Beach Meditation

February, 2023

8:00 am in Gulfport, a few minutes before the coffee shop opens. I park the bike and walk to the beach. A man is meditating, facing the sun. Where are the rest of us, to greet the new day?

My brief meditation is to remove my sandals and step onto the very soft sand, neither warm nor cool — or maybe both at once? — but soft. The surface has been grated and sifted by a machine that left its own mechanical footprint, though perhaps it resembles what a giant millipede might leave behind if it walk-walked back and forth in figure eights or infinities with so many legs. The artificial patterns, though, are so pleasing. The erasure of all previous pedestrians allows me to feel like the very first foot to fall here. Soft, and new. And only one.

In this moment, my heart says I am so in love with this planet. I am in love with all I can never know.

I am special in this early morning. There’s a brief thought about the sand between my toes. Re-shoeing may be unpleasant later. Soiled feet and gritty friction, a reminder of the return to reality. I’ve anticipated this eventuality, but now each step is on a cloud, my weight on the planet depressing the sand only as far as the natural laws will allow.

The sun warms my left shoulder. East is on that side. I take in the difference of feeling between sun and shadow; a distance of only a few feet from one shoulder to the other. The sun, millions of miles away, reaches out to my left cheek, but has no access to the other one. But the right faces the meditating man who, like the moon, shines the sun back at me. I know he’s there, even though I don’t look.

I reach the water. It is not clean. Are any of us? I step in because of this. Why would I expect perfection? Quiet sailboats bob on a near horizon. Not the far away one, but one they create by being in what appears to be a row. The shallow beach allows no closer anchorage. The boats wait patiently, obediently, to offer their gifts of nautical mobility. I am rooted in six inches of warm murky water. Remnants of sea grass floating.

This water is green and the water where the boats sit is a sky-blue shine. Somewhere between us, the blue shine crosses the green murk in silvery moon slivers, but the colors do not blend. They do not meet. They only inter-mingle, the blue acting superior, yet really very shallow. The dirty green is deep, the actual reality of the moment. The sky, its reflection, is trying to be something it is not.

I look left again and see the sun above a pier, its reflection in the water just below the pier. Two suns — how can I be so lucky to be in an alternate galaxy for a moment? What would two suns do to our perfect natural balance? A pelican emerges from the two-sun glare and catches my eye. It is a brown bird, the color of the pier shadow in contrast to sunrise orange, and it skims the water with wide wings not flapping.

In this moment, my heart says I am so in love with this planet. I am in love with all I can never know. I am just one of these grains of sand, grateful for all my senses and the gift of perception. Comprehension is a trickster, a delusion.

Comprehension is a trickster, a delusion.

I don’t stay long in this footbath. Now the sand and silica really sticks. I am walking back to the gritty world. The left that was just a moment ago in two golden suns is now in a cool, sober place. The tops of my feet are more in awareness as a crust forms on them. I don’t step in my old footprints; I make a new path. But I observe the first set and wonder who it was that made them. The me of five minutes ago in a one-sun galaxy is now a stranger.

The beach is changed. Where there was a clean slate, now someone has come and gone. Experience, recorded. I reach the pavement as a worker is blowing sand back to the beach. It tries to escape, but it cannot, though there are travelers on the tops of my feet and between the toes who are taking their best shot at today.