So I spent four days in one place for once. One place as in, the same spot on the same beach. On the same towel. Ringing bells! It's Turner's first swimsuit season! What do you think?
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| Cabana Boy |
I spent hours per day on the side of this water - that's the Mediterranean Sea, on the Capd'Antibes just across from Monaco. So fancy. I felt like a real live actor. There was even a cabana boy who brought me drinks and food. Paradise.
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| Cap d'Antibes, France |
And then something kind of incredible happened.
Habitually, I visit the sea for as long at night as I do by day. Some hours in between for dinner, you understand. Except by day I lie down at the edge, and by night I just sit. And at night I am hypnotized by the sounds, whereas by day I am hypnotized by the view.
But not this time. This time, as I gave in to the sound of the water lapping the shore, suddenly I got a sense of perspective through my eyes. I got the sense that I sat at the edge of a gigantic canyon. I could see the sand slope away from where I sat to the lip of its first drop down, to the place where the water turned from turquoise to navy blue, past the boulders and the seaweed patches.
But that wasn't what felt incredible. All of the sudden I felt split between Antibes and Silver...somthing National Park outside of Portland, Oregon. I can't believe I can't remember the name. But that's how things go when you're dematerializing: you don't even hold on to all the memories. and you can feel exactly the same in one place as you do in another despite their obvious oppositions.
I visited this National Park as an activity in the summer camp for grownups I got to go to when I was an Artistic Director. The place felt...Jurassic. The most incredible foliage: gigantic leaves, full-on carpets of moss like Berber, trees laid down a hundred years ago but still full with the wetness of everything.
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| Silver Falls National Park, Oregon |
This incredible waterfall fell over what felt like either the socket of an ancient eye or the inside of a prehistoric vulva. You walked a full minute from one side to the other, through a deep zenith where you could sit and stare at the water falling down. At some point in time that place was once a gorgeous sea. Maybe a lake. Because when you sit at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, you realize that the Great Lake above Chicago is really just a Minor Ocean like this one, and that we call it a Lake to feel more in control of the vastness of our landscape.
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| Cap d'Antibes, France |
I don't know what I'm going to do the next time I sit beside the Atlantic. I might lose my mind at the vastness of this planet. I really might.
I have heretofore watched oceans like paintings laid flat out in front of me: the beauty of boats in the foreground or the gorgeous sunset on the horizon. I have heard that there are depths, but I never go boating and I do not like to swim. (At least until now. Well see how that goes now that I can swim the way I always intended to.) This night I was led to understand really what they mean when they say things are deep: holding more than you can imagine, and certainly more than you could ever see. I keep fooling myself into believing that life is as simple as I understand it. Then I am shown otherwise.
