An emptying of the mind

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Today is Day 3 of my time off from work.  But it is the first day of the planned travels.  No, I am not on the road trip I had wanted.  But this is what I needed.  When I started trying to plan the road trip I just could not coordinate all the things I wanted to do and the hours of operation of the places I wanted to go and the hours of driving.  In my frustration I realized that as much as I wanted to travel east to those place that I am on the road for an hour and half every day commuting.  I knew that a 5 or 6 day road trip like I was planning was not what I needed.  I needed to spend time somewhere relaxing.  When I let go of the road trip idea I knew immediately where I needed to start my time off:  at the coast. 

Balcony view - isn't it grand?

I don't know what it is about the coast and the Gulf of Mexico that entrances me.  Mesmerizes me.  The endlessness of the waves, night and day, never ceasing, never changing.  Low tide, high tide.  Is this what eternity is like?

Riding the ferry over to Port Aransas never ceases to tickle me.  Occasionally you will see dolphins jumping along side the ferry.  It is a short ride, but part of the beach ritual for me.

Of course, there's lunch in Corpus Christi as part of the beach ritual.  It's been several years since I was in Corpus and it was good to be back there today. Years ago you could walk out on the t-heads, but those days are no more.  I still love to read the names on the boats and wonder why the owners named them as they did.

As I left my house this morning I looked at the chrysanthemums blooming in their pots by the front door and thought that I should be staying home to spend time enjoying my house and working on long-put-off projects.  It is too wet to do much yard work, but I thought that I should be working on finishing quilts and painting the hallway.  But something deep within told me to go, that I needed to leave the house, leave the job to nowhere, leave the dogs, leave it all.  Go, go to the coast.

After I settled into the condo I took my notebook and pen outside on the balcony to write before a walk on the pretty much deserted beach. As I wrote I thought about what I had thought about on the drive down here - it was just a jumble of thoughts that I couldn't really sort out.  What was I thinking now I thought.  And I realized that it was nothing, just nothing.  A true emptying of the mind.  As I tried to write I realized that my mind would not think of the things I wanted to contemplate.  It was emptying it self.  It is as if first came the jumble of thoughts and then emptiness. 

The only book I brought with me is Gift from the Sea written in 1955 by Anne Morrow Lindberg.  I had read this before, but decided to pick up a used copy of the 2005 edition to bring with me.  It is the perfect book for this trip.  The first sentence of the book: 

The beach is not the place to work, read, write or think.

The last sentence of the first chapter sums up today for me:

One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach--waiting for a gift from the sea.