“Traditionally, new students of Zen are cautioned against meditating too close to the open sea, since the passion of the tumultuous ocean is so overpowering that it may be too difficult to quiet one’s inner being. Better to sit in meditation next to a stream, where its gentle energies can become more peacefully assimilated. And perhaps even better is to sit in a garden of stones resembling islands surrounded by etched gravel resembling the sea, to find that still point, that unwobbling pivot from which any obstacle may be confronted from a position of unflappable strength.”
--Abd Al-Hayy Moore, Zen Rock Gardening
“Where are you from?” A question that precedes an innumerable number of lengthy replies, while its answers hint at a deeper subtlety lying just below the surface of the initial asking. When we inquire this of another, are we asking as to where a person’s body first came into being on this planet, as in the geographical location of a birth? Or, do we really want to know, where home is, - that palpable location of nostalgic memory and that blissful illusion of nativity? If “home is where the heart is” are we not technically home no matter our situation and circumstance?
I was born in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While residing in that northern clime, in a town named Scarborough, indelible moments were seared into my tiny child’s recollection. At the time, we, my four-member tribe and myself, lived in a three-story town home. On the bottom floor, in the basement, half of which had been allocated for the children’s playroom, sat a regulation sized Air Hockey Table (still a favorite to this day) along with all of the toys and games that three children, each four years a part, could possibly need or want. Within these safe confines, my two older siblings and I spent hours, - stuffing a poor, helpless hamster into our ‘Little People’ villages, while birds, that had found themselves trapped within our air duct, made a loud ruckus on the metal pipes as well as on our amalgamated childhood imaginations.
Our neighborhood was a closed community, within which two parks and a pool were located. The ‘big kids’ (a demographic that just barely included my eleven-year old brother) had their own park, which primarily consisted of an 8’ slide. In a large group, the big kids would commute the short distance to school, walking back and forth together while stopping along the way at the market (on the rare occasion when my sister and I accompanied them on these trips, we were always treated to sticks of Popeye gum that resembled cigarettes in their shape and were coated with a white powder that, when blown on, would usher forth a plume of what looked like smoke). Us smaller kids also had our own park, in which a sand box, a slide, swings, and other treasure troves of childhood play were kept, and on our way to and from school we were watched over with independence and care by the big kids. On one such excursion, we had all stopped at a nearby local haunt, where my sister was pushing me in a swing and the older kids were busy with their inter-gender drama. After too large of a push, I flew out of the swing and came crashing to the ground with a thud. In mere seconds, the teenagers were there to dust me off and help me up to my feet.
During the summer, the one entrance to our circular housing tract was closed to through-traffic and our own mini-Olympic games were held. There was: a bubble gum blowing contest, a Big Wheel contest, and a ‘Lil’ Hobo’ contest for the smaller children and running and bike races for the larger kids. At the conclusion of the individual pursuits, after which ribbons and trophies were awarded, a large parachute was produced and the entire community came together to watch the brightly adorned material make objects airborne. The pool, around the circumference of which was an ambling bike path, was a favored destination during the hot summer days. My siblings and my love for the water, our fearlessness around it, and our abilities to make like fish within it, were nurtured during these early years. To this day, the laughter and the trauma that this time period made room for is collectively recalled.
After four years of Canadian living, my American, and predominantly Californian, family was ready to pack up and head home. In the summer of 1981, the five of us hopped into a heavily weighted down deep purple station wagon and made that proverbial car trip west. Stopping along the way at numerous locations to sight see, to enjoy evening dips in motel pools, and to release the angst of too many people cooped up in too tight of a space, we bumped along 3,000 miles of American roadway. My sister and I would stretch out in the back where we would ask our mother for a tissue, upon which receiving we would rip it up into tiny little bits that we would stuff through the small hole in the rubber lining of the trunk door. With pleasure and glee, we would sit back and watch the small, white balls of cotton take to the air, floating on the car’s momentum and flying into the windshield of the vehicle behind us. During this time, I would also recite a commercial jingle, remembered from the days spent in front of a television screen. “Kentucky Fucky Chicken,” my tinny voice chirped out. To this, my mother would laugh uproariously.
Years later, I learned, through my older siblings, that the real reason why we fled our beloved community was because there was murmur of an indiscretion. My brother recalls talk of infidelity, between my mother and the father of a little girl, who was close to my age, and who my mother wanted to be my best friend. On a warm, autumn day, my father pulled the sagging wagon up to the gates of a seaside, sprawling condominium complex in Solana Beach, California. Life, as we had known it, changed.
We still had a community pool, idyllically located on sandy bluffs above a churning Pacific, within which we could submerge our whole bodies while temporarily forgetting the anger that was beginning to unfurl within our daily lives. However, friendship was different in this new location, as the division between the haves and the have not’s became visibly clear. At five years of age, it was not yet unacceptable that my new best friend lived in a multi-million dollar home on the hill. Unfortunately, I do not believe that either of my siblings had such luck in developing new relationships. At nine and thirteen, the hard reality of status quo and the awkwardness of not fitting within popular culture reared its ugly head. After one brief year, our parent’s had purchased a two story home in a town twenty minutes north. Life in Vista and Oceanside, for we lived right on the border of the sister cities, came to resemble more of what we had experienced while living in Scarborough.
It was in Vista where I grew through the joy of adolescence and the pain of being a teenager. During the twelve-year time span, I moved from an elementary school playground, to the hallways of one middle school, and into the lockers of the only high school I attended. Along the way, my parent’s home phone number became an effigy scrawled in black pen on bathroom stalls and haphazardly written in dozens of handmade “Sign In” books as well as in cheap phone books.
In the early to mid-eighties, our household developed a tight-knit bond with our neighbors on both sides of the fence as well as across the street. Representing a diversity of world cultures, we would come together every holiday season to break bread and toast to another new year. My family represented a blend of east coast (as my mother is from New Jersey) and west coast values along with the traditional sentiments of pre-World War I babies (my father was born in 1933, and my mother was born three months before Pearl Harbor was bombed). Our neighbors to the south were an elderly, white couple who had not produced any offspring. On the other side of us, were our Palestinian-American neighbors whose four children were in their late teens. My sister and I especially enjoyed the scent of home baked pita bread that permeated their household. Across the street was a Mexican-Italian-American family whose two children, a boy and a girl, were closer to mine and my sibling’s ages. For a number of years, we all enjoyed affable times spent in one another’s company.
Over the course of ten years, before both of my siblings flew the nest for a home located eight hundred miles north, our most favored past time was the beach. My brother was a prolific boogey boarder who would take to the waves for hours on end, paddling out past the break, where my mother, my sister, and I would all loose sight of him. My sister and I were just as adventurous in our own way, for the ocean came to be a nurturing force that would gently rock us within the ebb and flow of each tidal rhythm. Even when the ocean seemingly rollicked in thunderous passion, we knew quite well the art of duck diving under gigantic waves of white wash, grabbing a hand full of sand along the way.
On one overcast day when, instead of our mother taking us to the beach our father had, my sister and I were rough housing with one another just a few yards off of the shoreline. The sky was vacillating between a stormy gray and a more typical marine layer, when we noticed a lifeguard running up and down the beach, motioning for the swimmers to come in and out of the water. We glanced around ourselves, noting that there was not a sign of either thunder or lightning in the air. In defiance, we resumed our child’s play with delight. Soon, my sister was following suit, making a difficult to attempt beeline for the shore. Once safely upon it she turned and motioned for me to follow. “I don’t have to, if I don’t want to,” I retorted, as my head rolled around its socket. Annoyed, she pointed in a direction just beyond where I was swimming. With bated breath, I turned and saw, less than five feet away from where I was standing, a fin swimming around in circles. With a fire lit under my ass, I ran in water as fast as I ever have on that day.
In the end, the shark was dying and was just attempting to beach itself. Once all of the bathers had been accounted for, the lifeguard dove in and pulled the creature from the water. It was hoisted on to the back of a jeep and, before it was dead and the jeep driven off, I walked up and stroked the slimy skin of the dying animal. I remember being saddened by its loss yet invigorated by the small amount of time that I had spent within its company.
Under the warm rays of a yearlong southern Californian sun, the ocean was a dear playmate. Wielding a peculiarly dramatic ability to be simultaneously gentle and rough, hard and yielding, I looked forward to any and all time spent within its great belly. However, at night, I would toss and turn in fitful sleep as the ocean plagued my anxious subconscious life. A re-occurring dream that I frequently found myself trapped within was of an epic battle in which I would attempt to pull myself up a steep beach and out of the voracious claws of a hungry ocean. It would require all of my resolve and my strength to finally, after what seemingly felt like hours of struggle, beat the beast, and to land, fully collapsed and desperate for air, onto a safe harbor. In my dreams, the ocean was a controlling and domineering force, near to devouring me whole. I wanted nothing more than to escape its tight grip. I fought with all that I had, and though I always succeeded, I was left nearly spent and in complete disarray.
Like my siblings, I too flew the nest just as soon as I possibly could. In my case, like my sister’s, attending a four-year college and living in a dormitory my freshman year was the opportunity needed to escape the cycle of abuse that had wound its way around our parent’s home. As I grew into my early adulthood, I spent less and less time at the beach and in the ocean. In my mind-twenties, when my travels had taken me around the world and back, I had discovered serenity and a peace of mind within a jagged landscape of up-thrusting rock. My heart had come to reside in mountains.
Seemingly closer to the sky overhead, my eyes feasted on constellations and sweeping vistas while I channeled a little girl who would run from her parent’s house at night, to lay on sun-warmed sidewalks, and to greedily soak in a reflection of light from up above. It was an early form of meditation, for the heaviness of gravity seemingly dropped away, and I was transported to a quiet, and calm repose. I wanted nothing more than to stay in this place, forever. I wanted nothing more than to never have to return to the hurt and pain of the dualistic forces of life, pushing and pulling me in opposing directions, while ripping my heart in two and sewing it back together, time after time again.
Five years ago, I returned to San Diego living. My parents still reside in that same house, on Ridge Road, and though I make an effort not to visit, I am consistently wearied by the sadness that drips from that house’s windowpanes. However, I have recently come to consciously understand that I can either continue to choose to carry the heavy baggage of others or I can simply put it down. I have been attempting to let it all go, - to sit the duffle bag and the rolling backpack down, and to lay the suitcase and the trunk to rest.
Now, as I amble along a Pacific shoreline, I take refuge in the beach’s daily evolutions. During low tide, I walk along and discover fully intact shells that have pieces of seaweed rooted to them. I marvel in the beds of kelp that look like tide pools. And I relish the sound of seaweed popping underfoot. At high tide, I walk under the wooden beams of Crystal Pier and I reminisce about the difference in water level. I note the soft sand that provides very little to no traction. And I listen to the waves as they reverberate off of the cement-encrusted pillars. These days, I gaze upon the mighty waters and a desire to intimately know the ocean’s push and pull once again grips my being.
