lot of reading. I have calculated that I have read perhaps 10,000 books so far in my lifetime. I've been reading non-stop since First Grade, through "See Jane Run" primers to Nancy Drew, Laura Ingalls, Danielle Steele, to John Steinbeck, Whitman, Hemingway and Tolstoy. My reading is becoming mature, just as I am. But I've loved my books perhaps more than so many other things in life. Perhaps more than is appropriate, but it is a part of me. Of course I love my family, my children, birds, flowers, peace and tranquility, the sound of the creek over cold rocks or the leaves blowing in the wind...I love all these things but there is a part of me that no one intrudes, and that is my reading self. For that is one thing I do for me, always have and always will. I love the written word, I love it more when it tells a good story. And that's what I hope to do, write my story.
This will be my gift to you, my reader. A gift for my mother and my father, brothers and sisters, husband, children and dear friends.... for their continual love, the very foundation of my life. Looking back many years to my first memory of "family", "we" were once a group of 8 living individuals--4 female, 4 male; together under one roof long ago, now we are 7 families living in 7 places. My heart still aches sometimes for those few precious years we 8 had together before we split forever to continue the next generation. I like remembering some of those days, hoping to bring the good parts into my family now, instilling some of those values, disgarding others to make our own way.
And we all have. Oh, yes we all know love is painful. The pain of distance, of years and miles. The pain of things said, and the pain of things left unsaid. But we can't live without love, good and bad, beautiful and sad.
One place I can go, besides retreating into my books is, not surprising, alone in the stillness of the outdoors. Perhaps I'm in my kayak, paddle resting, body still, ears perked while drifting in a salt marsh or skimming through tall brown and golden-green reeds in the winding creek. Or standing completely still in the woods in the dead of winter and hearing only silence for miles, so quiet you might hear snowflakes fall past your cheek....I like to sit on a big rock overlooking a bay at sunset. I like the solitary sound of my footprints in the dry, fall leaves. I like seeing my breath smoke out of my mouth on a crispy autumn day. In this, I feel a real kinship with my brothers, they are like this as well. And it is at the these times that I can really feel who I am, and the words come freely.
One of my favorite places is the beach is right here in north Florida. We are fortunate to have white sugar beaches that are relatively private and undamaged by modern times; fragile and beautiful, it's where I am at peace. Our first day at our beachhouse every summer usually involves going down our deck and steps that take us directly to the shore first thing in the morning, loaded up with skin protectant, books, magazines, umbrella, drink, sandles, towel...but the best way is simply to leave with nothing and just walk. I'm tempted often to spend my time taking countless pictures but realized I was missing the most glorious sunsets and the peaceful arcs the birds made through the sky while I was busy focusing lenses and switching equipment. Yes, the beach is best enjoyed simply and empty-handed. Only then can I hear the flapping of the osprey wings, the thunderous roar of the waves, the call of the lone gull.
Too often I'm bending down to pick up this treasure or that washed up on shore. I can hardly bear to walk along the tide's edge and NOT look for that piece of turquoise sea glass, or the perfect whelk, the most unusual piece of driftwood. I do enjoy picking them up still and looking at them, touching them and really feeling their surfaces. But now for the most part I'm okay putting a lot of those treasures back down and walking on. I take only the finest pieces. I want to walk without searching, without a care. I search instead for harmony, essentially spiritual, I believe. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention. I mean to live a simple life, to choose a simple shell, like that whelk I fingered in my hand...a shell I can carry easily; but I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and children must make their way in the world and I have other fiscal responsibilities as well. Instead, what a circus act I find myself performing so often! This is not simplicity but multiplicity! Sometimes I feel it does not bring me grace but that the constancy of it is killing my soul.
I like to watch the sly Willet, nesting in the ragged tide-wash behind me; the Sandpiper, running in little unfrightened steps down the shining beach ahead of me, and an old Gull, hunched up, grouchy, surveying the horizon. And I feel a kinship with them too.
Now that's peace.
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