Unencumbered

Walburga Retreat, Ventnor, NJ 2017

When you awoke, it was as if none of that ever happened. As if the world was a uniquely pleasant place; constant and reliable. The inability to see the horizon moved your imagination to a post of tranquility. Memories of the incurable city no longer haunted you. By stepping back from the world into a clean, calm place where people sympathized, the transport shaped easy navigation. It was as if a grand fairy tale appeared unannounced. Where nightmares were charmed by a protective mist of affection. Gone were the oppressive battlements of an unenthusiastic family. Gone were your personal failings. Instead arose a realm of delightful possibilities. There was nothing to fear. No one to avoid. All it took was the serene vastness of the sea. A roaring lullaby. Friendly faces who took the time to converge. Such a quotient of effectiveness allowed a startling reversal of being. A space full of devotion. Relaxing, unencumbered. 

The foggy substance blotted little cruelties, precipitation anointing the day with sublimity. You knew who you were. Safety arranged inner quiet. Without ghosts, without judgement, without disharmony. Life’s trail routed circuitously coming to a stop. Turbulence dispelled. You reverted to a moment before beastly contents splattered your essence in every direction. All calamity wiped away. Freshened by morning dew, the rain and wind lapped tarnished sand. A continual cacophony from the beginning of time, concerned only with rewriting the story.

An ever-turning planet, as misused as it is, laid its eternal truth to disengage the troubling self. Could it be that simple, you wonder? That in a certain time, at such and such a place, your life began anew. Hope intact.  In this moment, somewhat particular since you had been here before, a swath of path laid clear through the landscape. Lessons were learned. A destiny rerouted. Free from the grief of living to a desirable future where cohesive interactions revealed themselves. Tactility, sensation configured anew. You arose to begin again along a new mode of sufficiency where conviviality was the game. The closed doors of exclusivity no longer matter. Competitive nuances relinquished for hospitable loveliness. 

Oh, here where the spirit runs free and the creative juices flow uninhibited by rules of another house. You glide along familiar halls. The prerequisites forgotten. Another age, simple in its desires, triumphant. The coastal air fills the lungs, the eternal sea, though dirtier than you remember, stays constant. It lulls. It instructs. Its presence as liquid as a millennium. Before civilization and its discontents bellowed oceanic voices to lead the day to disaster. The night coalesced with the moon. All the technology in the world cannot diminish, try as it will.