A wanderer meets a metal self-help machine

This morning I hijacked familiarity and routine from my day and in their place a gift pulled up in front of me.

After a cold brew coffee I gathered up my peripatetic tendency and headed down an urban route I used to take in the 20th millennium. I was a young woman from a small town figuring out a metropolis.

Eventually, I found a friend at the end of the my new city, the ocean. She met me with her Hereclitean tendency for change…and I trusted her with my secrets.

Today, I see the old remnants of experience in its depths.

Decades old life passages left on her shores crash around my feet. Waves of memory I’d tied off with a leash too short to meet the present are given freedom to move.

As I watch past, present, and future battle along the undertow, a vehicle creeps across the dusty sands and dumps its load into another ocean, the sea in which no oar is dipped, as T. E. Lawrence was fond of pointing out about the vastness of the dunes.

So, I follow the yellow monster’s lead. I gaze into the me from so long ago and gather the heaviness into the Now. Slowly I released my youth’s mistakes with a nod to the teaching purpose they served in my life. Then, with relief they fly apart, floating off where seagulls catch them and soar off into the horizon.

From the pier, I watch the Pacific continue to churn and open to the void with curiosity.

-a.h.