This time of year, folks enjoy heading to the beach. The 4th of July weekend is traditionally a time filled with barbecues, family beach houses, and fireworks over the ocean. Not this year, though. The pandemic is forcing beaches and restaurants to close, and there are no baseball games with fireworks displays. It’s just plain challenging in our current time to be joyous about much of anything going on in our country and world. There’s so much that remains unknown and unknowable about the coming days and weeks.
So, earlier this week, when I found myself at the coast, I treasured morning walks on the beach, sitting on the sand, watching as the ocean waves came in and out. Quiet thoughts until something caught my eye. A pole, about the size of a broom handle, was vertically bobbing up and down. It reminded me of a small version of Crater Lake’s “The Old Man of The Lake” hemlock log. I watched as said “pole” pitched and bobbed its way almost within reach. But not quite. I wondered, should I go in, grab it, and pull it out? What buoyant thing on the bottom was causing it to float straight up and down? Was it stuck in a jar with a message? Was it coral around pirate gold? Was it an unexploded ordinance from the nearby military base? WHAT was it?!!
I’ll never know because I didn’t swim out to check. Nor did it wash up overnight with the tide. It reminds me of the line of poetry that comes to you at 4:00 am, and you neglect to write it down. You can’t remember the exact wording. It’s an eternal mystery, the opportunity to know, gone forever. There’s angst around “not knowing” and yet also immense opportunity. As artists and writers, if we don’t know the “reality” of something, we can invent whatever we want to about it. The only considerations are the extent of our imagination and whether or not the structure of what we’re writing can contain it. In truth, I wish I had found out what “it” was bobbing in the water. If it happens again, I’ll make the other choice and investigate. Until then, I’ll let imagination take over and give in to the mystery and power of the unknown.
Photo credit: Dee Stribling Creative
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