Ruby Beach

I will always remember
going down into the kitchen
one morning and my daughter
is grumbling at the table
angry over string theory
i mean she wanted to slap somebody
I will always remember
sunset at the beach, we were in Florence,
and in Cannon Beach, and up north in Washington
my daughters sitting in camping
chairs at a bonfire
when i am honest, this year has been
hard
for many of us
my mom froze to death in January
under sad circumstances
she didn’t have coming
my photo app sent me a memory
this morning
a collage of pictures of the beach,
my daughters from 2019
my wife and me from earlier this year
over for the funeral
I had momentarily forgotten we went
to the beach
but I had wanted to show her places
i went to with our kids because I had wanted
to show our kids where I had been
with their mother when we were young
when i am honest, it’s kind of a mush
in my memory banks
i see ruby beach, I see a tent
cobbled together from laundry
line and plastic tarps
and driftwood
I see a skunk lured back out of
our tent with cookies
they ask me what do you
want to do now
i want to live, i want
to experiment, i want
to make more memories
i want to love and be
kind but sometimes I also
want to slap a physicist
So it was a hard year
in some ways for
some of us
be kind to yourselves
be kind to each other
make good memories
this is what we got
this right here
this swirling galaxy
swirling in a snail shell

Remember back when we used to blog our dreams?

I was with Gamma, she had a conch shell the size of a lime.
Then I was at Horst’s place, except it wasn’t a place he really has, more like a house or part of a house, with a view of an ocean or sound, maybe near Seattle, or perhaps in Denmark. Or Sweden. Or Iceland. Or Norway. (All places I have considered visiting lately).
There were a lot of strangers in the place, coming and going between different rooms.
I looked out a window that overlooked a small blue wooden balcony overlooking buildings and, beyond them, water.
I was packing or unpacking. Going through my stuff in a bag. Perhaps I wanted to leave, I was getting my stuff together.
I found Gamma’s conch shell, or should I say Gamma’s Chekhov’s conch shell?
Because I noticed legs emerging from it, eyes, pincers, the whole package. It was home to a hermit crab.
Then I noticed there were other various snail-type shells in my stuff, that I had thought empty, but they were all running around, hermit crabs all over the house. I was scrambling around trying to gather them all up while also trying not to make a big disturbance as I didn’t know the people in the house and also trying to figure out what to do with them?
I would put them back in my bag if i could gather them all up and take them down to the water and release them.
Wrapped up in some newspaper I found a blotchy red-orange bass/grouper type fish, sort of gasping for air/water, I wrapped it back up and put it in with the hermit crabs.
Although the situation had potential for slapstick or panic, I was going about gathering the sea animals methodically and calmly, with a clear solution in mind. I happen to think that emotions in a dream are as important as any events or symbols, and this was free of worry or panic or anxiety or any other negative emotions. Which, if you are familiar with my dreams, is a breakthrough. It was a good dream, for me at least, and the sea animals were going to be okay too.
I had everything under control.
I have been bouldering lately, and I was talking to Alpha last night about how the things you climb are called “problems” and how I love knowing that they can all be solved, unlike problems in life, where you don’t always know that.
For me the dream was (among a lot of other things) about dealing with problems with that positive feeling that they can be solved, rather than with angst.