The reality of economic times has begun to sink in at work.
Losing money.
Hemmoraging actually.
Like someone cut the jugular with a fillet knife.
With friends of mine going down and my own future uncertain, stress has begun to take it's toll.
Now...don't get all worried....I do not believe I am going anywhere....but there are no guarantees...and I am very aware of that.
In the history of my life there has always been one place I could go to get a grip, to see things from a healthy perspective, to be reminded of what I really care about, of what is important to me.
Now at the risk of upsetting my lovikins.....I must admit....it has never been a place of accompaniment, but of one of solitude.
The ocean has fed my hunger, quenched my thirst, and given to my soul more than any place I have ever known.
Sitting upon the warm waters, the cold waters, sun on my bare back, rain on my neoprene'd shoulders, salt on my lips, mist in my ...well...I have no hair....
The incredible peacefulness provided by some simple physics and timing. The glide across the water. The brutal punishment of being our of sync. The burning of tired shoulders and sun burned retinas.
The incredible release of laying a weary, salt/sun drenched body down to only dream about another day...one more wave....
One more.
I can remember mom standing on the beach growing impatient wanting to leave the beach and get on with more important things. My friends beckoning me. Girlfriends, and later, women, glaring at me as I looked away and with one finger in the air proclaimed..."one more!". As if they could hear me, audibly, or in any other way.
I always spoke a different language. The syntax was the same, the words correctly pronounced, but for some reason, nobody ever understood.
Times are different these days.
I live 90 minutes form the beach. Burning a bad day off in the water with the setting sun is a lot more involved than it once was.
So much has to go into this act of self indulged penance that it is often more than I can muster on a weekend let alone in the throws of a stress filled afternoon.
However, there is still one place I can go.
It ain't quiet.
But somehow it manages to provide a piece of that wonderment, of solitude, of self indulgence.
Simply put, there is not much that wrapping your self around 88 cubic inches of flat black and chrome will not put to rest.
Especially when you run up into the triple digits.
So here is to this life.
Here is to those moments that give to each of us in our time.
Here is to the remembering, the clarity, the sight, of what should truly matter to each of us...or not....after all...it is your life...not mine.
