Solstices and Songbirds

There's a blackbird outside on the willow. I'm watching it carefully. Knotted branches swing gently in the wind. The breeze pushes backwards and forwards. Lightly enough that the bird seems happy to hold on, but not so gentle that its presence can easily be ignored. The bird must be aware of it.

A deeper sense of motion. Somewhere.

The blackbird starts to whistle demandingly. Long trilly bursts repeating in time with the waving arms of the willow. An unexpected synchronicity stirs memories. My thoughts fall in step. A rhythm. My eyes close. I'm aware of deeper motion. Somewhere.

Elsewhere.

I'm small and a drop of water trickles past my ear. I'm floating in the eternity of ocean. My eyes are squished closed. Daydreaming of endless blue freedom. Am I part of the universe or is it a part of me? I let the waves raise me up and down. My body sways happily. I'm comfortable with the arms of the sea rocking me. Embracing me. In a small moment of forever I feel a blissful resonance. I open my eyes.

A planet spins.

I'm seventeen. I'm talking to my friend Maggs about the sea. How I've grown up around tides and currents. The dangers of gullies. All the ways the water has seeped into my existence. The song of vast space that calls out and folds me into the cosmic.

How I feel now sitting at the edge of the sand. Lost.

She shares back. She's telling me about her loss too and the rituals of her island life. She's sharing Kavanaugh, "Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter." I feel part of her world colliding with mine. Her words connecting me back to something reassuring. I'm not alone in mourning, not alone in searching. A trickle of deeper understanding tickles at me. An ocean without for an ocean within?

Momentarily I'm floating again, but I'm young still, and I miss the value of this moment. I'm blindly frustrated I can't join the water. Angry I can't feel the moon. I breathe in deeply, trying to use her soothing tones to calm the frothing waters.

Silent shores.

I'm alone in the dark thinking of loss again. I can't help it. There's a wrenching pang. A rising tide comes in fast and the moon in my window tugs at me to join it. It urges me desperately to come and find out what I'm missing. I squish my eyes shut to block the light only to hear waves beginning to crash against rocks. Except I am starting to know that what I miss now isn't something real, exactly. It's not tangible. Not finite and solid and hard.

It's changing and amorphous and moving. It's fluctuating currents through time and endlessly shifting time lines. Paths opening and closing and getting lost. Riptides tearing at foundations of stability. The sharp undercurrent biting and the slow undulation of waves throwing me around without control. I'm so angry and I'm sad and it's a tsunami of sorrow in the night.

I remember a friend. She's laughing at the overwhelmingness of it all. I smile and blink away remnants of a salt laden storm. You don't swim against the tide. You surrender to the sea.

Float don't swim.

Light gleams from a screen. Mottled marine hues dance on my hands. Marine mosaics hint at answers in the exploration of a forgotten temple. The Call of the Sea is a game that beckons. The careful, crafted ideas of this entire island reverberate against the confusions in me. The one floating in the water. The one stuck by the sand. The one alone in the dark.

I'm rebuilding myself here in some ways. Putting broken tiles back in place. Searching pictograms for answers. Norah is lost and conflicted. In sharing her space, I too feel that loss. This temple is the culmination of a journey. I know that behind all these mysteries were incomprehensible forces. Imposing architectures so endlessly vast I'll never really understand them. A realisation for Norah is that in the end, despite it all there's still a choice for her to make.

I chose an ocean within.

It's Solstice and I'm feeling lost again. The old pangs and worries still return from time to time. Maggs isn't in my life now to remind me how to take the first steps forward through the sand. Except I'm different now. I finally found the value in holding onto those moments. I seek them out.

So I'm thinking of the sun and talking deeply with new friends. I find the old feeling of calm echoes in. The moon calls. The sea inside me responds.

Together we mark the turning of light with photos of our skies and we write all the words we wish for ourselves and cast them out. Hoping the tides will be kind and bring our futures back in. Our intents shape the currents of who we might become. What we might need to leave behind. Placed out carefully amongst an endless blue dream. It's simple and beautiful and fleeting. A connection with something terrifyingly large and comfortingly cosmic.

Amongst the memories a different kind of comfort embraces my cheeks. The deeper current underneath. A sense of motion elsewhere. Somewhere.

Here.

The bird finally breaks from its noise. Turns toward a chaotic chirp of laughter instead and a patter of wings as it takes off . Idle memories scatter back in the ocean wind.