ocean

It has been a long time coming. Stepping off the plane was a dizzying experience, my senses overwhelmed by bright colors and clean air, the stark opposite from the dull polluted gray that is NY. It was also surreal. Not because I couldn’t believe it but because I felt like a part of me never left the last time I was here, and that I was just picking up where I left off. Surreal because suddenly I couldn’t tell you where the past 2 years of my life had gone as it all became a blur, a dream. I’m disoriented. It’s the feeling of stepping into a new life that you’ve seemingly already had established, that it was all just ready for your body to get with the program. It is also a sort of reincarnation in leu of what was left behind.

I’m in a personal year number of 1, a year for transformation and manifestation, as is the entire world. The last nine years of my life is a closed book now, and this is a new one. A continuation of the story, but its own story nonetheless, completely untethered and with my own hand guiding the pen. This year will set the stage for the next nine years of my life. It’s a year to remember, and a year for the history books (and globally too). What will I make with the resources at hand? What resources do I even have at my disposal? I’ve set out to discover just that.

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While walking through the community I live in, I noticed how shut up each house was despite the beautiful weather and fresh ocean air. It was then that I began to have the passing feeling that my history in NY is actually a blessing. These people have no appreciation for the weather or beautiful scenery because they’ve never had to live without it. They’ve never had to live as caged animals for half of the year, or to have an uninhabitable climate where the air hurts your skin upon contact. Or perhaps these people have made their cages and prefer it there. Either way, I see my past as a blessing in this way, and so my windows will remain open.

I don’t and will never understand how people can see nature as a luxury. With all the tourists here, my immediate thought towards them wasn’t negative. It was “Wow, I get to live somewhere that people pay money to visit when they’re not working.” I wonder, do people know why it feels so good to be here? It is because the soul says ‘Ah! Finally. Something that is real enough to bring nourishment.’ If we don’t consider that a priority, or if we don’t appreciate it when it’s right in front of us, then we are as plastic as the things we buy.

Although I haven’t had the opportunity to post in a while, I recently had the honor to be a guest on Writer Emily Mundell’s blog. Thanks again Emily. Here is the link to that post, which was about my stance on internal inspiration .

Also, thank you Marci Brockmann, Joe Milians, and Jen Dougherty for becoming a patron for Metanoia!

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Heaven is not so much a place as it is a perpetual moment.

The air is somehow both cool and warm as I breathe the saline scent of ocean air into my lungs. There’s no one in sight when I scan the horizon, but I do not feel alone. In fact, I feel more accompanied than I ever have been. The sunrise is welcomed, casting slightly different shades of orange and gold than it did when it left the day before. I drift off into contemplation…

I’ve learned at a very young age that people can be an unreliable source of love. It’s not necessarily their fault, we are only human. Families move. People lose interest, find a new person, or new group to associate with. In the worst cases, some will even be subjected to their own mortality early on. It’s not complicated. Others are not always going to be there for you, whether they can help it or not.

I’ve also come to find that everyone has a different idea of loyalty, and that others won’t always try to see from different perspectives in the way I do. I’ve become accustomed to the fickleness of human beings, even learned to anticipate it.

However, it is true what they say: when one door closes, another one opens, and sometimes for a good reason.

I had a unique childhood, cast away on barrier islands on the south shore of Long Island. I was able to find love in the extraordinary, beyond flesh and bone, and I am thankful for it. I found love in the persistent undulation of the Atlantic. I found love not just in the heart of others, but in the heart of nature. I found solace in the relentless way waves crash and recede. I found it in the micro and macro cosmos of all things, both living and seemingly inert. I found it in the potential of a drop of salt water. I developed a deeper appreciation for the physical properties and processes that govern our world. I began to associate love with what was raw, and unseen, as I knew there was more than what my eyes informed me.

I’ve learned almost everything I need to carry on with life in the temple of nature, a perpetual moment of love.