i AM
i AM: 15 March 2023
Late afternoon yesterday I shared the beach with this beautiful American Oyster Catcher. The picture of it standing with its reflection in the surf and the curl of wave just behind—it speaks to me of the movement in each still moment. The self, the consciousness, the life pulsing within each moment.
I felt it again when a Ring-Billed Gull stopped about 15 feet from where I was sitting. We looked at each other for 10 or 20 minutes, people walking by, waves crashing behind the bird. Some mutual, pulsing intelligence within the still moment.
I am alone at the beach for the first time in my life. It’s wonderful! I have rearranged furniture to my liking, unpacked as much as I care to, listened to my own rhythm for eating, sleeping, moving. It is bright and beautiful, chilly and often windy, so my mornings, at least, I’m spending inside. To write I’ve placed the table right in front of the balcony door so that I have a clear view of the ocean and the sand. I’ll move it back when I want to read, because I’ve positioned a reading chair in the same sight line, just 10 feet further back.
It’s opened up a whole new way of being in this lovely condo timeshare that my parents bought into 25 years ago. It is delightful here in any season and I’ve enjoyed it with many combinations of family and friends. And, I must say, it’s dreamy not to share it with anyone this week.
The night before I left Mark told me he’d exchanged some emails recently with our friend who has a condo in the same building. He thought I might like to invite him to meet me for supper one night. I looked at him incredulously, thinking “have you not been paying attention these 21 married years?”
What I said was, “Ummm…no.” At his resigned headshake I followed up with, “I’m not going to the beach because I want to be away from you, sweetheart. I’m going because I want to be away from everyone.”
“Why did you ever get married?” He asked this kindly, not defensively, with real curiosity. It’s absolutely true that Mark is the only person I could be married to; and, if I’m honest, probably the only person who would be willing to be married to me. It’s also true that when we were in the tumultuous throws of deciding and trying to get married, it was the absolutely only thing in life I wanted. And I got it! I would never change that.
But it’s also, also true that children, circumstances, health, jobs…these things change us. They change what we need and what’s required of us. They change how much we can shoulder. (Interesting: I first wrote how much we can handle. Hands, shoulders—the parts that carry our burdens.)
And people inhabit space differently. I need a large measure of calm spaciousness, which is why being alone is so nurturing for me. But that’s maybe a different essay.
Here is my one objective for my time at the beach: to stop. Stop trying to accomplish something. Stop scheming about how to do everything there is to do at the beach, to fit it all in, to make the most of my time. Don’t waste time!
I do need to accomplish some things, like writing this essay, but the point of being here is to let go of time. The point is to savor each moment without stressing over whether I’m savoring the right way. It’s getting lost in the present and, when I realize I’m in the present, staying there with realization.
This morning I practiced a guided meditation of Tara Brach’s. Instead of closing my eyes and being anchored by my breath, I sat cross-legged on the bed and used the ocean as my anchor—my coming-back to presence. You’d think that’d be harder, with the constant movement, the birds, the occasional person, the dogs. But the movement paradoxically made it easier because it felt more akin to normal life. The pulsing in and out of breath, the deep calm at the center and waves of emotions and feelings rising, tumbling, dissipating, retreating. I practiced keeping my gaze lightly focused on a point just beyond the gentle breakers, and when a person or bird went past, I practiced acknowledging their presence without letting it distract me from my point of focus. I just let them walk or fly past, with no attachment, just like we’re supposed to do with thoughts that arise in meditation. And like the waves rising and falling, they moved through me, acknowledged but not snagging my attention.
I’m still beginning my morning meditations with “Here I am”. But after a recent book I’ve been paying attention not only to the soft in and out of my breath, but also to the soft rhythm (da DA) of my heartbeat. The steady rhythm of life. I think in the difficulty of the past few years I’ve forgotten how to trust the steady rhythms of the involuntary muscles. Maybe I’ve forgotten about them altogether.
The book is Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. In one storyline, a woman takes notes in the prison poetry class for her cellmate, who has lost the privilege of attending the class. She notes: this poem in I-ams almost whole way through…(People seem to know what I-am means. I assume ‘first person point of view.’). She later asks the professor and writes this explanation, An I-am is a pair of syllables. The first one is soft, the second loud. It’s the rhythm of the human heart, which is also the natural rhythm of speech.
Of course, you know that what’s being described is an iamb—a type of meter in poetry. It’s the meter of the upper-class folks in Shakespeare. (“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?”)
I’d never thought of an iamb as a heartbeat. And I like thinking of it as an I-am. Except with the emphasis on the second syllable it’s really i-AM. That feels theologically more true to me, too, that existence itself is larger and more important that my individual expression of it. The meter itself, not just my point of view.
In my ocean meditation, I started noticing the heartbeat I-am. It came to me in my beginning Spanish, too! Yo soy. Yo soy—such sibilant intimacy, that oceanic heartbeat. My attention became snagged by the welcome intrusion of the Spanish. Check out me with some Spanish!
And then my stomach gurgled. Immediately my mind said, tengo hambre. I’m hungry. But I realized that the Spanish was right: I have hunger. It’s not who I am. That is the beauty of encountering new ways to describe ourselves to ourselves. Whether that’s languages or music, poetry or physics: existence—being-ness—is so much greater than our typical, efficient, shortcut words express.
There are two to be verbs in Spanish: estar and ser. Here’s a helpful article I found to explain the differences. Estar is used to indicate temporary states and locations…think of the acronym PLACE: Position, Location, Action, Condition, Emotion. Estoy en la playa—I am at the beach.
Ser is used to talk about permanent or lasting attributes…think of the acronym DOCTOR: Descriptions, Occupations, Characteristics, Time, Origin and Relationships. Yo soy Julia—I am Julia.
This is the heartbeat I-am. This is YHWH in Exodus: I am who I am.
Yo soy el que soy.
Plus, how extra cool that in Spanish God’s name is a palindrome—yo soy—God the same forwards and backwards, permanent, unchanging, essential. Which means that when I rest in my true self, I am (yo soy) encompassed within God’s permanence. A point of view within the unchanging, tidal rhythm.
This afternoon I went out for another walk. There were a lot of beached jellyfish and some dolphins fishing between the gentle breakers. A Ring-Billed Gull (the same one?) and I took stock of one another for a time. An American Oyster Catcher (the same one?) stood in the churn of surf. I sat down. Listened to my breath and my heartbeat and the waves.
i AM.
