Seems things have been getting heavier around here as I've been getting lighter. Obviously there's more to be said about that--perhaps I owe an explanation--but let's have an intermission. I have lost so many things--objects, people, opportunities; and I choose to live without so many things--amenities, luxuries, status... As such, much of what is delightful and nourishing in my life comes from things found...
Things like wild blueberries, tiny, almost hidden, full of goodness and deliciousness that couldn't be bought.
Things like this rock. I pick up rocks every time I hike the beach, which is several times a week. Generally, all the rocks I pick up fall into a very similar category in terms of size and color. Occasionally there's one with a special shape or color. But this one I picked up two weekends ago, with the tiger face that can also be a sheep face and also many other faces and expressions is the most amazing rock that's eve come to my hands. It was washed up on the Homer Spit, and who knows how deep in the ocean it has been, from how far it has traveled, to be a found object and muse for me.
Things like this--what is it? Magnifying glass? Telephone receiver? Goofy toy, anyway.
Things like the potato people, slightly different every harvest.
Things like a whole sea urchin, whole except for the life force, every geometrically placed spine present, delicate filigree.
Things like this chip of fir bark with its own little figure drawing inside. I found it when I was down in WA at the Sandwich Academy.
Things like this piece of charred wood found a little way up from Bishop's Beach in Homer. Does that or does that not look like a fish?
I end with the rock again, since its coming into my life feels almost mystically significant. It's an odd kind of significance that I haven't yet figured out for myself--I've never been a cat person especially, although I have always been a rock person and a person who finds faces in objects without objective faces.
Mastery of the art of losing may not lead to disaster, suggests Elizabeth Bishop. But perhaps living with the daily losses that are life, I -- perhaps we -- can come into a space where loss is exhalation, finding is breathing back in. And perhaps, somewhere in there, is balance. That's my prayer for today.
