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Before you know what kindness really is,
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth
-Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness"
In a previous blog I already shared the Isak Dineson quote which I live by: The cure for anything is salt water: tears, sweat, or the sea.
Of all my outdoorsy endeavors, I flail most markedly in the water. Not that that lessens my attraction to it.
Surely if we did not all have a bit of masochism within us we’d never love nor run, nor swim ever again. I was not an impressive sight in Lake Berryessa during that first bit of Triathlon! The most fortunate side effect of my advancing age (another birthday lurking like a stalker) is that "ego beat-downs" have occurred so often by now, looking lame isn’t much deterrant anymore.
I’ve had moments…dipping my fingers in the salt water darkess, glimpsing sea turtles laying eggs in the darkness on Costa Rican shores. Lurching into the ocean off a dinky Belizean boat, straining the snorkel and on the verge of drowning amidst my own Darth Vader noises-until another sea turtle awed my breathing into grace and we slipped into the quiet murmurs of aquatic life. Being far, far from shore in the waters of Thailand and I became like a true ocean dweller, fearless, swift, sure…I could have swam there for ages until eras passed and it came time to sprout legs and crawl onto the primordial sand.
Some would say it’s the fetal and primal memory in our collective unconscious. We evolved from a salty bog, were conceived, then incubated in another perfect salt water brew, and now that we are out walking about - some part longs for that dark, silty, saline security evermore.
What does all this water have to do with kindness or healing? Well, what doesn’t water have a role in? We are roughly 75% h2o after all…
I make a living providing a therapy-room sized womb where others can cry rivers or curse out our respective gods.
The most healing coversations I have had with other humans have come in the context of dancing, running, hiking, camping, cycling, climbing, and yes, swimming. What doesn’t venture to the surface in tears emotes via sweat. The tougher life became, the harder the bodily push. Until salt formed on my technical gear, I’d come home in auras of dust, and I lost blood and those pinky toenails…but maintained grasp of the levity that makes life not only bearable but endlessly amusing.
A subject for another days’ writing bout: the year that almost everything of importance tumbled away in a minor avalanche.
Call it the scorched earth school of character development. I learned that year how kindess presents. I felt the scarcity of supply acutely-but also its remarkable presence in the least likely of sources.
And to wrap, this new watery tune I am so completely enamoured with…(although keep in mind I most definitely frown upon using the ocean as an avenue to "end it all"). Temporarily, being haunted by the rather mournful voice of Roy Orbison has switched to this tune that snared me during a KFOG morning commute:
Into The Ocean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34kgciQyGbk
OK, post script, to keep this from being way too much of an overall downer I just have to include a rather talented 4 year old’s intepretive dance of the same tune
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MnE9Q7O4aew&mode=related&search=
p.s. so as I read about Blue October on the VH1 website, turns out that lead singer Justin stated that one of his earliest childhood memories is: the voice of Roy Orbison singing Cryin’.
How fitting.
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