Gifts from the Sea

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its nets of wonder forever.

Jacques Cousteau

Between Sea and Shore 

(I know I've posted this image before but it fits the post best!)

http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/between-sea-and-shore-lianne-schneider.html

Some days, my longing for the sea is palpable. Today is one of them...a gray, rainy day, the first of several this week...and I can think of nothing I'd rather be doing than walking along the beach at Cape Cod or Cape May, or Rehobeth, La Jolla, even Galveston before the summer crowds descend. The ocean in all its many moods and guises has always been a metaphor for my life's journey and there are times only those hours alone on a quiet beach can help me to decipher the lessons along the way. Some years ago I picked up a stone on the shore at Race Point, one of those diamond days - so perfect you could never forget it, shared as it was with my dearest friend. I've kept the stone for all these years and carry it with me to remind me of all the sea has to tell me.

  

THE WORRY STONE

I carry it in my pocket,

roll it around there letting

it shift from palm to fingers,

trace its contours with my thumb

and remember the day I

picked it up at the beach,

that brilliantly sunny

afternoon at Race Point…

how it caught my eye

amidst all the other pebbles

because it was not yet

perfectly smooth, though

quite well-polished, different

in hue and composition

from an ordinary stone,

a worn conglomerate

of sparkling quartz and

dull gray limestone,

one  black clast of obsidian

distorting the smoothness.

My thumb catches the fragment,

worries it, like one worries

a broken tooth with the tongue,

feeling the irregularity there,

probing it with questions -

what long journey has this stone

made to find itself on this shore?

How was it shaped by that voyage,

battered, abraded and pounded,

its rough edges worn down,

by long ages of pressure,

the travel across distant seas

cementing together all

the disparate metals and minerals,

compressed now into one

remarkable and unique stone.

I carry it with me in my pocket

and worry it with my thumb

to remind me of my own

uniqueness, melded from all

the separate pieces of self,

light and dark, rough edges

scoured by the unrelenting rhythm

of life’s ocean into a new whole

that is finally becoming me. 

Perhaps I'll get back to the sea this summer - but even if I don't, it's always in my heart, always reminding me that some things are eternal, that there is an ebb and flow to life that one must learn to accept. But like the tide...what seems gone will return...and find me waiting. 

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sea.html#284FQUeFS7VdxVWD.99

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sea.html#284FQUeFS7VdxVWD.99

Feeling shipwrecked???

When an inner situation is not made conscious,

it appears outside as fate.

Carl Jung

All That Remains

 http://fineartamerica.com/featured/all-that-remains-lianne-schneider.html

Ever feel as if your life is a shipwreck...perhaps just today, or for a week or even months at a time? No matter how well prepared you thought you were for life, for parenthood, for your career, for a relationship...things just seemed to fall apart all at once. It hardly seems fair when you've tried so hard to do it all and do it right. A great many people struggle every day with all kinds of depressive disorders because they felt hopelessly shipwrecked on some deserted island with no help or hope in sight. 

Artists often address this kind of emotional shipwreck in darker paintings perhaps where they can make such pain visible. Poets, of course, have throughout history done the same. As you will see in a moment - I've done both - but not for the purpose of merely expressing the feeling of being abandoned by the fates or the universe or God. Rather it's to offer hope and remind ourselves that courage in the face of hardship is not what we usually think of - a lack of fear - but rather a willingness to stand up and try again, no matter how afraid we are. There's an old Asian saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight." That's pretty much the way it goes...and that's okay. The only possible failure is the failure to try to make something from all that remains after the shipwreck.

ALL THAT REMAINS

At times, all that remains

of the graceful, promising ship

in which we once set sail,

onto which we had bravely loaded

and entrusted our adventurous dreams,

provisioned with the sparkling

citrus of hope, the ballast of reason,

is a rotting hulk cast upon some

lonely shore, beached and broken,

darkening with age and petrifying

with desperate abandonment.

We misread the silent stars perhaps,

encountered reefs that were unmapped,

were blown aground with the violence

of the fierce and unexpected hurricane,

the savage force of events and emotions

that whipped the sea to gray-green foam,

the perfect storm against which our ballast

was of little weight or counter-balance.

Here we’re stranded far from home,

even farther from where we thought we’d be,

our hulls splintered, ribs spread wide,

exposing all that we’d possessed.

But there are always treasures

to be gleaned from every shipwreck,

salvaged from the bones of shattered past.

We reclaim what is essential to survival

convey it all inland bit by bit, to an interior

place away from tides and undertows.

We collect from the jetsam what tools we can

to construct a shelter for the present,

to build a boat for some tomorrow –

keep the unbroken planks of wisdom

as foundation for what we can create,

the pegs of persistence with which

to connect the pieces into some new form,

the coiled rope of quiet courage,

the astrolabe and compass of our values,

with which to do our daily reckoning,

the parchment maps on which to mark

the errors of our previous course,

and with fresh insight plot anew

the way to yet dreamed of destinations

beyond the clouded horizon we see now.

We’ll roll the mainsails for a covering,

yet one day watch them unfurl again

filled with the brisk winds of bright new hope.

And when we go at last from here,

we’ll take with us a different treasure

than the gold we’d brought aboard at first -

new jewels of faith and fortitude,

the valued currency of courage.

We’ll leave behind not some worthless hulk

but a story written on that distant shore

preserved as an art and an architecture,

perfectly fitted into the landscape now

where sand and time will make of it

a home not just for gulls and memories,

but for the record of our redemption.

© Lianne Schneider July 2011

Sometimes, even when we're shipwrecked for a time, there are valuable lessons to be learned, qualities in ourselves to develop, and hope - not that someone will rescue us but that we will figure out how to save ourselves. We are the only ones who can. 

Poetry  and images on this page are not only copyrighted but registered - no one may quote or copy either the image or the poetry without permission of the author/artist.