Category: Meditation

Goodbye Summer

8/26/21 Thursday

The sun is hot but my skin won’t burn. The northerly breeze is cool but I don’t need a shirt. I walk across driftwood for hours and smile at my bare feet, I can’t remember where my shoes are, or the last time I wore any. It’s the end of summer, and this is the way a body is meant to be.

Tides and wind, rock and sand, terns dive in the distance for baitfish. They guide me to the salmon, which I fish for, because I am hungry. So I don’t starve, I go into town and get salads to go, and so my cat doesn’t starve, I go home to feed her. Holding her in my arms, she purrs for an hour until she falls asleep.

This is a life where the mind is quiet, where there is no dividing line between inside my head and the natural world around me. There’s no such thing as time, only cycles. Only vibrations. The sun is my companion for 14 hours a day, the nights last forever. Then, as things tend to happen – there is a change. I’m going home.

Following through with my commitments, I did end up starting a company with the motto “seeking a return on happiness through serving others”. My old boss left me a message, he wants to extend my previous contract. To help him I say yes. My son starts school soon, I need to be there to support him. My best friend is sick and tired of seeing pictures of me catching fish so he wants me to take him out. Probably most exciting is I have an actual date lined up with a real life American woman next week.

And so I say goodbye to this phase of life, and say hello to another. Goodbye summer, love you.

10 Breaths

8/4/21 Wednesday

Every day I pause to take ten breaths, with each one taking a little longer. The last inhale and exhale is the forever breath, where time stands still and the universe tingles in my ears. Usually this is in the evening after stretching, today it was at the beach.

This is where I’ve spent the last few days, my favorite place on the island. There’s no easy access, so I take the long way in with the kayak. It’s warm and sunny, and a perfect day to let go of the last 3 years of my work life. Time is spent looking for agates, fishing the kelp beds, drinking water, and just sitting. Over and over and over again.

After-the-rain.org / Ocean kayak

Days go by without wearing shoes. Everything smells like ocean. I brought food but forgot utensils, so I made chopsticks out of driftwood. I miss my son and my cat and my goldfish, but today Am Happy.

With an emptying mind new ideas take shape, and I’ve made two decisions so far about what to do next in life. #1: I’m going to start a new consulting company, just so I can have this mission statement: “Seeking a return on happiness by serving others“. #2: During each week that I do not have my son with me, I would like to not eat any meat unless I catch and kill it myself. This is just a morality issue I’ve been grappling with lately. Both of these are experiments that I plan to commit to for six months starting this week. I feel a lot better about #2 because I caught a salmon today, cleaned it, cooked it, and ate it. Prepared with olive oil, basalmic, garlic, butter, salt, pepper and all spice, and tossed with bowtie pasta it was the most delicious salmon dinner I can remember and I am grateful.

After-the-rain.org / Sockeye salmon