Water – After the Rain

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.

3/28/21 Sunday

Hello, it’s been a while. After a silent winter, I’ll try to ease back into this. A good start might be to apologize for leaving so abruptly last time. I acknowledge it wasn’t fair to some of the readers I’ve grown closer to, those who have shared this difficult journey with me. The reason is that things were getting worse and more intense, and it was starting to have a noticeable effect on my son. Everything else had to be set aside while I focused on getting us through this.

There’s a funny thing I learned along the way about living through the pain and hardship. The issues we faced were difficult, severe, and consequential. Life in general would change as we knew it, as shaped by our own decisions, with recommendations from various counselors, advice from attorneys, and decisions handed down from numerous court appearances. However after coming through all that, I can say that ripping the bandaid off a failing marriage was better than continuing life as it was before, a sad charade of appearance, where habit, routine, wishful thinking, and long nights of emotional isolation became a breeding ground for fear, deceit, and manipulation.

The other day I went down to the beach just to watch. No surfing, no sailing, just watching seabirds and listening to the sound of the pebbles wash in and out with the waves. So present, so timeless. The longer I sit the more the “I” melts away, until there is only wind, water, and rock.. Not long ago the divorce was finalized. My contract at work is coming to an end, and the lease for my little cottage is almost up. The boat up for sale. I don’t remember the last time I felt so naked, so alone, so alive, and so excited about a future that is unwritten. I kind of thought this moment would be all about letting go, but the sea made me realize something – I already had.

Tag: Water

Goodbye Summer

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