Some mornings a pair of porpoises cruise the waters in front of me. Almost always a flock of birds swoops by on their way to find the next feeding ground. My favorite companion is what I call the lone surfer duck. She, always unaccompanied, bobs on the surface in anticipation of the next cresting wave, which she dives head first into, then pops up in the calm waters of the other side. I see the surfers imitate this behavior with their boards to avoid getting knocked back to shore as the work their way through the breakers and think what a fine teacher Nature is for those who pay attention.
The past few mornings I've seen Pop, pant legs rolled up, knee-deep in surf, holding his fishing rod high and squinting into the sun. He is a pillar of patience and peace on a desolate beach. That's what fishing will do for a person, I suppose, if one can get past gaffing an innocent minnow or drowning a defenseless earthworm. I hold that image of him like he holds his rod. The first time I saw him there, I cried, but he came over to sit with me, providing his usual wordless comfort, and to ask what the hell I was drinking out of a hollow gourd with a metal straw.
"Naw," he said and turned up his nose, "You drink it. I'll stick to my coffee."
So, there you have a glimpse into how I start my days. This afternoon, swinging in the hammock that hangs on the deck of the beach house I don't pay a dime to live in, I said to myself, "Damn, I'm blessed!"
After a short pause, I said it again, "Hells bells, I blessed! Besides this awesome set up, not a single drop of my coffee has sloshed out. The sea breeze is so gentle with its pushes."
Blessings snowball, if you acknowledge them one by one.
Elsewhere, the book project has turned halty, if that is a word and means stop and start. I don't feel like looking it up in the dictionary and I'm in an emotionally stable enough place to be wrong should one of you uptight types feel the need to correct me...and it does happen.
At the writing retreat in Carmel, CA that I forgot to tell you about in the last update
the facilitator suggested, and I agreed, that a collection of essays
would be the easiest route for me, since I already have many near
finished. Then I got the wild hair idea to send five of them off to a
big time editor, most likely because I am still sickly
incredulous that I am capable of publishing beyond the safety of these
travelogues. She responded that I am a talented writer, who would best
serve herself and others by writing a memoir while trying to place
essays in magazines. Then we had this long discussion about truth, THE
TRUTH, and my tendency to exaggerate for the sake of entertaining.
Fiction or non-Fiction, you can't straddle the line. This commentary has
provoked an existential crisis for me and my writing. A memoir? First
of all, that implies that I think my silly little life has had some
significance beyond my pandering through it. (another word usage doubt I
don't feel like looking up--if it doesn't mean pondering while
wandering, it does now).Second of all, write about your life and you
start touching the touchy, namely privacy issues of those you have to
include in the story if you are really going to tell it like it was."Just write it for yourself," so many have said. That brings up the REAL issue: Audience--without one beyond myself, I'm not motivated to write; with one I'm afraid to write for fear it will be deemed mediocre. I've a 50lbs trunk of diaries I've already written for myself. Anyway, I've these things to ponder as I pander.
Cuba! Sandy postponed that trip for us until Jan 10. We did complete the first part of the training as scheduled in Miami and it got me all fired up about leading these "cultural exchanges." We have been emphatically told not to use the words, "vacation, tourist or donation." I am leading participants on an exchange program and the extra bags of toiletries, clothes, baseballs, candy, etc are gifts for our relatives in Cuba. If it all started with Adam and Eve....well, we're not telling a lie.
Until then, I'm hanging in Punta del Diablo with my dear friend, Yolanda, who owns the cabin I stay in. We are working in the garden, cooking, sunning on the beach and talking life. She is one of the people I most hold dear in my heart and our meeting reinforces my belief in reincarnation. We are definitely picking up where we left off in some other life time. How is it that you can work side by side with someone 40 hours a week for ten years and never really get to know them and then you meet someone haphazardly in a yoga class, go for a walk on the beach and realize you know this person as if you were born in the same family 13 months apart? Soul magic over milliniums.
I'm bummed about not spending my favorite holiday with my cousins in VA, but to ward off the blues, I'm organizing a Thanksgiving dinner with my "family" here. A couple of chickens might have to stand in for the turkey...feathers, lay eggs, pecks the ground, close enough.
I've only taken a short bus ride to the border town to shop since returning, so no funny seatmate story this time.
All the best, and always love, G
