Musing on the Sea, and a New Year

I went to the sea yesterday, as I often do on New Year's Day, to give my soul a breath of fresh air, and to reconnect with the ocean. I'd been gone too long. I'm living some little way from the coast now, and find it harder and harder to get there, between my schedule and the price of gas. So easy to forget what the important things are in a busy life. I miss the ocean.

It's where I write more easily, where I breath deeply and fully, where I remember all the living things that surround me – birds, fish, animals, people. It's as if I step into a whole new world. And it's a place where I remember who I am, what's important to me, what I want to be and do in my life.

It is a dangerous place. I hear, almost always, a call to join it, to walk in, submerge myself, the siren song that says my blood is made of ocean, and must go back to it. How tempting, on those dark days, to set all else aside and become the sea. And this very strange dichotomy, because that same sea fills me with life, courage, even joy.

I love the colors of ocean. The days when the sun, sparkling as it sets, spreads a silver sequined gown over the water. Or the times when the sea seems sullen, gray, angry, restless. The calm of the water when the tide turns, and everything seems to halt for just a bit while the sea gathers itself, preparing to hurl itself up or down the shore. And the impossible blues and greens on a sunny spring day, as she trumpets her beauty.

It seems fitting to start the first day of a new year where I'm happiest. While to many this first day may seem insignificant (it is after all, simply another day on the calendar), to me there is a particular feel to it, a sense of possibility that buoys and invigorates me. One cannot slough off the happenings of a previous year, but it is possible to narrow one's vision, to look ahead instead of back, and to reorient one's life to a small extent.

This is my New Year's resolution: to look ahead instead of back. I can't forget, but it is perhaps time to set aside mourning, sadness, loss. I remain intensely grateful for all the good in my life, the people and events that have brought me here today. I was lucky to be loved, even for a little while, and to give love.


OCEAN

For just a moment,
    on the shore,
I understood Ocean as killer;
Knew why suicides submerge themselves.
The strange dichotomy:
     Mother, lover, muse:
    Ancient temptress.