IV. home, again

A squeeze of your shoulder tells you who is there | Between Memories

Floating in the ocean is one of the only times I find it easy to be held. I trust the water completely, even though it could overpower me easily. Even though it sometimes does. Just thinking about it makes my eyes well up, but the tears never drop. They rest in a state of convex anticipation. When I was art school, we would say a sculpture like that has a lot of tension— you know what I mean?
I feel like a baby when I’m in the arms of the ocean.

Babies are born with a soft spot on the top of their heads, a gap in the skull that allows for the brain to grow over the first year of life. It wouldn’t be possible to fit through the birth canal if the head was any bigger.
A baby’s head is particularly vulnerable to injury and must be held gently. That same spot smells sweet, as anyone who’s held a newborn knows. Eventually the bone knits together over that spot and leaves a seam forever marking the spot.

The Crown Chakra rests there, at the top of the head and a little to the back. It is our connection to the divine, our spiritual center. This area and the space above it contains the history of our own consciousness. You can feel a pressure there in meditation sometimes. Maybe it’s like a tiny birth.

The Chidakasha is behind the center of the forehead. It is an actual location, but once inside it the space is infinite. I heard once that if you place your awareness at the base of the skull and look up towards the crown as if it were a starless night sky, you can see it.

Much of our experience in the physical area of the head takes the form of thoughts, ideas, personality, anxiety, and attempts at prediction. Yet just under the surface there is a convergence of portals, and you can’t take your mind with you. Some say our energy that preceded this particular lifetime can be felt here, and that babies are closest to the memories of other lives. As their mind grows they forget.

It seems surprising that you could forget who you are, that the idea of you can become so real that you don’t realize you made it up. Or that others can tell you who you are so many times that eventually you believe them. The idea becomes the truth until you remember that this too is a dream. There’s comfort to knowing that.

There is a large rock formation protruding from the ground, with cracks and craters filled by water from the garden hose. Every now and then my mother turns from the plants to the rock, and the water is cold and clear again.

I’m 6 years old, I think. I crouch down and plunge my hand into a quiet pool, drawing my index finger across the cool, rough surface at the bottom.

The wetlands behind my house are teeming and I stand up to walk towards them. As I reach the edge of the lawn I can smell the skunk cabbage and the sweet decay. The air clings to my skin and the songs of chickadees echo through the trees. I place my feet carefully in the driest spots and the bright leaves curl around my ankles. I’m walking faster and faster, until I’m running.

I can barely breathe, my legs moving of their own desire. Finally the light becomes brighter and I see a wide open field. I search for a good spot.

I thought I was creating a place to return, but I became the house.¹

A series of still images of the beach flash rapidly, representing the years of my life.

Which beach, and how far did I walk?
Who was there and what emptied out of me that day?
Was I afraid or did I throw my body into the water?
What strange life lingered on my skin as I crept back onto dry land?

I guess that’s why it’s hard to cry sometimes. You want to keep your saline memories and shake your fist at the wind.

But I’ve learned it’s best to surrender them, I’ve become quite good at it. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m weeping. Spilled contents take on new meaning outside their container and some tears have no special meaning at all.

So I worry about the beaches, the coastline, and erosion. I worry about the oceans filling with plastic, with pieces of us, and how they keep getting warmer. Conservationists might plant new grasses along the sandy shores but more often we just dump piles of sand from somewhere else, only for them to wash away the next year and we repeat the whole business again.

Dunes are fragile. They are a special habitat for nesting birds, who can traverse the surface without disturbance. They are designed with particular relationships in mind, and although loosely compacted their friendship with water protects the coastline in storms.

At the western edge of Provincetown, MA there is a breakwater that leads to the very tip of Cape Cod. It’s over a mile long, and parts of it are nearly submerged at high tide. When I was twenty-three I dropped acid and walked all the way out to see the sunset from the unpopulated beach at the end. I found tiny white stones and placed them in a stack. I wondered if this was how it felt to build the Taj Mahal. I held my face close to shallow pools of water and inhaled deeply.

We had heard there was a shuttle to take you back to town, but unsurprisingly we couldn’t find it and had to walk back in the dark.² I’m embarrassed to admit that we got lost, and I found myself walking across piles of grass that stretched across the horizon. I whispered apologetically as I carefully placed my feet. The grass compressed with a hiss and pierced between my toes. I felt as if I was walking along the back of a Woolly Mammoth. Trying to make myself as weightless as possible, I prayed that I would find the breakwater in the moonlight.

It began to drizzle as we reached it. I curled my toes to grip the edges of the cool, wet granite.

The house was adjacent to a lake. I built a hearth inside with chairs arranged in a semicircle. A single room was upstairs with cozy beds, pillows, and a big skylight. Light reflected off the blonde wood casting a glow across the floor.
For the next year, I came back. And we ran through the wetlands and finally, home. When I enter the house now it is full.
They welcome us to the fire and help us settle. Sometimes I would notice a new painting or cup.
One day I walked upstairs to lie down, and I saw a somewhat older woman. I could not quite perceive her face but I knew she was me.

”Come here,” she said.

I lay down on the bed, and she sat the edge and put her hand on my chest.

“Don’t forget to do this.”

A wave rises and pushes itself forward. The future and the past, still images flash across my vision— throbbing and alive.

The faintest whisper in my ear,

Next post > V: Favorite

1. My body is a house, given to me at birth. It has quirks and unique charm, and requires some maintenance. It has survived a few catastrophic events, the effects visible and felt. I tend to it lovingly, even when it seems a chore or unlike the other less weathered houses. I reside inside the house principally. It is the vessel where I live. But I also travel outside sometimes, and return when I’ve had enough adventure. I decorate my house, inside and out, I express myself in that decoration but it’s not an extension of me. My house holds memories, good and bad, but the house is mine and I choose to love it anyway. This used to feel like a resignation but it doesn’t anymore. My house is a residence but it’s also a temple, and its rooms are always changing. Houses can be lonely but mine isn’t. It’s full and alive, and I’ll enjoy it while I’m here.

2. Moments made extinct in the era of the smartphone…remember when you had to look up directions and if they were wrong you were actually lost? Without even a built-in flashlight to help you? What a luxury to have such adventures where you accessed ancient instincts, and navigated by sense and moonlight.