Big Sur, Again...

I woke up yesterday morning, and I could hear the call.  My soul, no matter how often I go, must return to this place.  I come and go but, so it seems, pieces of me are left each time, pieces I need to collect again, parts of myself that do not make any sense except in far away places like Big Sur.

Life has been weird lately.  I am foundering.  I do not know what I want which, for someone who has always known what she wants, is hard.  I am grasping but seem to be incapable of holding onto anything of substance.  I twist, I turn but there is no permanency in anything I hold.  Perhaps there just is no permanency at this stage of life.  I know life is endlessly impermanent, perhaps instead what I am losing is the ability to believe that permanency can even be a goal or achievable.

There is no love for me that lasted my lifetime.  There is no career I retire from.  There are no kids that need my mothering anymore.  I can do whatever I want now, and so funny that one who has always known what she wants, now hasn’t a fucking clue. All the tethers have been removed and instead of feeling free, I feel so very stuck.

Sell everything and escape in a camper van, cats and dog in tow?

Sell my house, buy a cheaper one up North?

Wait until I become more sure of a direction that feels less like panic and more like a decision.

I sit on the side of Big Sur,  the ocean aquamarine below me.  I can hear its waves crash on the shore.  The rocky shore line is unmoved, at least perceptually from the ocean’s erosion.  Here is where the tide tells the time, with aid, of course, from the sun’s rising and setting.  This is the watch I want, to be returned to a place and time where I have never really existed.  Time was always in charge of me, my life.  Time with its hands wound down tightly, everything scheduled, orderly, not in a free fall of chaos...

I have lost my ballast, but I am not sure I miss it.   Instead, I am just trying to figure out what is next for me.  What do I want?  What the fuck do I want?

The only thing I can come up with at this moment, is I want this view everyday.  Perhaps not right here, in Big Sur, the cost would be prohibitive, but there is coastline that looks similar, if less dramatic.  I know I want to wake to this every day.  I want to see a hawk fly by at eye level view, soaring on the winds that beckon.  I want to see the sea life that swims beneath me.  I want this, with every fiber of my being.  This place.  This version of myself who is unconcerned with all the things I become immediately concerned about when I cross my own threshold.  

Here I am a better version of me, I have time, I have patience, I revel in the natural beauty.  I don’t give two fucks about Amazon, or Target, or buying new clothes.  So why do I at home?  Why can’t I remember how it feels to be free, uninhibited, unrestrained?  Why can’t I take that home with me?  

I think I do, but then I lose it.  Like so many other priorities that are not, in fact, priorities.  I say I want something but then I don’t follow through, I do not do the things I say I am going to do, I instead numb out, check out, disappear from my own life. Perhaps this is why I love Big Sur so much?  I am present in my own life, a day tripper maybe, a natural voyageur, but I am there, in my skin, living my life, doing what I enjoy, what I want and feel like my life is the most complete in the serenity of austere beauty.  And nature seems to want me there too, today, I stopped and saw a pod of whales migrating.  Spouts of water and air, sent skyward as perhaps an homage to what vitality breath brings...each deep breath they take and then expel evidence of their life in motion, cruising beneath the depths of a world we cannot even begin to really fathom.

Now I sit in Moonstone Beach, watching the sun bid farewell to this day.  I didn’t see it rise this morning but I will see it exit.  And thank it for the gorgeous day, and the courage to leave my home and sanctuary to participate in my other sanctuary, Big Sur.  The weather was perfect today.  I drove with the top down, hair blowing, music cranked.  It was the perfect day. I reflected, I lived, I breathed and I found myself again.  I do not know exactly why I keep getting so lost from myself.  I just know that I do, repeatedly.  Perhaps I keep getting lost so that I have to go find myself?  Perhaps that is the whole deal?  I tuck myself away so cleverly that I forget where I put me, so I have to go find myself, forever.

I am creating a sanctuary within. I seem to access it best when I stripped away of my home and responsibilities, when I place myself purposefully out there in the world.  When I am living, instead of existing.  Life is good, no matter where I am, they are just different existences that I am privileged to enjoy.  Many are not so lucky.

Now I pause to watch the sun disappear into the ocean.  I have witnessed the pacific swallow it up so many times and it never fails to delight me.  To capture me, to hold me still and awestruck.  I get to do this living thing.  I get to be here and be wowed by the simplest most beautiful things on this earth.  And it is all free, no payments required, no rent, or mortgage.  Just right there, the only price I pay is the heavy cost of getting myself out of my own way.

Again, still...