Yesterday – For years I felt I was a gathering wave: all heaped up with nowhere to go and urgently looking for a shore to break on. Now I feel as if I’m a buoy on the sea, pushed up and down and back and fore in the tides and wind-driven surges, but essentially just held here in suspension – in motion without momentum – while out to sea the waves busily wash past.
I can’t get a grip on things, that’s the problem. Little things: dry paper, kindling, replying to emails. Big things: how to make a living, how to make sense of what’s happening to society, how to come to terms with what’s happened to myself. The thing with things is that they are too much. Even the little ones. Especially the little ones. A head-injured taiko player I spoke to online said that living with a brain injury is like having a hangover. All you want is comfort food and sleep and you know if you just ride it out it’ll pass. Except we’re still waiting.
Today – And then there are days like today when there is so much beauty: too much to take in, too much to give out. The sea is spilling over with golden blue light and in it all doubt is dissolved. For today at least, the waves don’t make me envious with their rhythmic fluid motion. Like me, they settle as the sun holds them, as the sun settles and holds everything, forever and ever.
Amen.
Lochinver, Assynt, Scotland
19th October 2021