Floating Is A Balancing Act

Noticing the bare bodies

Dear Starlight,

It’s the equinox. Earth’s timely moment of balance. When eggs stand up and we are suspended between death and birth of seasons, and dark and light are equal to one another.

On route to the office yesterday, I veered left and took an unplanned detour to the beach. Not a proper ocean side beach, but an upstate Hudson River “beach” littered with driftwood, murderous Japanese knotweed pods, and minuscule muscle shells reminding us that this brackish water once upon a time had oysters and muscles thriving in it.

I sat in my truck dumbstruck by my odd decision to off route myself from habit. What am I doing here? I wondered, staring at the seagulls staring at me asking me the same question.

I considered my feeling state: “floaty”. I am not accustomed to having my hands off the wheel speeding somewhere with fierce determination and looming threat. Passivity is mentally excruciating and strangely exhausting. Do you know doing less can be so difficult?

I sat there, looking at the seagulls and gray waters and pictured myself floating on a piece of splintered driftwood from the cyclonic Imbolc shipwreck I recently survived. I contemplated over stretching to grab another piece of broken wood to make an oar to row somewhere. I felt the heroism of my ingenuity flood my little nervous body. Won’t I prove to be wonderful! I looked around and realized I had no idea where to row too? Let that strategic idea go. Jetsam.

I considered balance sitting at this fulcrum point between seasons. Floating is a balancing act; moving with change versus gripping to hold steady. Panic breathing is a sure way to drown—literally.

The longer I am here, floating, nowhere known, the sooner I will learn to love the piece of driftwood that is here, carrying me somewhere. And the longer I float the sooner I will learn to read the sun, the stars, the birds and wind as guides.

Down at the rivers edge I looked at the stark black trees pencilled against the sky–slyly looking dead. We often pay no attention to these winter tree bodies. Their slender curling upward bent arms. Naked from their cover of leaves.

I heard their invitation; it is you, you need to recognize, love, and nurture–everyone loves the splendid leaves but you must learn to love the bare tree that’s standing here appearing dead tired. Let go. Let go of past seasons hues. Leaves leave so the tree can regenerate.

I looked to my feet and noticed the leaves of last lay composting as fertilizer for the tree that will one day bud again. Small yellow pops were poking their heads out of the muck.

Yellow balances gray as a complementary contrast.

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At the beach I sat in my gray girl truck and wrote:

The ship tore apart

Savage torment

In darkness lost all sense

Given a broken mast

To float on

Float on, float on, float on

See some debris

Should I try

To salvage to create

an oar or sail—

Not knowing where

Where is land is island is land

Float on

Watch the sun

Seesaw up and down

See more pieces

Flotsam and wonder

Should I pick them

Let them go stay light

Someday a bird crosses overhead

Another day another one

Float on

Try to recognize

This place a place

Watch the seagulls

Watch them float

fly, float, fly,

cry, cry, fly,

float, fly, cry

How long will it take

Floating on

Lost at sea

No one can see

Me floating on

In the dark I imagine

I’m a lighthouse

A light in me

Only I see

In the dark

This light will save me

Let everything go

Hands free laid out on a tree

Floating on

Waiting is all

All I want

To be right here

In this dark sea of possibility

All I see is opportunity

Vast as the bluest sky

Which now looks like my eye

I’ve become one

With the sea

Holding me

I needed to be carried

On a life raft of splintered driftwood

Floating on

I cry still

Geese swoop down

Calling back

Rest rest rest rest rest rest

Lullaby of waves rock me

sleep a bye baby

sleep a bye baby

sleep a bye baby

You are not alone

Directionless

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A special note: This coming week I will share with paid subscribers anchoring medicine and a tarot spread related to the King of Cups for navigating emotional resilience to float in moving waters, and a wayfinding guide to creatively support identifying your bare self with the tools of dendrology (study and identification of trees). Look out for an extra newsletter between now and next Sunday.

With love,

Me last summer when the sun was out at the rivers edge in my gray-girl truck. Soon the sun and warmth will return.