Sunday, August 23, 2020

Magical

Hello.

I slept a full eight hours and woke up to the clanking of boats and the scrabble of seagull feet on the roof, familiar and soothing sounds. I'm propped up on my made bed, the sun blazing through the window and warming my feet, the window blowing through the ash outside the bedroom, making grey and white shadows on the wooden siding. Outside, the see is the perfect marine blue as far as the eye can see. We're nestled inside the skerry guard of smooth, grey rocks, on a coastline dotted with brick red and ochre yellow and white wooden houses, interspersed among the pine trees. 

I've been reading about how our neurology is affected by every interaction we have. Neurologist Tom Oliver:

Neuroscience shows our neural networks are hugely dynamic: always changing to the physical and social context we are surrounded by. Every time we speak to someone, every word and touch we receive is changing the neural networks in our brains. 

And so I believe that being here, surrounded by the sea, the birds, the familiar stuff that seems to sit deep in my dna, has to be therapeutic.

(Actually, the piece I've linked to is about interconnectivity and how working as a whole is the only way to get us through this pandemic.)

The picnic is packed; bread and cheese and eggs and tomatoes and cod's roe Kaviar, and we are off on a boat, captained by my seagoing cousin, to Mink Island, across the sea, into the waves, to watch the world go by from a different perspective. To swim and dive in the saltwater, the cure for everything.




 

 

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Sigh. Thank you. The northern maritime.

Katherine C. James said...

Sounds glorious. Isn't it extraordinary to sleep a solid eight hours? I wake up refreshed and think, "What magic is this?" As a person with complex PTSD, which as my therapist reminds me is something I have not who I am, I know about the need for shrinking negative neural pathways by replacing them with many more positive neural pathways. We know when we are doing it, I think. It feels so different to be caught in an old or negative or frightening place than it feels to be in an inspiring or uplifting or joyful place. It's the feeling that I think of as pure flow. I love that you're enjoying your time, delighted you share it with us each year, and happy that we've known each other long enough that your trip has beauty and meaning for me. xo.