Coastal


Look at that sea, girls…

IMG_7675IMG_7550 IMG_7554 IMG_7571 IMG_7616 IMG_7631 IMG_7636 IMG_7644 IMG_7647IMG_7685 IMG_7688 IMG_7691 IMG_7737 IMG_7766 IMG_7777 IMG_7795 IMG_7872 IMG_7901 IMG_7907 IMG_7919 IMG_7931 IMG_7990

“Look at that sea, girls — all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen.  We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”

[L.M. Montgomery :: Anne of Green Gables]

IMG_8026 IMG_8034

Creed

IMG_7963I feel the tide and know my own heart is a reckless moon, my pulse a rogue wave that sweeps and rips at the frayed edges of the world, pressing my own small time into tiny heres and nows and somewhere in the distance, on a red cliff, my name is carved in stone.  Not the name Jillian.  Though that is what you call me.  My other name, the one stamped on the hot surface of my heart, holy and true and blessed.

I am arches, I span, I bridge, I fill a gap.  The waters pass through.  I am a vessel.  I will fall, grind to dust under a thousand starry nights, paint the water red and take to the sky.

I don’t carry much with me.  I lay me down to sleep in a wind bitten wigwam just out of reach of the high water, built of the tired bones of trees.  Good bones.  When I wake at night I think I rest within the ribcage of a whale.  I hear their songs as I sleep, whale songs, like a gale on a frigid winter night passing over the land I came from, the North.  That kind of sound breeds freedom in chained bones, eats away at steel, corrodes hinges and spits rust.  I sleep deep and wake free, all my small, sour, self-imposed penitentiaries melted and fluffed into flotsam and foam.

I lift a hand to my brow to block the gold of the morning sun.  I look down.  I am the black rock in the heart of the surf, wiped clean and slow to fade.  Warm host to the cormorant on sunny days.  Veins of quartz pushing through the hard darkness of my face.  And here.  A nugget of gold.

I lean deep into the drum of the shoreline.  I am drawn to the rhythm and in the closing cadence between the crashing curls of water, I hear a creed.  No, I feel a creed beat its power into my bones, lacing my cells together with an ardent, sterling rope, each wave a new article of faith.

Oh.  I believe.

IMG_7972

The Sea Canaries

[belugas at the Shed Aquarium of Chicago, IL]

Robbie just walked into the office, looked over my shoulder at the computer monitor and said, “You are a beluga-aholic.”

I reckon there are worse things to be!

I could have sat and watched these whales for the rest of my life. They are so beautiful, their faces so innocent and their eyes so kind.  I have to be honest though, I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to bump into one of these mystical beauties while drifting about in a canoe in Arctic waters.