angelbirdflies

When I was a little girl, I dove into the vast boundless ocean and swam in her wide waters feeling the sudden weightlessness of all my worries. The deep stillness soothed, as water pressed against ears and flesh in an embrace so wide, nothing was excluded.  I called her "mama", even then, like a fish at home. I didn't have to think to swim, to glide in and out of waves.  I didn't have to be anything other than what I was in that perfect moment.  I didn't have to speak or pretend, to smile or look away. The ocean didn't have to be other than it was to be safe.  I was aware of shark and stingray, the tug of tide and pull of waves, of reef and jelly fish.   It just needed to be and in it's buoyant being I could simply be too.

Okay, we all know this, but it takes fifty thousand years for a plastic container to begin decomposing.  Take that little fact with you the next time you go to the grocery store. Humans! I feel apologetic to be one of them in the same way I used to feel apologetic for being a white girl growing up.  Knowing that "whites" had held themselves above a rainbow of dermal expressions, I was acutely aware of the obvious fact that I bore the skin of an oppressor.  I wear the mortal shell of human with that same weight of sadness when I think of how we, as humans, overlook our interdependence in favor of the delusion of elite separation.

China just sent me some more photos from our recent foray in Metchosin... ahh, sweet summer memories.

Then:  This picture was taken of Bodhi and I on the beach in San Diego when he was just a year and a half. Now: This picture was taken in Kauai four years later. My how they grow.