Ruby Red Beach Glass

There are a few things in life that I can honestly say that I am really, really good at. Walking the beach probably tops the list of my all-time greatest accomplishments. I have walked the entire length of the eastern seaboard here in the US and most of its west coast too. The beaches of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia are particular favorites. I've walked the beaches of Mississippi, Alabama, the panhandle of Florida, Puerto Rico and some of the Caribbean Islands. Beaches in Hawaii, beaches in Ireland, beaches in Italy. When I moved here to Magnolia, I never dreamed that a smallish, crescent-shaped, stony, kelp-laden cove, would turn out to be my favorite beach in the world. Both ends of the cove are anchored by large granite outcroppings, but one end is more massive, wilder and more spectacular in a storm. It is also the end that marks the beginning of the land on which my revered spirit home, Clarke Pond is located. It's a magnificent, ancient place where the tree line stops at the water's edge and the trail into the forest begins. A magical spot.

The entire beach is only about six/tenths of a mile long and at low tide you can smell it for blocks. It's a smell that makes most people wrinkle their noses with distaste, but I love it. It is the smell of primordial soup - the place we all crawled out of so long ago. Somewhere in my limbic brain I hear a tiny voice murmur, "home". And I am inexorably drawn towards it. I can spend hours mucking about in the long thick strands of seaweeds and various varieties of kelp that lie piled knee-high along a third of the beach where the prevailing current deposits them. Particularly after a whopping, big storm... Magnolia Beach becomes the recycle repository for all the flotsam and jetsam that humankind and nature can heave up. I've seen some amazing things tangled in the kelp: a dead deer, a conch shell (native to Florida - what a tale it could have told!) large parts of boats, a baby seal, a small completely intact shrine to the Virgin Mary, animal bones that defy description, an entire garden's worth of tomatoes, bits of broken dishes, and always the inevitable bits and pieces of plastic. And beach glass. Lots and lots of beach glass.

Bottle stopper

I am a beach glass junkie. There are many, many containers of all types around our home with nothing but beach glass in them. Most are sitting on window sills to catch the light. I've found a few pieces of glass over the years that I consider extraordinary: a piece of large, flat, clouded-white glass with chicken wire embedded in it (what on earth?), a beautiful piece of amber glass with a lovely raised design, a bottle stopper, an old marble perfectly eroded, and the handle of some type of cup. Fabulous treasures one and all. There are the very few, deeply cherished, small cobalt blue pieces. I have glass that spans the colors of the rainbow, delicate lilac, baby pink, deep olive... all absolutely gorgeous. But no red. 

Red is the holy grail of beach glass for most collectors... at least it always has been for me. I have browns that dissemble in the light and ambers that flirt with distant cousin reddish hues. But no red. I have combed beaches for 40 years looking for glass, throwing back those pieces, no matter how lovely the color (not red) because they "weren't done yet", gathering, always gathering. But no red. Until now.


Imagine my surprise when my beloved David and I were walking Magnolia Beach a few days ago, both of us having wandered off in different directions in silent reverie. Imagine again my surprise when David came causally strolling up, telling me to close my eyes and hold out my hand (a process I generally loathe). Imagine me practically fainting when I opened my eyes to see the largest, most perfect ruby red piece of beach glass laying in my upturned hand. He said simply, "I thought you might like this". I was literally shell-shocked...well, in this case glass-shocked, but the effect is the same I assure you. Needless to say I lost whatever dignity I possess and proceeded to squee right there on the beach for a good 5 minutes. David stood calmly smiling his Buddha smile, his eyes twinkling. Suddenly an odd, overwhelming sense of place struck me and I realized we were standing by the opening to the Clarke Pond trail. I had just been offered the perfect token - the spirits inviting me once again to walk the most sacred path where the veil on earth is thinnest for me, and all things are absolutely possible. 

Just look at my ruby red beach glass.

Glass cup handle

Mirror, Mirror...Who am I?

It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet her glance

Who was it that said that "An unexamined life is not worth living."? Oh yes. Socrates. It's a phrase that has served as a lodestar for me my entire adult life, a philosophy that set me on a journey of self discovery that began when I was about twelve years old. Naturally at that age I had a fairly limited idea about what formed the concept of examining oneself. But I began the process of looking about to see how I felt about things in general. The sum total of my efforts at that point culminated with the knowledge that the entire smorgasbord of organized world religions had absolutely nothing to offer me whatsoever. I was astonished by the revelation. And so I was off, discovering this, that and the other thing that I didn't like, and as time went by I became increasingly vocal in my opinions, particularly about what I found wrong with the world around me. After all, wasn't I examining myself by evaluating the world in which I lived? I found that a healthy dose of self-righteousness mixed in with intelligent critical thinking was really the way the world should be viewed. And not just by me. But by one and all. And according to my principles.

I'm not sure when the slap in the face. came. It might have been in a drug-induced haze in my 20s, or possibly as a bolt of lightening that shot through me from a simple phrase in a book I was reading at the time (which is not at all an unlikely way for enlightenment to come to me). Whatever. I found myself suddenly struck by the absurdly painful notion that a self examined life meant that one actually examines oneself, looks under the hidden rocks, opens the closet doors, digs through the primal ooze of ego, shame, blame, and a lifetime full of false beliefs. So I responded to the whole idea in the only way that made sense to me. I began to drink. And kept on drinking for the next 20 years. Drugs fell by the wayside (too paranoid), cigarettes were life threatening (I accidentally set my sweater on fire when I was shit-faced one night). It was only after I stopped drinking (another story altogether) that I started reluctantly tried to put into practice the concept that had so horrified me years earlier. I had help. Lots of help. Good friends. Good therapists. Great lessons from the universe. Then, at some point I learned that this was an ongoing process, that I wouldn't wake up one morning and say "Right, got it, all examined, all fixed, let's go for tea". Depression set in. And stayed for a long, unwelcome visit like a bad house guest. 

After this had gone on for a bit I began to hear an annoyingly persistent voice, whose origin I couldn't quite identify, keep whispering in my ear, "Go for a walk in the woods." So I did. Then I went again. And again. Soon it became a regular and remembered cherished habit. I started to reconnect with nature. I had been a park ranger for nine years and had switched careers to be a graphic designer. I had spent less and less time outside. Big mistake. As I started listening to the voices of the natural world outside all around me I began to find my own inner voice, waiting patiently to be heard... And that it was worth actually listening to. I was hearing with my inner self - my spirit and my heart. When I discovered that all the voices were coming from the same source I was joyously mystified. Mystified. Steeped in Mystery. I love both of these states of being as one directly reflects the other. I love the world's mysteries, and I love the fact that my own inner mysteries are always, always somehow connected to the outer mystery presenting itself at the time. I learned a new word to describe this phenomena - synchronicity. A truly self examined life meant reflection. Inner meet Outer. As above, so below. Socrates....very cool, dude.

Fast Forward

So much can happen in two years. We all know about the big stuff - the natural disasters that change the face of our planet, the environmental catastrophes that threaten to wipe out large ecosystems, the horrific acts of violence and terror that human beings inflict on one another, the surprising new faces on the worldwide political stage, the riveting acts of heroic ordinary people determined to help one another survive despite seemingly insurmountable odds. These are the things that engage our collective attention.

But the day-to-day happenings of life for most of us of are generally made up of smaller scale dramas, the mundane events that make our small worlds go 'round. "What, my invitation to the party got lost in the mail?"  "No, I am not driving all the to the mall to bring you your cell phone." "They want how much to fix the car?" I have been away from this blog for two years living out my own scenarios. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time and detail about what has happened, so here's..

The Nutshell: my friend (who originally inspired this blog) survived her cancer and is doing well. Sadly, our friendship did not survive. Sometime during the rehabilitation phase of her illness things became completely unglued. The reasons are complex and really, the less said the better. Leave it at that I am sad for the loss. On the totally opposite end of the spectrum, I got married to a wonderful man I have known as a friend for the last 10 years. This joyous event has also served to alter my personal landscape in unexpected ways, catapulting me into a new life. I now have step-children, mostly grown, thankfully. I have acquired a large new musical family, as he is a musician. I have been married before, as has he, but we are finding that middle-aged love is vastly different than young love. It feels like it has more emotional, spiritual, and intellectual "meat" and less hormonal "heat", if you will.  Needless to say we are both delighted with the "meat:heat" ratio and are very much in love. Despite, or perhaps because of, sagging bellys, bad backs, and worn out knees.

Finally, factor in some rather unfortunate and severe health issues that I've been visited by in the past two years and life just went whizzing by while this blog lay fallow - patiently awaiting a new Spring when long-awaited tending would begin anew. Well, Spring has arrived! This blog was begun in Spring two years ago and is being resurrected again in Spring. The wheel turns and brings us back to new beginnings. So rambles will again be recounted, cat tales may abound, and my love and stewardship of the earth will devotedly continue....maybe even more strongly than before. Time has a way of altering the lens though which we perceive what is important to us. And I now know that this Earth is who and what I am most connected to in this life. I love my family, I love my friends, and I love the new opportunities that await me as my mental foliage unfolds once more.

It's an "Oh Auntie Em, there's no place like home" moment.

The Queen of All She Surveys

Living with a elderly cat who has wandered gradually into a state of dementia has been one of the more interesting experiences of my adult life. My beloved Sissy, who is now 19 years old, has begun to exhibit behaviors and traits that are eerily familiar and, I have to admit, extremely unsettling. It's a lot of like watching what happened to my grandmother before she died. Well it would be, that is, if my grandmother had had four legs and a cheap fur coat... ok, four legs anyway. There's the basic befuddlement - walking into a room, stopping, looking around and wondering, "Where am I going and why am I in this hand-basket". Understandable...happens to me all the time. And the deafness...sure, that comes to all of us with age. The fact that I can walk up behind her loudly calling out her name and she still jumps a foot if I reach out and touch her is, I am ashamed to admit, sometimes comical (I feel SO guilty). The wobbly gait, the constant visits to the litter-box (where she has been known to exhibit the same "Huh? Where am I?" expression mentioned above) are completely old-age appropriate and every woman over the age of 45 or so can totally identify with the "more frequent visits to the litter-box" thing, let me tell you. Then there's the flatulence. The less said about that the better. She sleeps more (is that even possible for a cat?), she eats less, and she has turned into "Velcro Kitty", wanting to stand on my full bladder wearing her little kitty toe-shoes at every possible opportunity. I get all that. What is troubling almost to the point of sleep-deprived madness is her new habit of jumping up onto the bed in the middle of the night, walking right up next to my ear and screaming at the top of her little kitty lungs - the sound of which, for anyone who has ever experienced the same sort of phenomena in a tiny baby, is inversely (and I might add, perversely) proportionate to her size. My cat weighs 5 pounds. If I'm doing the math right her voice strikes my eardrum at a glass shattering 130 decibels (the benchmark for the threshold of acoustical pain). She then proceeds to walk around the house making a noise that, for lack of a better description, sounds like badly-tuned bagpipes being played by a monkey on crack imitating a wounded badger. With a hangover. And a chip on his shoulder. This goes on for an hour or so. It's oddly reminiscent of many of the trips I took to the nursing home to see my grandmother in her final days, when she had absolutely no idea who I was. I'd be walking down the hall after a sad and frustrating visit, and I'd hear a voice, wailing, shrieking, and crying out so loudly that my head would automatically whip around in panic stricken hyper-alertness to find the source of what seemed to me to be "the sound of ultimate suffering". As I'd be trying to decide whether or not a life threatening emergency existed, I would finally be able to make out a single, demanding word... being screamed over, and over, and over... "NURSE!!!!" - each petition being punctuated viciously with the manic buzzing of a call button being repeatedly, incessantly and relentlessly mashed by a 98 pound woman who could probably have bench-pressed my car. My Vet describes this behavior from my cat, known as "increased nocturnal vocalizations", as "fairly typical in cats with dementia". Well yes, I suppose so if that's the diagnostic term for it (what choice do I have..."I'm an artist, Jim, not a doctor"), but it is still disconcerting as hell. What I find to be the most distressing part is not that my adored kitty has turned into a crotchety, old woman who fusses and frets constantly. No, what makes me really stop, bend over and loosen my shoes is the thought that one day *I* may be the old lady with the demonic buzzer in my hand - clutching it desperately like a lifeline - trying to telegraph to anyone who will listen my desperate life-affirming pleas for attention, affection and some semblance of dignity. If so, then, I will promise to do my best not to sneak up on anyone in the middle of the night and scream loudly in their ear....on the other hand.....