Amongst the walkers and talkers,
the joggers and the stationary phone callers she is sitting on a stone bench
facing the sun, eyes closed, her palms cupped in front of her as if she is waiting
to receive something. Perhaps it is just the warmth of the sun’s first rays she
is grateful for, the breeze off the ocean’s boisterous waves with its lick of
salt. But I think of all the other waves we cannot see – electro-magnetic,
light below infra-red, above ultra-violet – and all the things we don’t yet understand
about our world and where the thoughts and memories of everyone who has ever
sat in that place, their anger and dreams, their regrets and hopes, might be
stored.
And I remember a meditation class
from years ago when we all closed our eyes and let our hands gather the air in
front of us into a smaller and smaller compressed ball and Yes, we said, we
could feel the tension there, an energy pulsing against our palms, our
fingertips. Was it true? Or did we imagine it because we wanted it to be so?
At the other end of the beach the
volleyball players are leaping and diving across the sand, slapping the ball
over the net, high-fiving each other’s success.
All of us are holding out our
hands, sometimes empty, sometimes full.
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