In times of distress, all I plan for is to take some space. One of the places I go to is the sea, I sit on the hood of my car to be lulled and hypnotized by the breaking of the water on the shore. I watch my besieged thoughts as they squander spontaneously one by one, giving in to the roll of the current. When I fill an empty space with my heavy presence to gaze, it usually means that I feel partly defeated, but mostly, I feel shrewd for acknowledging my partial defeat.
I escape my usual cocoon of blameless certainty to momentarily exist in the hands of God, or the universe, or the randomness of mere circumstances. And as I sit within myself, I also reside outside of myself and I watch that space between inside and outside as if I am viewing both through a screen. Here, in that picture perfect scene, and for a crucial moment – whether I know it or not – I comprehend that I consist of many layers and that there is an enormous depth of things within and without.
I sort of just accept my situation, my contemplative face softened with humility by the sticky salty vapor amid the sea and the sky, and all that’s imperceptible beyond and under them becomes somewhat discernible in my mind. I am at that moment also having petty thoughts, not just calming non-resistant ones, like thoughts of shame for pitying my state, for I know that victimization is dangerous.
Or maybe I vainly wonder if my newly formed frown wrinkle is visible to those around me and if so, does it dim the light and beauty I should otherwise radiate? I usually lament sullenly and so very pathetically as if this is it in life: all the worries that alternate between being legitimately big and ridiculously small. Even though deep within my core, sitting troubled yet harmonious in front of the sea, I know that this is not IT. I know that there’s no perimeter to the “it” I am living nor the “it” that will be. And that also troubles me with excited nervousness.
When I sit on the hood of my car or bury my feet in the soft sand, facing the sea, I am far from the comfort zone that I know – the one where most time is spent rather than lived, the one from which doubt is validated, the one from which I am the biggest saboteur of the quality of my life. And so in order to find credibility I satiate my time sitting in front of a vast body of water, to think about the insignificance of that constant doubt, the fragility of everything, the thin lines severed and the boundaries exceeded. You know, the fast roll or slow loll of things.
I forgive my saboteur, myself, by the sea. I accept her there after I resisted her elsewhere minutes ago. I love her after I sit with her and after I watch her spool undone in the current like a reel of blue thread that, just minutes ago, was tightly coiled. She provides for me a clear contrast between what I want and what I resist to take, where I am and where I wish to go.
After hours of darkness, it takes only minutes for the sun to rise.
And so it also takes me minutes after a visit to the sea to unbury my feet from under the grains of sand or jump off of the hood of my car and walk into the metal of it, usually with my shoulders hunched but my neck protruding like a stem of a sunflower that first bends and then slowly arches its’ many-petaled head upwards towards the sun at dawn.
I realize in the car that those freest of us do not mark our days by the hours of the night or day, that’s too long of a wait to come undone. We unspool quicker. We mark our days during the mere minutes it takes for the sun to rise or set. In those seconds that make each minute whole, the freest of us submerge in the contrast between remaining who we were minutes ago, or who we want to be minutes after.
It is only in this minutiae contrast where I can find my sovereignty: in the salty sticky vapor amid the sea and the sky. It is not dwelling in the nest of hate, nor residing on the peak of love.
Even though the sun has actually just begun to set, even though there will be six more hours for a new sun to give rise to a new day, and within just minutes, to take over the long night still yet to come – even though all of that – I press on the brakes to switch the car engine on, reverse, and drive home to an uncalculated day that has, within minutes, risen just for me.
by Beisan A. AlShafei
Beisan's Burble 