Portals

I took 24 hours and left with Carl on Sunday morning for Ventura and a boat that took us to Santa Rosa Island, one of the remote, uninhabited Channel Islands. We spent the morning looking at whales and dolphins and the wide-open Pacific, the water choppy and sky overhead gray and moody. It took over two hours to get to the island, but once we were there, the skies opened up blue and we wandered around the fields and explored the deserted buildings of the ranch that had once displaced the native Americans who made the island their home. It was very beautiful.

No one lives on the island anymore, but some people brave its isolation and camp, and there are volunteers who stay to lead tours. Carl and I avoided the few people who had gotten off the boat and made our way alone down to a beach that might as well have been in some tropical paradise, such was its wildness and solitude.

I lay in the sand and read and dozed and we ate a bit of the food that we'd brought -- turkey, crackers, cheese, grapes and plums.

I tried to let everything go, everything.

to be grateful for love and companionship
for whales
for the ocean
for the souls that were banished from this place
for the sand and the breeze that bends
the poppies
for the wide world that still holds us up

the deep world

#gratitude

Are you thinking jesus! When's this woman going to express her gratitude for the deep blue sea and the great blue whales? Here it is, my gratitude for the deep blue sea, for the coast of California and the planet's largest mammals that swim in the waters.

I saw five blue whales a week or so ago, not one or two or even three but five. Their bodies are sleek and shone in the sun. Vast.

Here it is. My gratitude for dolphins, for the thousands of them raced us, my efforts to not anthropomorphize so difficult because surely they smile and play and love?

Here it is. My gratitude for the island fox

for a dusty hot day

for a rocky beach where I lay with a book on a blanket, a stone under my head and in the small of my back

for a painted cave that smelled of damp and green. Lichen, the word

For white flowers that grew out of rock

for red crabs busy in clear water

for pelicans overhead

for this man for us

Notes On Whale Watching

I was literally awestruck on Saturday when I went out on a boat for a seven-hour whale watching tour with some friends off the coast of Ventura. I don't think any amount of writing could do justice to what I saw, so I'll post some notes I took off and on, in-between sunning and rocking and gazing out into the blue. I took over 700 photos, so I'll post a few of my favorites. We saw at least 18 humpback whales, one blue whale, one Minke, multiple sea lions, more than 6,000 dolphins,  countless birds, including several rare species and a bait boil where birds flew around feeding amongst a pod of dolphins and multiple humpbacks. It was wild.

The tell-tale (tail?) stench of whale breath: invisible, fishy, something rotten
The story of Jonah who was swallowed and coughed back up.
Had he displeased God?

On the ocean, my capacity for wonder is as large as the blue whale -- the largest creature on earth.

Memories of sitting with Sophie as a baby under the blue whale in the main lobby of New York's Natural History Museum. Back in the days of constant crisis, the shadowed space below the hanging whale was one of the few where I felt at peace, where Sophie quieted down. We both looked upward in blue light. 

Twenty-one years out, and I'm in the ocean with one.
.
Four breaths and then the tail and then the dive back down. Ten minutes later, four breaths and then the tail and then the dive back down. 
Over and over

Cloud hovers low over the arches and monoliths of Anacapa Island

How does condensation take so many forms and so much emotional weight?

Van Morrison's "Purple Heather" an echo 

A lonely wooden tower, there you go, lassie go

This morning. Gray blue light of dawn bleeding into room. 

Hesitation. The rhythm of what will come is set by passivity. 

I am drawn to patience. Like held breath

like water

The color blue

cerulean

sky into sea

blue bleeds into blue

Does blue bleed? 

So I don't forget

I can contain my desire despite it seeming uncontainable

The rocking of the boat is constant, and I am never sick.

It's like love

the making of it.

The female body as container.
Desire
The space inside that is filled.
The whale tail and the female uterus

Slick as a dolphin
No amount of cliche could contain it
A container for desire

 

The audacity of the sea lion

The body as water

The body as vessel, as container, as passageway

The grounding of rock and ancient arches 
My tilted sense of wonder