Rolling Waves

For my mother, wind is the shapeshifter. It scares her…AND…she loves a cool breeze.

For a disabled loved one, sand or pebbled surfaces are a danger for the wheelchair; natural places also offered him adventure as a youth.

Somebody else cannot tolerate extreme heat, but basks in the way sun glints off water.

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A feeling – as old as Time, at least as old as my life span – tumbles me underneath the water. I am tousled, not gently. I am submerged, gasping for breath, like the childhood in waves on real ocean beaches. I am thrown under, up, over, through. Immersed.

Like the rolling waves, I feel torn asunder; in pieces; crashing; brilliantly alive in its striking pain.

Every now and then I can see the horizon, as I bob up for a spell of just.enough.air before going down again. It is crystal clear: a place of non-ambiguity. A place of solace and rest. A place where adult direction is clear. A place so wise and knowing, I can barely stand the shining clarity of it; a place so wise and knowing, I cannot not stand in awe and heed its call.

Like the rolling waves, too, I feel rocked and held with the glories of Nature around me.

The wonders of Nature pulse through me – a semi-permeable membrane – breathing in and out. Not just air but all that is cyclical and real and unfettered by superficialities, mind games, or trances.

Like the rolling waves, it is all changing – sometimes too fast to catch my breath, sometimes too terrifying to heed the call, sometimes too necessary to move forward.

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Things are not as solid and fixed as they appear. Things are not all bad or all good. Some things shapeshift, and as they do so their impact on us changes. “Feels terrible.” “Feels good.”

Underneath that, what can we learn about transience?

What feature of the outer landscape mirrors your own inner tumult in some moments but also the respite you feel in other moments?

All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2015 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."