Tonight I felt like I wanted to write. I took many notes while on the full day tour across Pugent Sound to the San Juan Islands, that vast “sea” and “ocean” that yet wasn’t, with her waves that dragged me down as a drug, to the depths of the hardest sleep when I arrived home. I will explain that in a moment.
It was an 8-hour day, six hours on the water, two hours at Friday Harbor, with whale watching, and I have much to say about it.
I have just reviewed my journal, starting in 2009, and realized this is 2019 and I am still on the same road.
Dear Self, are you running to or running from? Or are you just drifting?
As I stumbled home after such a long day, to the kittens, the new era after having lost Alias, Patchy, Danny, and Lily Grace, and bless his short time, Levi, coming home to my Jackson and Libby, my Seashell, having betrayed Serenity…. the thought did indeed cross my mind, “But yet what’s actually changed?”
I collapsed upon the couch, after turning on my lighthouse lamp which turns as the real ones do, mine being 4 counts to shore, I could feel my sea legs rocking me to sleep. I could feel them and it was good. The sea was tipping me slowly back and forth upon that couch, as my eyes closed and I sighed in the dark.
After six hours, I had learned to walk the Glacier Spirit with a full cup of coffee in my hand, stepping over the feet of fellow tourists, the yellow stripes marking the steps on deck, the buttresses for each door, at times minus coffee, the steep stairs down to the Head and back, and she was hitting some waves that caused items (and small tourists) to fly.
Those waves had encapsulated my body as I napped upon a coveted small protrusion on the bow, just below the captain’s window, in the cold wind, feeling alive and yet somehow drained and hypnotized to where I no longer existed beyond that sensation of my body moving with the buffeting waves that caused others to exclaim, and my heart to be silent. I had found a fellow rider in Jessica, a young lady who also felt the mesmerizing wizard in the waves. We spoke of it. We spoke of Moby Dick. We spoke of the people who retreated to the heated cabin. We were happy they had left. We clung together shivering in the waves and the stabbing wind, both feeling whole, feet laced together and our heads nodding beneath warm hoodies.
My seat mates (had I been there) later told me they saved my coffee cup from shattering with a banking wave. Thank you.
On my couch, reliving it physically without choice, my body remembering, it was better than any massage could have offered. I felt happy and relaxed. Libby jumped up to snuggle behind my knees, as is our custom. Her warmth was as comforting as her purr.
It has been 10 years. Dear Self: Where, when, what, who, are you? Do you care? You should. Something lies ahead.
Let the River Run 