The experiment of rocks in a container that still has room for sand and still more room for water is a powerful reminder when I think of self-care as the rocks, the first thing to put into my container. In the past two years I’ve hustled up enough part-time work to nearly replace my full time job…but there are no paid vacation days, sick days, or even weekends. I’m working constantly. Granted, I’m delighted with the work, but it’s all consuming. Last weekend was the first break from all work since April. I went to the coast for a wedding. Saturday morning I woke at my usual 6:00 a.m., brewed some coffee and sat down in front of the window facing the ocean with my Power of Words homework and journal. I could hear the crash of the surf, but the view out the window was still black except for the reflection of the reading lamp. I went to work with the “TLA snapshots.”
Pat Schneider offered me a ray of insight, “Not being able to write is a learned disability…If you can daydream, you can write. If you can cuss, pray, joke, tell what happened in the hospital cafeteria to a friend -- you can write.” Nancy Shapiro via Flannery O’Connor illuminated my morning with, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Then Pam Roberts affirmed with a bit more light, “…everyone has a story and…the telling and the hearing of our stories is healing. And in this healing lies the realization that we are more than just our stories.” And so I write…just a few lines about the swelling rivers back home, the sink hole on our street, the power of water, of rain and floods and ocean waves, their blue white foam just now becoming visible through the thin transparent piece of glass, which with walls and corners, and a roof protect me from the elements. I write about the awesome and awful power of water…only 100 yards away like death roars. How is it that I feel more alive with the possibility of death so near? How is it the five stalks of sea weed clinging to the basalt wall between me and the ocean manage to survive the constant barrage of waves? How is it seagulls trust the currents above enough to still their wings and just ride…flipping 360 degree like a Blue Angel? How is it the lacy white spray at the crest of a wave looks so harmless?
The sun has risen, as it does every morning. “…no matter how thoroughly we have convinced our intellects…our unaided animal senses… Whether we are scientists or slackers, we all speak of the “rising” and the “setting” of the sun, for this remains our primary experience of the matter” (Abram, 114). I put down my pen, my work, my worries, my thoughts, my creations, metaphors, dreams, and plans; for the first time in months, I allow myself to just be with the ocean and the gulls. I release to Abram’s suggestion to stop looking at nature as “a fixed and finished entity waiting to be figured out by us” and instead view it as “an enigmatic presence with whom we have been drawn into relationship” (118).
And I am renewed.
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