Every day you infuse with life and love
Leaves a double footprint:
One on your soul,
And one on earth.
Your life makes a path like that:
One will lead others to greatness,
The other will lead you
Safely Home.
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Tag Archives: Beach
I miss the ocean
I miss the ocean, the scent of it, the movements of the waves breathing upon the shore. I miss the blues and greens of the reflective surface mirroring the changing seasons from inky blue-black winter to clear sapphire to the softest cornflower summer.
I miss the rainy frothing autumn currents whipping up a storm. I miss the stillness of blue against blue with only white cottony dots, above and below, sailing on their way. There is nothing a beach or a black cliff can’t make better.
I miss the mooring poles, rusted orangey-red, standing erect on slippery slopes headed to sea. I miss the hexagon light huts with red hats casting longing glances at the starry horizon. I miss beach carnations, pretty Pinks, birthed savagely from stony cavities on barren cliffs.
I miss the sound of the ocean. Roaring forcefully, keening wistfully, or lulling soothingly, while polishing land and thoughts smooth and shiny. There is nothing better than being rocked to sleep by the ocean. Maybe it is the water in me calling to its twin, or the pre-historic aquatic creature longing for its origin. I am left to wonder.
But there is something about the ocean that moves me. Maybe it is time to move with it…to that island I have always been dreaming of…
Nordic Summer
It is June and the sun has come out. Finally. After eight months of cold, wet, snow and grey drooping skies. The roads have dried up, tanned into a paleness of taupe and stone marble.
Town gardens have sprung to life. Green climbers are cylindering up white picket fences and garden bluebells and peach blush roses lean towards borders of saturated unclipped grass. Lazy cats sleep on outdoor love seats, stretching their fury limbs in the direction of the sun and yawning sleepily at admiring bypassers.
Townspeople have come out of hibernation to drink cold beer in makeshift sidewalk eateries. The temperature has barely reached into the 60s, but the men have bared their hairy chests and women are strutting their white newly shaved legs to the warming sun. Here, neither animals nor people seek out the cool shade in summer, if they did, it would be considered equal to swearing in church. The sun is a rare, highly treasured guest in this part of the world, and we like to think of ourselves as her favorite host.
The seashore turns into an exhibition strip of pale bodies. Young and old shed most of their clothes and give themselves over to the national favorite summer activity: tanning. The brilliant blue sea shifts from black to lapis lazuli to aquamarine in the never-setting sunlight. And the archipelago becomes a playground for sailers, windsurfers and speedboat races in the daytime, and a treasure trove for young crabbers in the pale greyish dusk of the summer nights.
Many first kisses will be made in these long lawless nights. Hearts will be broken, new friendships forged and memories, to warm and sustain in the sunset years, will be made by unsuspecting youth, happily unaware of the passing of time.
Little red wooden cottages dot the shoreline surrounded by wildflower hills and yellow buttercup meadows. Some of them are boathouses, occupied by old fishing trawlers and temporarily by holiday-stay-at-home teens looking for a nocturnal hideaway. Others are aging holiday homes, sole survivors of a simpler time, when second-home owners were rare, and cabins with proper plumbing and electricity even rarer.
Woofing canines, leash-less and playful, prance around garden-style cafe tables, jumping to catch an occasional piece of prawn-and-mayo sandwich before it is snapped up by greedy whining giant seagulls.
And as bright days turn into a little less brighter evenings the smell of hot barbecue and daylong sun block fills the squares and the baked streets. Cover-ups and sleeved blankets hide the day’s work of skin darkening and some relentless, annoyingly repetitive radio summer hit with an irresistible foot-tapping appeal is boomboxing the awkwardness out of the otherwise quiet townies.
Time slows down during these precious sun-rich months in the cold north. Reserved introverted northerners find themselves dizzily drunk on too much vitamin D and transform into loud, half-naked, fun-seeking southerners, basking in the glow of the metamorphosed landscape, as though they were on a tropical island, carefree and uninhibited.
Nordic Summers are as intense and desperate as young couples in love, unfolding as though time did not exist, yet hurrying to blossom as though there was no tomorrow.
A Buoy or a Wooden Fleet
If you were shipwrecked on an island with a rising tide,
What would you choose?
A buoy that would keep you close to the shore,
While you basked around in the storm,
Or a wooden fleet without sails, leaving your fate
To be juggled by the varying constellations of
Stillness and chaos?
Something ahead of me
The horizon helps me
To understand the vastness of my own
Potential. I can always push a bit further, but
As I push, it too will move, just so, that it remains
Something ahead of me.
Destinations we know nothing about
There is nothing
As beautiful as a beach
In winter.
Dunes laid in snow,
And sand, coated
In shimmering hoarfrost.
And that black, cold sea,
Barely moving
Under the watchful eye
Of the pale January sun.
It makes me think of journeys,
Of comings and goings…and
Destinations we know nothing
About.
Honoring our Sacred Places III
Yesterday I went to my third sacred place from my childhood and teenage years. This place is a little further away from my parents’ house. I used to skip school and walk out here and spend the entire day in the company of the sea and the seabirds. I also looked for shells, treasures to take home with me.
Yesterday, I wrote a few prayer words in the sand for the sea to take to Heaven.
