Tag Archives: boat

City Walk

Posted on by Standard 4
Photo collage: City Pavement

Photo collage: City Pavement: Photography by Noelle

I walk along the Hudson river in Manhattan near my brother’s home. Cicadas are singing in the trees. Sail boats are on the water and today there is a good summer breeze. A father speaks to his son in a language I don’t recognize and the boy squeals with laughter, a language we all know. Two women jog past, sweating and talking about stock trades while four girls ride pink and purple bikes ahead of me. There is a group of East Indian men speaking in excited voices about something in a soccer game on a park bench. A large and very loud, woman covered in tie-dye down to her sneakers offers me jewelry, as an elderly man taps his way up the stairs with his cane behind her. Two men kiss by the water’s edge and a boxer’s head suddenly protrudes from a bush looking for a stick.  I hear the cicadas again in the trees randomly vibrating their timbrel membranes which make those distinct vibrating sounds we all know in summer. It’s like a musical back drop to all these people moving in and out like the waves on the river. More peaceful than the band playing on the speedboat that bursts by, but louder and more strident than the homeless man who speaks ceaselessly in a whisper to no one in particular. I smell the lilies in the garden boxes and fresh cut grass. I stop. A tendril of hair moves along my cheek. All of us are living our lives from cicadas to the homeless man. Each life as dense with events, mundane or exotic, as each seeks out. Every single one unique. Nothing is the same. Not each living thing, not each second that unfolds. That butterfly has never moved or landed on that hibiscus, with the light coming off the water like it is doing right this moment before. That’s why it’s all about The Now. Every second is a snowflake. A divine finger print that is like no other.

Untethered Boat

Posted on by Standard 2
Free Bing photos

Free Bing stock photos

Today, I send into your meditation an untethered boat.  It drifts in the early morning on a slow moving river, just off shore of a small dock. Bits of fog come and go and the sun is not quite up yet. You see glimpses of the opposite shore with trees and brush, but it fades in the mist as quickly. The oars rest in their locks at your feet. Your inclination is to pick them up and row. Row out onto the river and see where it goes or row back to shore and the dock. Three beliefs arise with this plan. The first, is to validate the belief that you must “do” something to get “somewhere”. The second is to affirm the belief that “effort” is also required to reach some destination. It may seem as if “doing” and “effort” are the same thing, but they aren’t actually. Doing means activity and busyness that may or may not take effort or yield any meaningful results. Effort means work, exertion, and definitely implies hoped for results.

What if you didn’t pick up the oars? If you simply let the boat drift in the morning mist? This brings us to the third belief. Can you believe in the river? Trust in its swiftness? Trust that it is going in a direction you wish to go? Trust that the scenic route, will, in fact, deliver the scenes you wish to see? Today, ponder what would happen if you let go of the doing, the effort, and the need to know where it’s all going. What would happen if you just let it all go and drifted on this slow moving river, in an early morning mist, with no idea where you are going at all?

Voyager

Posted on by Standard 5
Free Bing Stock images

Free Bing Stock images

The apartment is quiet. I breath in slowly, holding it a moment before letting it out. I breath in again and close my eyes.

What separates me from the great explorers? Are we not all voyagers? Am I any different in substance and character then the captains of old? Crusty souls, masters on open seas, with nothing but gulls to mock their misadventures and palms to hail their gold. They hungered deep within their hearts for other treasures, too. Love, beauty, freedom

I breath in and the sound of my heart beats in the distance.

I stand, eyes closed and breath in again. The clock ticks in the kitchen. I hear the rattle of the blinds as the wind slips in. This time comes the scent of the sea. I wait, breathing silently, until the ocean spray touches my face. It heightens my awareness of the flapping sails. I stand ever so still. Breath in, breath out. Tack lines move across my feet as they feed out. This helm holds the trails of so many hours in my pacing.

The wood of the wheel has a warmth to it beneath my palm. Worn, warped, mine. I stroke it fondly for it is my companion, as much as, the means to find my way. Tidal currents move at angles on the water ahead, but I hold the wheel steady. The ocean moves beneath me and I’m terrified by what I cannot know or see and exhilarated with equal passion.

The sextant, too, feels substantial and weighty in my hand. I bring it up to my eye and hold it steady on my future. It is distant, but objects within are clearer to me now. I can set my mark. Breath in. I am not as far off course as I thought. Breath out. A few calculations in my sea journal and I move the wheel slightly to starboard. The spray rises and the wind fills the sails. That distinct flapping comes to my ear, as a switch of an ignition somewhere in my mind. I hold my breath and listen. The rhythm of the hull rising on the sea surf, then dipping below the horizon with a soft flop.

My heart beats in the distance.

The salt and the sea now envelope me. I run my hand lovingly across my map. A map built in sweat and love, tears and anger, missteps, wrong turns, high flying freefalls and laughter. Yes, a rich laughter, indeed. My map. My life is lines of longitude and latitude and strange sea monsters with lolling tongues. Or are they guardian angels? I’ve forgotten or can’t remember. I have been adrift many times. Always, at some point, I catch a wind and find land to regroup and set out again.

Breath in. Breath out.

The sound passing my lips is the only sign the ship is in motion. I look up. Orion is on the horizon. I am a star gazer and my ship has many ports still to see. Master of my destiny, I am. I breath deeply one last time of the saline sweet air. I lay the sextant down, loneliness settling where it filled my hand. The clock ticking in the kitchen persists. Blinds rattle in the dirty apartment windows. My heart beats steadily in the distance. The map folds close as eyes open.

Breath in, breath out.