#1 Marginal

Marginal.

On the edge of something.

On the fringe of consciousness.

The space where land meets the sea.

A walk along the ocean in Ogunquit, Maine.

The longing for expression seems inherently human. Now, in the age of social media overload, it gushes from every keyboard. And still, mine wants a small space, a way to think out loud, to give small observations breathing room.

It’s the middle of a rare warm night. The ocean’s incoming tide lets out an occasional whomp as the angle of a bigger wave strikes the rocks that look like petrified wood  (a form of shale containing mica and quartzite) otherwise there is the usual, fairly loud, swooshing that you’d expect so close to the water when it’s possible to leave the windows open at bedtime. The moon, just past full and still shining,  spreads a path on black water enough to light the room a bit.

It is completely clear to me that coming to live in this space, on this margin, was aided by non-corporeal assistance. There was lots of earth-based human help as well of course. The challenge in having arrived here is to use the energy imbued in where the land meets the sea in this sacred time, this margin of old age and its transition from life to … whatever lies after the known has gone. I’ve spent most of my adult life musing about life after death and have had the privilege of being in the presence of a few of the great minds who have been examining this topic in deep and scholarly ways. More recently have been classes–parts I and II–on Consciousness which is like splashing about in a delightful pool, exhilarating and fun and profound.

Lifelong learning is not an oxymoron.