Strange things happen when we give ourselves permission to retreat.
When we set down our luggage we fell, like a bodiless set of clothes, we fell to the ground, we fell down. We just managed to cross the singing meadow, from the Abbaye de Rhuys to the sea.
There we l
ay all day, on a rock, in windproof jackets, with no desire, no strength and no plans. Once I opened my eyes and saw a lizard, like me, lying on a rock. When the tide was out, dizzy and bedazzled I walked over the rock flats with their non stick coating of barnacles, and I saw a thin brown man with white hair lying under a low cave, who said without words, do not see me.
When we set down our luggage we fell, like a bodiless set of clothes, we fell to the ground, we fell down. We just managed to cross the singing meadow, from the Abbaye de Rhuys to the sea.There we l
ay all day, on a rock, in windproof jackets, with no desire, no strength and no plans. Once I opened my eyes and saw a lizard, like me, lying on a rock. When the tide was out, dizzy and bedazzled I walked over the rock flats with their non stick coating of barnacles, and I saw a thin brown man with white hair lying under a low cave, who said without words, do not see me.
On the second day we rose, gradually, enough to walk the coastal paths, to meet the sea plants, some of them strange. The chamomile, the honeysuckle, the blackberry blossom, Queen Anne's Lace and mallow are wild here, by the sea.
On the second day we rose enough to walk into the sea. As JC front-crawled to the horizon I settled on a rock to contemplate, but an inner command said go into the water.
Such a command, the command to LIVE, since I asked for it, could not be ignored, although I complained. I walked into the impossible cold of the water although underwear and body was baggy, and I swam.
Strange things happen when we give ourselves permission to retreat, put everything down, abandon. The things we longed to concentrate upon we never did. Instead, other unexpected and senseless things arose, like images spread out on both sides of a cloth. Things that were important are not, instead, the importanceof a song I sang last week with love, the terrible harm of a snide thought, the possibility to heal dark things which we never imagined.
On the rocks bristle little stone figures, pilgrims lining up and going out to sea, one with its rock arm outsretched. On closer inpection the figures are nothing more than stone set upon stone. It is a mystery how they survive the tides. JC, by lying still all day long saw the thin brown man with the white hair come out and set them up again.
Strange things happen when we give ourselves permission to retreat, put everything down, abandon. The things we longed to concentrate upon we never did. Instead, other unexpected and senseless things arose, like images spread out on both sides of a cloth. Things that were important are not, instead, the importanceof a song I sang last week with love, the terrible harm of a snide thought, the possibility to heal dark things which we never imagined.
