January 1, 2013

Once a year, in the decade that defined my thirties, I traveled to an island off the coast of Mystic, Connecticut to take part in a women’s retreat.

We met around the date of the Perseid meteor shower.

Over time a core group developed. Women who returned to the dark edge of the ocean year-after-year, just hoping to catch a glimpse of falling light.

Maybe that experience is why the poem, “It is Born” by Pablo Neruda, remains my favorite.

It is Born
by Pablo Neruda

Here, I came to the boundaries
where nothing needs to be said,
everything is learned with weather and ocean,
and the moon returned  
with its lines silvered  
and each time the shadow was broken 
by the crash of a wave  
and each day on the balcony of the sea  
wings open, fire is born  
and everything continues blue as the morning.

If each day falls
Inside each night,  
There exists a well  
Where clarity is imprisoned.  
We need to sit on the rim  
Of the well of darkness  
And fish for fallen light  
With patience.

Anyway, there we were, sitting on rocks, listening to the waves, watching the dark sky and chatting.  It took a couple of years for the ceremony to begin, but it quickly took hold, and I suspect I wasn’t the only one who made the journey back each year just for those moments.

The ceremony was simple. In the dark, there would be a splash, and a woman's voice would call out a gift she’d given the ocean. Sometimes it was a desperate gift, something that could no longer be borne, something so big and wild and frightening that only in the cover of darkness could it be named.

Sometimes it was a hope, burnished until it was worn smooth as bone before it was banished to the sea. Sometimes diamonds and pearls were thrown. Those barely made a sound when they were tossed; still, they were named.

And sometimes someone said she just wanted to live long enough for her hair to be braided again.

And then we began to realize alchemy was possible at the edge of that island.  The ocean is big!  And powerful!  We began throwing things we wanted to be rid of and name what we wanted in return.  

And then we’d all stand up together and throw rocks and laugh.  And the stars would start falling and eventually dawn would come and some of us would still be there, waiting for the big light of the round sun.  

Years ago I moved away from that ocean and in this ever-more-landlocked home I try to find new edges to throw my ‘thing’s into.  

This year I want to catch up with my soul. I want to inhabit it, I want it to inhabit me, I want to be as locked in the center of my soul as I am in this great wide country. And I'm willing to throw off the bushel basket where I hide, me and my little flashlight, and read, read, read; write, write, write; and paint, paint, paint, and become the light I've waited for all these years.