Imagery … Seeing it in your mind’s eye … Being there in your head … a clarity.
Today (in my mind) I’m taking a leisurely slow walk along the beach, keeping an eye on the horizon, waiting for my ship to come in. I can almost see my ship now. It’s a tall ship with billowing white sails that are held by a strong straight mast in the center. There are lots of little ropes that weave around and through eventually forming knots that hold the beautiful sails that are essential to going from here to there.
The ship isn’t here yet, but I have to remain faithful that it’s coming. I have to just believe in it, even though I can’t see it. I have to sense it out there and pull it to me with invisible strings that are linked to my heart, not my head. My head is a doubter and it doubts the beautiful ship. It doubts the direction of the ship. It doubts sometimes whether or not the ship is even afloat anymore. My head gets so mixed up.
My heart can see the ship and can hear it, can hear the waves slapping on the heavy wooden timbers as they cut through the water. My heart can hear the sails snapping in the wind. My heart can hear the songs of the crew as they draw nearer and nearer to me.
I walk along the wet beach, seeing the ship in my mind’s eye, keeping hope that it’s coming, almost here, any day now, just around the corner, right on schedule. I walk with bare feet and drag a toe along the wet sand and look behind me at my footprints and wonder at where I have been. I look ahead at the clean smooth sand and know that the water comes over and over and over and wipes all the old tracks away,. The ever present water is forever setting the slate clean, setting the day up again, setting it right again, setting it new again and again and again, for as long as it takes.
The past is past now. It’s past and over and done and gone and behind me. And the ship doesn’t seem to be here yet. I scan the horizon, squinting my eyes in the bright sun and I don’t see it anywhere. I have to just believe that it’s coming.
This is what I have, this clean impressionable sand that is under my feet right now, here. This is what I have. I think that if I look behind me too much and if I let myself get turned around, I might never see the ship if it comes. I will be looking the wrong way and I will miss it. And it might come and go without me ever knowing about it. What a shame that would be! I wonder how many ships had my name on them, had a carved wooden maiden with my face painted on it, and my name scrawled across the front, and I missed it because I was foolishly looking behind me! No more. I must promise myself to never look back again. I must promise myself to concentrate on the imprint in the wet sand and every so often glance up to see if that beautiful ship is here yet.
March 8, 04
