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| View from the TARDIS on a foggy summer morning |
Maybe we all remember our lives in chapters---I've rarely met someone who didn't classify their life in this way to some extent. My timeline is tick-marked with the openings and closings of stories: My Life as a Wife, My Life in Hawaii, My Life as a Zookeeper, My Life in College and, for the last thirteen years, My Life Studying Sea Otters. Some of these stories gracefully smudge over and across one another; others are divided by the widest of oceans. Today, in this moment, I find myself straddling two worlds.
Over the last week, I've felt the transformation acutely. One foot is still mired in the world of science and manuscripts and otters and the foggy glimpse of a kelp bed from my doorstep. The other is on the gas pedal of my own Rosinante with nothing but road and beagle and old friends and new friends ahead. Clouding my world this week was the pain of pulling that anchored foot up from the safe and familiar and swinging it around with relief and gratitude to join the other in emprise. I say pain because there has been discomfort, confusion, and so many questions about where I belong and where I am going. But in the last days of this week, I was given the greatest boost I could imagine at this transition: collaboration with respected and loved colleagues on a fascinating and illuminating tidbit of animal behavior. I'll wear it like a fragrant flower lei around my neck into the next chapter, reminding me that where I've been was as beautiful as where I'm going. Thank-you to the muses of scientific discovery and to our own shared ingenuity for this bon voyage!
And so the balance shifts over the divide and the momentum pulls me forward, where I know I must go. It's all packing, and moving and camper preparation and the hugging of friends until the nestlings fledge and the TARDIS returns to Hollister and Emmy and her backpack begin the drive north.
She's got the urge for going, and she's got the wings so she can go...
The Chambered Nautilus
ReplyDeleteBY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
"Still, as the spiral grew,
ReplyDeleteHe left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more."
Perfection. Thanks, sister.
This song http://youtu.be/9Lu_uyulrZI came to my mind after reading your entry. I think it also resonated with me since I met you around age 15. I know it is sung from a man's perspective, but I hope you hear in it what I did. You are loved and supported no matter where you are. Love, Jean ;)
ReplyDeleteI love that song! Thank-you, Jean for reminding me of it and for your words of love and support. It's a great comfort to me as I pack up all the material trappings of my life, that I will never be homeless. There is always home somewhere and in that, I am luckier than many.
ReplyDelete