Resurfacing

Resurfacing seems like the only word that comes to my mind upon entering into this world again where the thought becomes texture to pop into written words. My last blog, which was more than several months ago, headlined with mine/our fascination with other people. Given a plethora of many other things to be rapt with, I believe (and still do) that only other people provide me with a myriad of thoughts to base my little world around. We humans truly love each other when all is said and done (well, most other humans). If not in agreement at all times, we provide a mirror for each other and delight in a quick exchange, laugh, expression or taking in of a new thought that perhaps we haven’t heard before from our fellow humans. Maybe this is obvious? Probably, but in a world where we see each other through masks and it’s hard to truly read nuances of an expression, the obvious needs to be dragged out into the light. I hate cute sayings that are overused, but WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. And hopefully we can hold on to the together part. I would like to think that it should be obvious that our exteriors (our skin color, our ethnicity) is just that, our exterior. Yet the racial divides have reared their ugly heads along with this virus and this only adds to our dismay as we’re trying to be birthed into this new world. Our delight in our fellow humans is set against the stark contrast to the world we’ve been living in for the last five months. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to observe and do some writing. Like everyone else, I have been catapaulted through all of the news, observations, theories, opinions and too much volume with everything. I’m sure much of what you will read here has shown its colors in one way or another to you, but I hope to put some spin on things that perhaps you haven’t looked at in quite the same way.

Hurrican Isaias touched down upon the shores of New York a few weeks ago and left many fallen trees and loss of electricity for some in its wake. I was fortunate enough to have only a lot of tree limbs and debris on the small bit of land around my house but it made all of my windows dirty. We had our windows professionally cleaned only a week before the storm and I was so gratified to have some clarity to look out upon our fallen world. This much I could control. Well now they are dirty again and it got me thinking that it just provided a further metaphor for how I feel about the world right now. I am aware that it’s just a lense for look-out yet it is what I could control and this too has failed me! EXTERIORS. Just that. And we will be failed by others and circumstances. We understand this now more than ever. All the more reason to go IN.

My house has become my sanctuary. Spots that were formally passed by have taken on new meaning. Like the strip of floor in front of my stand for my laptop to do yoga Zooms or my back deck in all of its Summer glory. I bow to this and ruminate in the glory of the space for our beleaguered bodies. This I know, yet ADVENTURE SEEKING IS SORELY NEEDED! In the bustle of the daily routine, something in my innards cries out for a place that I haven’t seen, a drive that would get me there, people I would meet along the way. Recently, I dragged my family (resistant teen and almost teen in tow) to the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ. Paterson (especially after our drive) seemed like an unlikely place to this feat of beauty to settle itself, but it did. It was also in the low 90s, everyone else seemed to have had the same idea, and there was little parking. Our bodies stumbled out of the car and my consciousness fell upon the great rush of water, the small cliffs overseeing its watery gestures, the SOUND. Lou Costello also happened to have been born in Paterson so we went quickly to see his lonely bronze embodiment in a run down park that meant to have a hay day, but if it did, it was long gone. We got back into the car and drove the 35 minutes home. While at the falls though, the people we saw were of every type and the mingling of dialects, religions and colors all brought us to these Paterson Falls. I was in simple awe of the beauty of our gorgeous diversity. We probably shouldn’t have, but we exchanged cell phones to take pictures of each other. Strangers meeting by the falls. A woman in a turban smiling with the kindest eyes as my sister took her family’s picture with the rush of water in the backround.

Even still, Summer brings so many expectations with the season. Will my soul be able to escape my ritualistic frenzy enough to truly soothe my mind? And what is this frenzy as we charter new courses to take? In a time of tumult, our ritual can become like a warm bath of what we know. The outside world is still somewhat shut down. Our grand city of New York is marred and ripped from its previous glory; no theatre, restaurants in the way that we knew them, concerts. People are starting to gather again in small groups choosing to slightly ignore experts because there’s that urning for togetherness. How much is too much? I ask myself this all the time. If we’re tested, the results are sometimes turning out to be half accurate and then we can still get the virus right after we’re tested. My daughters, who are probably storing this strange isolation deep in their pores somewhere, want to congregate with friends. And I don’t wish to be “that Mom” but my husband John is over 60. Too many thoughts to turn over before we give our precious Summer over to Fall.

Fall. What school will bring. Working our way up to the most heated presidential campaign of our lives. See how the numbers settle after our togetherness of Summer. Before it transitions again, we are going to the beach. The waves of the ocean have no thoughts and have been around and around, receding and crashing, since time started.

I finish this now from the beach. Teaching myself again how to relax. What is relaxing and how does the body transition itself from the usual busy to this soft spoken dream of an existence? I will be letting myself go to where I need to go before it starts all over again. Before we buckle up for another ride into the places of unknown. If we take cues from nature; the growing of a garden, how we feel with our bare feet on grass, the listening to an ocean that knows everything, then perhaps we can store it away for when we need to go into battle again. Even if it’s taking on a form that we will constantly learn to study and get to know in its alien and off-putting way. This black virus. If I couldn’t get to an ocean, what would I do to wind down the barking of the last six months? Even with our beach trip, I think that taking a body on any kind of trip (walking, driving, kayacking, swimming, meandering in all that nature provides) can only be beneficial for the tossing and turning of waves that is our mind taking in way too much. And being aware of breath. Matching the ocean in the in and out.