Finding joy in aligning symbology with the poetry of experience,
memory and storytelling, meaning and discovery
.
There is something metaphorically symbolic about the wave.
In the waves —
the big ones, the farther out set,
what I call the third tier of rollers —
I find unbridled joy. I’m home again.
Being out there, you begin to see the beginning of a swell, say 300 feet out to sea — or the evidencing of an emergence.
Then it comes, and you can swim out to it. To prep for a ride. It rises like a mountain, then it reaches a kind of velocity and crests to a curl — and you’re either ready to ride from the top or the curl, or you dive down and swim through it.
Always, you keep your eyes to The Sea, since invariably, there are big swells that can pile on top of earlier sequences of waves and can overwhelm you if your back is to The Deep.
When the tide is in the middle of a progression or regression, the waves collide with each other, outbound, inbound — and they explode in vertical collisions, shooting straight up. During a storm, this energy is spectacular. And fabulous to be in the middle of this backwash. The Sea, this time, is roiling and lumpy with energy.
What I like to do is to keep swimming out, farther and farther, till I’m in the middle of the wildness, where big waves and rip tides keep pummeling me; it’s exhilarating and thrilling, adrenalized and riskier — attention and stamina play potent partners.
Seals are out there.
J O Y F U L L N E S S
By Tim Girvin