A fine day came along with the rare opportunity to enjoy a visit to the seashore. Preparations began the week before when healing was required for blisters on both heels. A nasty bunch of sores had broken out due to a bout of even nastier heel spurs right under the achilles. The recommended topical remedy backfired and created angry skin. The thought emerged that the best cleanser would be seawater.
A week later, the alarm rang at 5 a.m. to get the journey started. It’s a two-hour drive and with the restrictions on common activities these days, it seemed prudent to go early for that coveted spot on the beach. The last turn arrived, Route 108 off Route 1 in Narragansett to the beach entrance gate.
Sacred, a sacred overwhelming moment of joy rushed from the heart as I took a spot next to the red flag marker. How long had it been? How many years had slipped by since I’d last been to the coast? Blankets laid out, I gathered up the marigold flowers picked that morning in the garden. My old pagan groundings always said, bring a gift to the sea. Without hesitation, I walked in wading through a patch of seaweed, pushing past the breakers to lay the petals on the water. The joy was so intense I cried. My oldest and dearest friend in thee.
The waves were steady and light. The sun settled low in the early September sky. We’re just past the full harvest moon in Pisces a few days ago. The first swim and the ancient recollection of loving the chilly, salty water returned. Yes, the transcendental memory of having been a sea mammal in another incarnation rose up inside. My roots, deep roots of comfort in the mystical returned. How had they slipped away? This day was not only to heal the skin but to find peace and clarity. I am all out of the direction in this lifetime and feel lost. The path has not gone smoothly for my gentle soul. The smog of competition, greed, and ignorance has clouded in. Once, I only wanted to be with horses all day. I had that for ten years. Later, I wanted to be with the fields and trees. To survive, I had to move into different crowds and felt the sting of the tribe. An outsider, perpetually, fate had dealt the hand of an outsider.
Lying in the sand, voices drifted out saying, “what is it? It’s a person?”, “someone’s floating in!”, “it’s big, too big!” People were walking past my spot to the shore. Following the crowd, it was a shock to see a small whale had been brought in with the high tide. We gasped and said how sad it was to see the creature dead and being pushed by the waves. And it was. A young minke whale had washed ashore. Hours later, it was still on the shore, waiting to be taken away and buried. The sea gave us a corpse today.
The news broadcast said the cause of death was unknown. It’s not uncommon to see whales off the coast around Point Judith. But, not adrift and dead. Surely it was an ill omen. I’d come for answers and felt perplexed at the loss. How bizarre to enjoy being in the water, cool and clean while this being was lying there: a carcass. The message had to be a warning for everyone there. Something is not right, you are warned.
The answer came indirectly on social media. This post came up as I was scrolling. Mystical answers come in different ways. I believe this message is the larger meaning of what happened.
On the drive down, I’d listened to an NPR interview with the late poet Mary Oliver. She came from a neglectful home, I identified with this too well. She turned to nature for solace and found it sincerely. I asked for a message. I got one.
Mary Oliver ocean poem
“The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.”
Is this all some reckoning? Has the karma come around on unsettled debts? How can we clear our souls when ghosts of trampled spirits can no longer stay silent? How many have died from indifference? Gaia loves balance. Humans have long soiled the environment with their fragile needs. So puny, so dependent, so ugly. This sickness is not the plague, it foreshadows the nightmare to come. Consider it the prelude before the storm emerges. No swab, no mask, no mercy will save us now. We took too much. The Earth will have the last word. The dark moon in Leo does bring melancholy thoughts into the sun.
Without a basis in science, more a reaction to nature, it seems for years upon years, humans evolved around a migration cycle. Although it’s common now to be fixed, there’s still the memory of movement, not as a result of war or famine, natural disaster or plague, but to simply follow the sun. Should the sensation come along of restlessness, wonder if it’s not instinct asserting itself over domestication. Always the transition to fall is marked by a disturbance in the body manifested as migraine and mal de mar. It’s gotten milder over time. Still, the discomfort starts to appear in a sudden difficulty in sleeping. Little fluctuations start the desire to go.
LuceStellare 