Today I was reminded of how a lack of clarity can be brutal to a person’s psyche. It’s just been a strange day. I got an email that ripped the understanding of my world apart, saw a person dead, passed out or asleep in a ditch in front of a tavern, and pushed myself hard cycling for 25 miles hoping it would burn off the crazy. It didn’t work. I finished the ride and was just hot, sweaty and still crazy.
Another email supposedly clarifying the first one left me more confused and more crazy-feeling. Just speak plainly. Just tell me the truth. Thank you.
But truth is in short supply.
People are sorting through half-truths all over the planet. Who can tell a lie from the truth when words are coming from a politician’s mouth? Is the government lying about how much oil leaked from Shell’s pipes in the Gulf a few weeks ago. Do corporations lie to avoid fines or criminal charges? Shot a gorilla in a zoo because their tranquilizer gun was where? Pesticides are safe. GMO’s are safe. It’s okay to destroy the planetary ecosystems because….what is the ‘truth’ today? In your life? In mine? For our planet?
People seem to say anything that will get them what they want, regardless of the percentage of fact included. Why is honesty such a skittish commodity?
Telling the truth may create reactions in others that are scary. If we really knew how much harm we do to our bodies by ingesting pesticide-ridden food would we rise up and grow our own? Would we ditch medical practices that are more harmful than good? The atmosphere itself seems congested with lies that protect corporations, governments, the 1%….. and damn all other life on the planet.
What started as a simple question, early this morning, snowballed into this thesis–or rant–on half-truths and created a wave of crazy in me that longs for truth, even if it hurts, even if its scary. I want all things hidden to be exposed. I want the government, corporations, politicians and every single one of us to let go of the fear of speaking the truth. Or is the fear that we simply cannot handle the truth?
Photograph Summer 2010…Shell Oil
Let’s start with honesty and build on that. Shall we? I can handle the truth. Can you?
An email came from our team leaders this week about our schedule. I replied to everyone that we were going to have two sea turtle nests to process on Sunday. “Be ready,” I wrote.
Meanwhile it has been a very trying week topped off by one of my darling cat kids waking me at 2:30am this morning. Sleep never returned so I left the house at 4.30am and took my tripod and camera for some long exposure photography at the beach. Why not, I reasoned.
Conditions were near perfect. There was enough surf to give a very silky effect to the 30 second exposures. For half an hour, waiting for light, I stood on the beach and communed with the Ocean Mother while my camera perched on it’s carbon fiber legs soaking up the light and magic that was very present on the Gulf of Mexico this morning.
When it was light enough to see the beach clearly, I ran my tripod back to the car and began the mile and a half walk along the white sand. At 6.15am, 35 minutes after I began my walk, the most wondrous sight appeared.
A most-perfect V crawl and nest pit awaited discovery. I screamed in excitement, “YES!”I turned to the water and said with laughter, “THANK YOU!”Then I quickly fumbled with my phone to call our team leaders. As I was leaving them a message, a message from our All-Call system came in…we had another nest in the upper part of our section of beach. Immediately I remembered my prediction….be ready.
I hurriedly finished the rest of my walk and met up with gathering team members at the first nest. It was called in last night around 9.30pm and was already marked. This was incredibly good because human footprints completely covered the tracks. We would never have discovered it had the tourists not called it in.
We processed the nest, which had to be moved due to close proximity to the water. (Our federal permit gives us permission if the nest is too close to the tide line). But we couldn’t linger as we had nest number two of the day to process.
‘My’ nest had to be moved as well as it was too close to the water’s edge and high tide mark. Several of us dug (scraped carefully) to find the eggs. I found them!! Magic! Pure magic!
It had been a very rough week emotionally and as I stood at the water’s edge photographing at 5am I spoke with the Ocean Mother and shared my heart. I felt a reply…We all make mistakes. Look…I had something to do with the birthing of __________ (politician). I laughed out loud at the thought. “Yes, I guess none of us are perfect,” I said out loud.
The Ocean Mother gifted me with the delight of her daughter turtle’s nest. At least that’s how I experienced it. When I arrived at the crawl it looked as if the sand had just been turned by her beautiful flippers. The eggs still had the beautiful mother turtle’s fluids fresh and stringy on them as we gently transferred them to their new incubation location, just above the high tide line.
The lesson for me this week has been to face all of who I am…the good, the bad and the ugly. There is a surrender that comes with that choice and in it are little gifts and treasures. Super-grateful for the photographs of the silky sea….which is how I see the energy of the sea…and for the mother loggerhead who gifted me with a perfect crawl and nest…and for the other turtle mother who made my mystical prediction a reality.
Psychic Simone predicts a nap in her very near future.
Here’s another prediction….I see myself taking a nap very soon. And I’m contemplating opening a psychic hotline very soon. Details to follow.
A friend shared about his efforts to start a spay/neuter and rabies program for stray cats in a remote place he’s been working. It’s such an isolated sort of place with other agendas so his efforts touched my heart deeply. Where politics and violence are the focus, he quietly and gently planted ideas for change. Compassion, kindness towards innocent creatures.
His story really struck a chord within that amplified ideas of late that have been rattling around in my heart and head: It’s the daily acts of compassion that create lasting change in the world. Acts done quietly, perhaps unnoticed by others.
Big events, big gestures are catalysts for sure but it’s the daily practice that creates positive shifts in consciousness that continue and build and spread. As each of us practice these small efforts, they become the normal way of being instead of something we have to think about or remember to do.
Art on the wall in the Miami Airport
I used to believe that there was some big purpose for which I came into this life. Now I understand that it’s simply to be kind and compassionate to all beings and learn to love deeply, unconditionally, without judgment. This realization lifts a great burden of striving and pushing against all the uncool things happening. It seemed far too overwhelming to ever make a difference.
We don’t give up our efforts to bring light into the world. We just grow to understand it’s simply a way of being that brings transformation….to ourselves, to the world.
May we be a ray of light every day by practicing simple, everyday kindness.
Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss Among Vanishing Orcas, was written by Eva Saulitis. It’s a very personal story of over twenty-five years of connection with transient orcas in Alaska. In this touching account Eva shares the life and death of a pod of orcas that lived near the Exxon Valdez spill area. While it is beautifully written, it’s also incredibly sad for not only does she tell the story of their death, she tells the story of her untimely death due to cancer.
And it makes me wonder…..what about the Gulf Coast? What will happen to those of us who worked to clean up the spill or document its affects?
The BP Deepwater Horizon spill was far worse in volume that Valdez. The coverage area, humans exposed, wildlife exposed….what will be the long-term story that unfolds along the Gulf Coast?
Internet image of orcas
While reading Into Great Silence, there were many times I paused to contemplate the profound love Eva had for the whales and their waters…the forests surrounding them…the bears….salmon….seals….dolphins. Here’s a excerpt from page 92:
9 July 1989–Yesterday, Mary and I hiked on Crafton Island, not realizing it had been heavily oiled. We found an oil-coated river otter skull. Even the grass above tide line was black. I told Mary about the first time I’d come there. One spring day in 1987, a fisherman friend had invited me for a skiff ride. It was an old, wooden skiff, and he’d perched atop the outboard’s cowling so the engine wouldn’t fall off. Here, I told Mary, was where we’d searched for glass balls among bleached driftwood. Here’s where we’d found wild irises. here’s where we’d sat on the wreck of an old boat and talked all afternoon. I’d never met anyone so earthy, so entirely of a place, embodying an all-out, organic love for the Sound. I’d only begun to recognize that in myself. “Why aren’t you married to him?” Mary asked. I told her I was married to the place.
I remember walking on a beach at the Alabama coast that was heavily oiled– my eyes and throat burning from the smell of crude oil and dispersant– asking myself why I was there. For a week of each month for a year I left my home in Asheville and my husband to travel to my place of birth to document through photography and writing the effects of the disaster. Why am I doing this? I asked.
It was grueling, depressing, hot, horrible work. I had the freedom to leave whenever I wanted to escape the black death that coated the beaches and the stench of hot fumes filling the air. Every time I began to drive into the mountains of North Georgia, on my way back to North Carolina, I remember feeling relief, feeling I could breathe again. It felt as if a weight lifted off of my chest as I made my way home. To safety. To clean air.
Adjusting to being away from the disaster was difficult though. I was so depressed it was almost impossible for me to invite laughter or pleasure into my life. I felt guilty for enjoying myself given the dire circumstances at the coast. It felt as if the world was ending and life as I had known it was gone due to a needless, careless catastrophe.
So back to the question: Why am I doing this?
The only answer that ever came was….someone needed to witness the disaster with an open heart and mind. Not as scientist or politician or oil company representative….just a witness that loved the place.
So I visited seven beaches for a year and walked them, photographed, took video footage of them and wrote about them. My tears mixed with the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico and I stood as witness to the pain and suffering of life there.
This kind of experience changes a person. Something happens within the mind and heart that shifts the perspective so completely that life can never return to how it was before. A person cannot return to ‘not knowing’ what they know. They can’t un-see or un-feel the multitude of visual images and emotions that were experienced on those wounded shores.
My heart broke for the ghost crabs and blue crabs, the flounders, shrimp, fish, dolphins, string rays, sea gulls, terns, osprey, pelicans….for the humans that would eventually become sick from exposure to such high-levels of toxicity. Nothing is the same after witnessing this.
I was certain that humans would awaken and create immediate and lasting change after the spill, but it didn’t happen. This was incredibly disappointing to me.
After documenting the spill and its aftereffects I noticed people responded strongly to images of beauty and stories of nature depicting the profound relationship experienced with wild places and wild life. It felt like a natural evolution of my work and efforts to shift from death and destruction to beauty, specifically the beauty of the Ocean.
I haven’t forgotten what awakened my own sense of urgency to protect our planet, our Ocean. And the deep sense of place it instilled.
Eva reminded me of the love we develop for places that touch our lives. We become a part of these places and the more we invest our time, energy and work into them, the deeper the connection we have with them. Their wounding becomes our wounding. Their health, our health. Their death, our death…metaphorically and literally.
Why do we risk our own safety to help? The bottom line is love.
Photograph by Brent Durand of me diving in the Sea of Cortez.
On this Mother’s Day I am especially grateful to loggerhead sea turtle mothers who give me incentive to awaken before dawn, drive to the beach and walk along the Gulf just before, during and after sunrise. It gives me opportunities to photograph pure, rich color.
There are a very few moments in which to capture the richest, most precious light. Between the pre-dawn gray and post-dawn white there is a sweetness where color bursts forth from the water, earth and sky and everything the sacred sunrise kisses. The muted, soft pastels are transformed momentarily into rich colors of incredible depth. Then the harshness of daylight washes them into a faded expression of what they once were reminding me of the impermanence of life.
Ambitious architects from the day before provided a perfect surface for the perfect light to illuminate and I arrived at their castle at the perfect moment, when the light was at its richest. Some times things work out exactly as you would hope.
There were no sea turtle tracks on the section of beach I patrol but that’s only part of the reason I volunteer. I go for the sunrise because sweet is the light.
Today I was reminded of how a lack of clarity can be brutal to a person’s psyche. It’s just been a strange day. I got an email that ripped the understanding of my world apart, saw a person dead, passed out or asleep in a ditch in front of a tavern, and pushed myself hard cycling for 25 miles hoping it would burn off the crazy. It didn’t work. I finished the ride and was just hot, sweaty and still crazy.
But truth is in short supply.
Telling the truth may create reactions in others that are scary. If we really knew how much harm we do to our bodies by ingesting pesticide-ridden food would we rise up and grow our own? Would we ditch medical practices that are more harmful than good? The atmosphere itself seems congested with lies that protect corporations, governments, the 1%….. and damn all other life on the planet.
What started as a simple question, early this morning, snowballed into this thesis–or rant–on half-truths and created a wave of crazy in me that longs for truth, even if it hurts, even if its scary. I want all things hidden to be exposed. I want the government, corporations, politicians and every single one of us to let go of the fear of speaking the truth. Or is the fear that we simply cannot handle the truth?
