Astoria: A Place Between - Written Version
Somewhere between in-breath and out-breath, dream and waking, land and sea.
I shared this piece the other week as a narrated audio in the form of a podcast. I figured I would also share the transcript for those who prefer to read! You can find the recorded version HERE.
I begin to hear the breath of the whole of it.
At the top of our hike there’s a parting of trees. Forest opens to endless ocean. A view a good 500+ feet above the Pacific. Even before reaching the point looking out upon the blue, the massive give and take of ocean swell flows into my ears. Without thinking twice, I begin to sync my breathing with the tide.
My first time on this coast, I sat on a beach alone. Grey skies and drizzle — I did the same thing then.
As ocean lapped up toward my feet, I would breathe in. As it retreated back, pebble tumbling toward sea, I’d breathe out. My breath and the oceans… mirrored images. A pneumatic dance.
Intuition had beat research to the punch. I would later discover our breath and the tide share a frequency. Roughly 8-12 cycles of in and out per minute. Choppy seas, like anxiety, can increase that number. Calm days, like states of peace, can reduce it.
We are breathing with the earth.
The night before the hike, my friend Israel sang the words we are the tide as his band captivated a full theater with their hit song by the same name. All around me I listened as the collective breath of the room sang those words of tidal communion.
“All is an ocean.”
This sentiment shared by author David James Duncan, who opened the concert with some of his writing. In his essay, Cherish This Ecstasy, that he read with Blind Pilot’s instrumental accompaniment, Duncan quoted from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,
“All is an Ocean. All flows and connects so powerfully that if, in this life, you manage to become more gracious by even a drop, it is better for every bird, child, and animal your life touches than you will ever know. Start praying to birds in an ecstasy! Cherish this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to people!”
Compounding influence, perspective, and experience all now arriving back at the shore of the vast Big Blue where I am standing — overlooking from a high cliff above. I am watching as undulating tide rolls to and fro.
We are the tide, we are breathing.
Not by the out-breath nor by the in-breath does any mortal live. By a mystery immortal do we live, on which these two breaths depend.
— anonymous Vedic rishi
A bit of give, a bit of take. A holding for the mystery between.
How has it ever gotten more complicated than this?
A bit of hold, a bit of release. Slack, taunt. Me, you. Us, them. Ocean, land.
The river that runs down between. The soft catch of foam after the wave arrives, before the wave recedes.
Give me one, give me the other. Give me the still and small moment that carves itself down the middle.
The wave will break and the wave will recede. It’s all an ocean.
The breath will draw in, the breath will release. It’s all a life.
Arms outstretched to the far borders, between as fulcrum, I am arriving at infinity.
I am reminded of a dream I had a little over a year ago where I was standing, alone, on the shoulder of a northern Michigan highway. Feet on the graveled asphalt, my eyes were fixed to the line of deciduous woods running parallel to the pavement. At its border was a doe who was staring at me. Her eyes and mine were holding each others. We were residing in a contained infinity.
I suddenly stirred awake.
I was alone in my house but for my dog who was at the bedroom window. When I peeled the curtain back, I saw in the middle of the dirt road that I live on, illuminated by the dreamy glow of dusty street light, a doe staring up at me.
Between the far reaches of dream and consciousness, what transpired to lead us both here?
In-breath, out-breath, we are the tide, all is an ocean, a mystery immortal.
Where can I go if I am not held by my restriction of one or the other but instead, am sustained by holding an altogetherness that merges…
The water in, the water out.
The dream, the waking.
The inhale, the exhale.
I take a deep breath.
“You seem pensive, thoughtful,” she says.
We are waking up with our morning coffee.
The Columbia is meeting the Pacific just outside the window. The story of the land and the story of the ocean are merging. These two great expanses, their furthest reaches, arrive here in greeting.
What is this presence between inhale and exhale, between sleeping and waking? Between river and sea.