Careful what you wish for?

08 Aug 2010 1 Comment

by RV Princess in Uncategorized

I am in Fundy National Park, in New Brunswick Canada, the nearest town to it is called Alma. At the moment, I am posting this from a wonderful little cafe in Alma, which abuts the Bay of Fundy. These past few days have been trying. Mom and I haven’t been rubbing along easily. I am too critical, and am not sleeping well. Without sleep my irritation levels spike under little provocation. My Mom is who she is, and if I’d just set some boundaries, in a calm way, it would probably be fine. But, boundary setting is not my strength. I suppose it’s time, at 35, I should learn, no?

I walked along Wolf Point today, which juts out into the Bay, and also allows Fundy into it’s granite embrace in a horseshoe shape beach that is thick with red colored mud and rocks and small black snails that cling to granite rocks both big and small. To get to the beach, Mom and I walked along a fresh-looking wooden walkway built into the side of the mountain, bracketed by pines, whose boughs reached toward me, and scented the air all around. The lovely coniferous smell, both invigorating and soothing, sang on the air. I needed the soothing. I’m sad today…the beauty I crave overwhelms me so that I can’t let it in. The quiet I need eludes me, not because of an outside source, but the noise in my head makes my ears hot with sound. But the beauty….it’s so much to be with, it’s like drowning if you let it all in. How do you continue to breathe and drown at the same time?

I want to give you a poem I wrote some months ago, at the time that I conceived of this journey. But first, let me say that in this moment, I think a trite thing – beware what you wish for. A dear friend recently sent me an email saying that I am “cracking the egg.” I feel like I am drowning in beauty with no way out, except abandoning this endeavor, and all of this drowning is dredging up old feelings, old thoughts, old energetic patterns and I haven’t any notion what to do with them. I’m unmoored and without consistent cell phone reception or welcoming ears to listen, so I’m left only one way to communicate it – my writing. I suppose this water is my way to my writing. But oh, how she sweeps in great drenching waves! My poor soul is timid in the face of such power. If you stood where I stood today, you too would know the great fear that overcomes one when faced with such fierce beauty. Nevertheless, today Fundy gave me another poem. This poem needs work and isn’t ready yet for you. I hope it will be a good poem, not a well-behaved poem, mind you, but a good one. A powerful one, and with some original expression in it.

In the meantime, I leave you with this:

I want the Bay of Fundy.                                                                                                                                                                                               I don’t even know where it                                                                                                                                                                                            is exactly                                                                                                                                                                                                                          But I want it.

I want to be rowed out onto it                                                                                                                                                                                  by someone, ideally a beautiful                                                                                                                                                                          man with long fingered                                                                                                                                                                                          hands and a way with words                                                                                                                                                                                      or silence.

I want to sit in that row boat                                                                                                                                                                                      in quiet anticipation                                                                                                                                                                                                   and slosh and sway                                                                                                                                                                                                    and watch and listen                                                                                                                                                                                                      to water                                                                                                                                                                                                                              and watery creatures that                                                                                                                                                                                             I can’t see but can wonder at.

I imagine seeing and not seeing                                                                                                                                                                               the millions of gallons of water                                                                                                                                                                          pouring towards us                                                                                                                                                                                                        as we wait and listen.

I imagine imagining that water                                                                                                                                                                                   stroking every                                                                                                                                                                                                               rounded out empty place                                                                                                                                                                                         beneath the hull of our                                                                                                                                                                                             little boat                                                                                                                                                                                                                         and sandy pleasures swirling                                                                                                                                                                          around in those unseen places.

I want that.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I want to know without seeing                                                                                                                                                                                  to feel without knowing                                                                                                                                                                                                as millions of gallons of water                                                                                                                                                                              pour forth and soak every                                                                                                                                                                               shadowy place beneath me.

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