The upper part of the river is smooth paddling. The river’s narrow, and the rapids are thin as a pencil, a line from bank to bank, not hundreds of yards deep. I have to pick the right ‘V’ where water flows smoothly between two rocks allowing me safe passage. The sun is out. Two jaegers, Stercorarius parasiticus, cruise the right bank. The first bird flys low over bushes and rocks, hoping to scare out a small bird, or a ground squirrel, with its shadow. If one spooks, the following jaeger will swoop in for the kill.
Memories inside me are like an aquarium. I watch them swim by, some scary, some pleasing, and all unexpected. I’m asked if I ever feel lonely. Of course, I do, but not for too long. I have my aquarium of experience constantly circling through me. Sometimes, I focus on a memory, stay with it awhile, or skip to the next, but more often they arrive unannounced. I’m learning to allow them to swim by as the big fish swim by in the aquarium, or as the nervous, small, colorful ones dart out and into sight.
I had an early memory today. My first visit to a museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A family outing. I might have been five. I remember the odd echo leather shoes made on the marble floor of a hallway. Eventually, we entered a room where the painting Watson and the Shark hung. It’s big. Painted by John Singleton Copley in 1778 as a commission for his freind Watson, who lost his leg at age fourteen in Havana Harbor, and later became Lord Mayor of London. The painting received a fair amount of criticism when exhibited at the Royal Academy because it neither depicted a biblical or mythological subject as was the style of the day. It was an early example of Romanticism, a painting from ‘real life.’ To me, in 1955, it was real. Knowing nothing of its history, or that it was a painting, and at eye level with the shark, and its teeth, I felt the room fill with water. I was scared. Sure the shark would come for me next, I screamed, and continued screaming, until I was taken out of the room and reassured I was safe.
I enjoyed my shark memory until it disappeared. Then the happy rhythmical, hypnotic trance of paddling took over. One stroke after the next and the next and the next and after the next and the next and the next and next the …. you have time to observe, reflect on things, and dangerously, sometimes even arrive at a conclusion. The reflection today was to stay outside myself. I focused on the thin line of land miles ahead shrouded in a blue haze. You never reach that blue. As I approach, it always departs for the next line of land further out. But what if it was obtainable? What if you could live in that blue? What if that Panguanichy blue surrounded you? What if it became a ‘now’ that goes on being ‘now’ as we live it, a unique permanence. What would your life be like?
