I am lying on my back on the liquid transparency of the Indian Ocean and above me is the sliver of a new moon. A smile breaks my face open. I breathe in this gift of moon and ocean, blue sky and fluffy white clouds. It is somewhere between 7-7.30am and I have driven to the ocean to cleanse the debris of living from my body. Awash with sadness, frustration, weariness and tenderness I drop everything and step into the great mother. For a brief time I have this small lagoon to myself. But it is also a shared pleasure as others arrive and enter the water in silent exchange.
With peripheral vision I see parts of my body above the waterline – I feel like I am in a Magritte painting. It is utterly surreal – this proximity and vast horizon. Both exist in my body. Even the coldness of the water is reassuring, knowing the day is likely to be hot. I soak the cold into my cells. The sky feels opaque compared to the transparency of the ocean. It is all an illusion. Both are liquids of one form or another. Like my body. Air and water surrounding me. The thin sliver of white sand defines the edge of the land. Even this is an illusory solidness. Its form changes with the tides, the winds, the movement of the elements.
All of this contributes to the poiesis of my life. Making room for the poetic is not a luxury it is critical to my life and to my being able to breathe and go on living. Making (art) is an everyday activity. We all do it. We make meals, we make friends, we make love, we make conversation, we make do. I want to contest that making room for poetry is critical to live a life of meaning. An obsession with the sensate details of materiality impoverishes us and it is my intuition that we are then ready prey for the devouring, insatiable mouth of consumer capitalism.
So there is the moon and there is me floating on the great liquid ocean. When I open to a peripheral gaze I see my knees and toes, belly and hands … and I see the curve of the earth meeting the sky above. It is all horizon … curved horizon … shades of blues and greens. The traces are still in me as I sit here writing. My imagination has been stirred. This is the essential poetic ingredient for my soul.