The following is from an email to my Inner Circle.
*Scroll down to read “OCEAN,” and to listen to Ani read it to you.
Dear One,
This month, as the birth of Angels on the Clothesline, my memoir, approaches, I want to stay in closer touch with you. Harvesting love, the purpose of these emails, seems a great way to do that.
Speaking of staying close and in touch, walking almost every day is one of the primary ways I not only stay in touch with myself and the earth, but also with you. It is while walking in the fields or on the local dike by the Connecticut River that I usually start my letters to you (on a recording app on my phone).
This past week, because of the unhealthy air quality in the eastern United States ensuing from Canadian wildfires, I skipped some days of walking. Staying inside with windows closed, knowing I would be walking again before too long, I thought of members of our human family around the globe who do not see relief in sight. I thought of what climate crises might be ahead if we do not make some vital changes.
Yesterday, I realized that June 8th is World Ocean Day. Again, I took pause.
One of the vignettes in my forthcoming memoir is called “OCEAN,” which I share today with a recording of me reading “OCEAN” to you. Let’s be in awe together for the ocean and our earth. 💜
Note: In my memoir, Angels on the Clothesline, I am at once the the child and the woman bridging time to be the presence missing from my childhood. OCEAN opens with “I see you.” “I” is the woman I am now; “you,” the child I was.
Listen to Ani read “OCEAN”:
OCEAN
I see you on a bench at the edge of the boardwalk,
your back to the clacking heels, rumble of rolling chairs,
the bazillion different voices.
Peanuts for sale! Peanuts!
Get your tickets to the Steel Pier!
Cotton candy here! Balloons! Balloons!
Don’t run ahead—you’ll get lost!
Check out our beach toy bonanza!
The best arcade in Atlantic City —three throws for a dime!
Go for the jackpot!
You face the ocean. Cannot see it in the night. Can just hear it.
Faint at first, as if you were imagining it there.
You push your face forward. Close your eyes.
Listen harder.
You hear the waves rush in like they
love the shore, left alone now. Empty of crowds.
You lean deeper into the dark.
A kind breeze meets you.
The ocean with no end. The night. Your face.
All there is.
The steady whoosh of the waves makes you cry. With longing
to be closer to the ocean than even when swimming in it,
buoyed, skin coated with salt. Diving beneath its surface.
Closer even than that.
You want what separation there is
between you and the ocean
to be gone.
No longer to be a separate girl on a bench.
You hear your name called.
Your parents back from buying peanuts in paper cones.
Your father laughing. Why are you looking where there’s nothing to see?
Turn around. Join the human race, my daughter.
You smell the peanuts.
Don’t want to open your eyes, to be pulled from the dark.
Away from the ocean’s summons. With no choice but to leave
this moment when there is nothing else
but the ocean, the deep night, and you.
In closing, I’m harvesting an image from the first day that the air was back to its customary safe quality here. If I lived and walked close to the ocean, I would share a picture of her boundless beauty and presence. The oceanic sky will have to do. 😉
Might you be moved to write into one of your experiences of intimacy with our earth’s body? Your writing could take any form. Could even become a letter : to the air; to a particular place in nature–maybe a favorite hiding place as a child; could even be to mosquitos. Could be a gratitude list, An expression of celebration and/or concern. Anything goes. So good not to underestimate the power of writing.
And if writing is not your thing, then sing it, dance it, draw it…
I am not shoulding on you. Just inviting you into the joy and power of your own creative expression—which, thankfully, can take so many forms that are not called “art”, but are. 💜
With love and gratitude,
Ani
PS. In case you missed it, in my Inner Circle email letter, “I am so pregnant,” I featured two other sneak peeks into Angels on the Clothesline.
