Interregnum

For two weeks I swam in this lagoon every morning at sunrise.

Every day it had a different mood, different lighting, a different greeting for me. That’s the beauty of tidal things, of a shoreline, of the point where earth meets salt water, where fresh water meets salt water, under sky: mutability.

A nuanced, numinous beauty is revealed by repetition: I think that might be what’s meant by grace. My morning swims became a moving mantric meditation practice, a rosary I told each day at dawn. Like the discipline of yoga: activity repeated with awareness and presence for the release in the binding. Every morning was an opportunity to dissolve into forever and just be there.

After my swim, I would walk down the beach a way, seeing what the overnight tide had left, drying off, feet in the Indian Ocean, head in the clouds.

On my last morning a fog rolled in shrouding and softening the shoreline world: a fade to grey moment.

It was time. I went back to the frangipani cottage, showered, packed, said the requisite goodbyes and headed for the airport.

I had saved one last treat to make this section of the journey bearable: breakfast at the “legendary East Cape landmark”, Nanaga farm stall on the Sundays river.

I couldn’t decide between a roosterbrood (a bread roll cooked over coals) or a spinach feta pie so got both. Who knew when I would be back?

Then it was automaton time: return the hired car, submit to a series of security checks, wait, board.

Climbing up up up in that impossible blue, the city of Gqeberha receded so quickly.

More waiting in transit lounges, more security checks, more waiting, some long flights with annoying disruptive drunk passengers until a rigorous reentry into the reality of a rainy Seattle.

My first ever point of entry into the United States: Seattle with the beagles in the basement. It was horrible this time around, but I survived those long walks in interminable grey corridors mostly intact to tell the tale. Maybe. The telling I mean. At one secury checkpoint queue, I shuffled forward alongside a young Colorado man who had been in Thailand for six months. He had No Idea.

Alaska Airlines merged with Hawaiian to fly me the last leg of my Very Long Journey of return to the enchanted land. Rainbows attended. Hawaiians are good at sending signs.

At around three hours it was a short flight, but the Alaskan-Hawaiians treated us weary late night passengers well. Golden rabbits played amongst the stars.

Then the golden stars of Albuquerque lights reached up to pull me out of the sky, back into the desert.

The earth was unsteady under my feet. A trickle of blood leaked from my nostrils, smeared a bright glistening red across the back of my hand.

I don’t get nosebleeds. Until I do.

I am grateful for rainbows and golden rabbits in the stars, sardine trucks and fog, and to be living a life which sometimes, just when they are most needed, seems full of signs and omens, full of my own personal lucky stars to wish upon.