77.

[you are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. god has placed it all around us. it is in everything and anything we might experience.]

-Chris McCandless, Into the Wild

yet another long time, no internet kind of post. i've once again retreated from the web into my small black book and to the pen and paper kind of thinking that uses some other, more dormant portion of my brain who's pulse sometimes come close to dropping frighteningly low. yesterday i spent the better half of the evening sitting by an unfamiliar coast after a busy holiday of sisters and brothers rushing in and out, mama keeping everything pieced together, and daddy sitting attentively, listening to it all from his comfy chair. there is some sort of low that sneaks in after the hullabaloo of a large family vanishes that reminds you the closeness of family is hard to replace and the ruckus of eighteen voices crashing midair can be remembered as a sweet symphony of love in the silence that lingers once it is gone.

sitting by the sea i did some thinking on a question that comes often when i find myself in front of something so much larger than myself.

i ask which is wiser: the mountains or the sea. i am partial to the mountains - probably a feature of growing up inland, in the middle of a state landlocked between pastures with cows and rolling hills that grow up up and up until they peak into mountains. mountains, the way i see it, have an uninhibited exposure. their growing pains jut out into the open air, their history of wear penetrates the clouds, and we (as often as we remind ourselves to notice) have a constant vantage point of it all. the secrets of the mountains cannot be hidden and the mountains don't do much to hide them anyhow. its a sort of unabashed honesty that speaks to the troubles of living over the ages, witnessing the comings and goings of flora and fauna and people and animals. an honesty that grants you a lil' wink and a nod as it tears through the sky to remind you that we all go through it - the living, the growing, the falling apart, and we usually sustain. the mountains, planted firmly in the earth represent a kind of wherewithal that speaks to a sort of wisdom i appreciate and know. a wisdom i recognize in people: my mama and daddy, my sister, the revolutionaries i've committed my academic passions to, and the thinkers and singers, particularly older country folks who have lessons to share. yet, sitting by the sea, listening the yawp and bark of the sea lions in the distance, quenched something within my spirit too. the constant ebb and flow, in and out, of the water emptied me out and filled me up simultaneously. leaving me with a calm spirit and a clear mind. i found a peace that speaks to the same feeling i find in the meditation of staring into fire's flicker, watching what some North Carolinians once deemed "Fire fairies" dissolve into the blackness of the sloping hills. the charm of the ocean, however, doesn't seem to me to be grounded in a wisdom that i recognize. it's foreign. it moves and changes and can never, to the country girl from Georgia, be familiar like the crevices and birthmarks alongside the mountains. the faults and mistakes are covered again and again, laid ashore by the current, and hidden under the depths of history. regardless of how much time one devotes to the floating, sinking, submerged, story of the sea it cannot be memorized. the depths can only be explored so much, but then forgotten. it's a forever stranger. so my thoughts and my vote return to the mountain again and again. the potential for knowing gathers me in.

i believe in the sturdy wilderness and rest assured knowing that even the unknown can eventually, somehow become accessible.

discovery and familiarity are always possibilities.