The Grand Mirror

I could have been upset that I was back in Santa Barbara today, but I wasn't.  I just couldn't muster the indignation properly to get well and worked up.  The truth is I cheated; I didn't try that hard.  There is a patch along the 101 that runs right next to the beach, far out in the mists sit two islands.  I don't know their names.  What I do know, they are miles on a side, just far enough away to be hazy in the mist dancing along the top of the ocean.  Large mountains run along the spine of these fog shrouded giants, dwarfing even the cliffs that tower over my head.

In-between here and there reside six or seven mammoth oil rigs.  They remind me of bugs, twisted, hard things, walking on spindly legs.  They rest under the suns harsh glare, folded up and dark.  They seem so close in the daylight.  So peaceful, restful.  At night they glow with a yellow light, a perfect pride of walkers.  I could just imagine them skittering a few hundred yards every now and then, when no one was watching all that hard.  When everyone on the road has something better on their minds, when they look without seeing... The giant bugs scoot down to a new place, ready to drop their long mouths to uncharted depths.  Always in search of something, hungry and relentless.  But they are kind in my mind, intense and intent.  Single-minded.

But for now they are sleeping, and the sun is shinning.  The sky was so blue, so bright.  The whole sky its self was pulsing with light.  Reflecting it all was the grand mirror, so claim I could see the sky in it.  The sky and the water one and the same, the lost horizon.  It was just bright blue along the edges of my sight.  It reminded me of a picture I only ever read about, which makes its impact somehow the larger.  I wonder what it may look like, making it so easily remembered.  Would the image its self be unnoticed or forgotten?

It was a picture of the sky and the ocean, made like a map.  It displayed the world as a column of fluid, at varying pressures.  It showed how you could start on the bottom of the ocean and just keep swimming to the sky.  There is no real difference, its mostly the same stuff, just not so close together up in the sky.  There is a place at the edge of our atmosphere that is almost space, but still has some air in it.  Its a boarder that I never thought about, and I don't think many people do.  The edge of space as a place.  A real place that you could go and feel the edge, and say, "This is it, the end of life.  Out there is cold space, but right here is earth".  It was always just a thought concept, but now I could imagine going there and thinking of the enormity of that spot.  It should be no different then the other side, where the water meets rock, but it is.  Some how its so final.

But is there really a other side?  The cold water meets solid rock, again its the same thing.  Its all about the same thing, under the same pressure, just one shifts a bit and the other doesn't.  But without a disturbing presence, most of that boundary is just as still as the other, dead still.  The water lies stagnate, barely moving, while the rock lies more still.  But even the rocks are moving a little bit.  Its all the same stuff thing, under different pressure.  Just like life.

My life is like that chart, and I'm somewhere in the middle.  It could have been easy to be upset at being stuck here for hours, but its a nice place to be.  Its not what I wanted to do today, but there's no sense if fighting it.  Its a perfectly fine place to be, and I'm happy here.  Its good to just go with the flow of things, to really just be okay with what's going on.  Someone once wrote, "How do you know this is a experience that you should be having?  Because your having it."  There's always something to see, if we only open our eyes.  There's always something to hear, if we only listen.  There's always something to say, if only we'd try.  It amazes me how much of my suffering is in my own head, my little story.

My little bullshit story.  Every now and then I catch myself thinking of how wrong, because I was so sure I knew what the I was talking about.  Or how unfair something was, how I was wronged.  My sad little me story.  But then I really think about it, and I see that the facts were simple.  They just were, what ever it is, in anything, facts are neutral.  Then I added my little judgments on it all, "This is that, that is this, and this is what should be."  What am I upset about, the facts or the story?  Just the story.  So why not tell a new one?

I would rather be right then happy sometimes, its scary...  Like I would rather be at home right now, and its wrong that I'm here so I will be pissy.  What if I am here because its a beautiful day for a drive, and that was that?

It could be...