Thursday

23 February 2017

— my daffodil tongues up about two inches

Good Morning All,

 

So, I woke up with a start just after 2:00 this morning, the first thought in my head being: This crumby beach metaphor of yours, which you have built up over the past two days, is going to be awful small potatoes when and if you ever get to it.

  “Well," I told myself, "I’m a small potatoes sort of guy," and went back to sleep. 

Anyway, here are the small potatoes:

  The more I thought about beaches, the more it occurred to me that a beach is never the same and always the same. Every single wave that comes in and ends its life upon it changes a beach, if only a little. That would be thousands of waves each day shifting the sand around. Every washed up shell and bit of kelp, every chip of ocean-rounded glass, every human print and bird print changes the beach a little. And yet from year to year, the beach is still essentially what it was the year before and will be the year after.

It occurred to me then that every person I meet, every book I read, painting seen, poem read or written, every bird I marvel at in flight, every flute sonata I listen to changes me a little bit.

  Yesterday’s hands-rubbing fly, ants, dog, locusts, the gold star, Mark, Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Debbie, my brother David, the Howdy Doody jam jar, the girl sticking out her tongue, my heroic scared-of dogs dad, my mom checking my brow, all of them were at least one wave upon my beach, and most of them were more than one wave. Each changed me. Hearing about Old Mother West Wind changed me. As did the news of Debbie’s lazy eye.

In the April Day Book entry I was working on a couple of days ago, trying to get a little bit ahead, Loretta Lynn says they were catching lightning bugs in their hands and pretending they were diamond rings. One day when I am sixteen, Edgar Lee Masters tells me out of the blue that the earth keeps some vibration going there in my heart, and that is me, and if the people find I can fiddle, why fiddle I must. Johs sends Holly and me a quick e-mail to say he’s about to board a flight to Tampa to advise our military about how we get food to the starving people in southern Syria. Holly responds with a quick e-mail wishing him journey mercies. Each of these is a wave upon my beach. Each changes me.

Even now, writing this in my capacity as a small wave upon my own beach, I suspect I am a little different from what I was when I began this a half an hour ago.

And you yourself may well be a little different from five minutes ago.

  And yet … and yet in some entirely mystical fashion we each remain the beach we always were.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron