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- So my days were filled with inner pain mixed with self contempt for bad choices with now permanent results. All this while I watched the sun rise and go down again each evening. Even in the worst of my sufferings there was some joy, pelicans, jumping fish, a brief word from a few others who also cut themselves off from the world. Sometimes I would come out of the cabin and smell the salt air and notice how beautiful the sky or the water was on this particular day before returning to my scribbles. A divorce then a fortune hunter to devour my meager funds that took 25 years to gather, no one to understand, I needed to travel this rocky path all alone. After all I did try to reach out and my troubles were multiplied. Yet then, life reached out for me when I was alone. Memories of grandpa, home when home was home, and more so, the fleeting at first glimpses of life all around me, schools of brightly colored fish, the markings on the narrow boards that served as dock for my boat, the palm trees waving in the distant and the soft warm breezes that sometimes came at the end of the day. Nearby I chanced to find a docking space for a fishing tug and on its shores, silver pie plates filled with cat food and a couple of strays munching away. Soon more cats came, as many as twenty strays and raccoons too, all eating from the same dishes. Then a limo from the island causeway pulled up and the capped driver brought yet another plate. There was goodness in the world. Though clouded, I knew it all along. Love was all around me but in my pain I wasn't reaching out with smiles, sounds and hands to touch it, to contribute to it, to immerse myself in it. I started with a box of food and a paper plate and it became a daily ritual. Yes sadness was still there. But, it is amazing how one little change can take enough of the edge off to make a difference. Rarely do things change all at once or completely but little things matter and they accumulate. Life is all around me. I just need to take a moment and open my eyes. It is enough.
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