Category Archives: Sea Sighs

Bermuda High

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RoseLighthouse

A Bermuda High is pumping sultry heat and stifling humidity into New England. It is a typical high-pressure summer weather pattern that forms in the western Atlantic. This bodes well for vacationers and the beach crowd – in fact the weather is breeding beach bums. We’ve got balmy water temps around 69 (note that’s about 30 degrees cooler than a healthy blood stream) with waves at 1 – 3 feet and the usual dose of SSW summer breezes. We’re having a 4th of July weekend sizzler.

ImageIt’s all-good if you’ve got sunscreen and access to either the Narrow River or Narragansett Bay. Then again, my dear Mom would declare the hot humid cocktail as “oppressive”. There is an unsettling aspect of Bermuda Highs. Comparable to the “good witch” and the wicked witch of Oz, this cyclone has a darker power. She steers the course of hurricanes. Bermuda Highs draw great strength from the oceanic atmospherics that generate humongous clockwise winds that give birth to storms that are pushed toward the eastern US seaboard.

Bermuda Highs interact with other wind and wave patterns, thus what lies ahead, weather-wise is difficult to predict. When the system shifts to the east or west it weakens or gains strength. We can bet on one thing – movement in either direction will spurn hurricanes – when they will be strong enough to wreak havoc and where they will land this season is anyone’s guess.

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Wicked

So it seems this sizzler of a weekend is a calm before the storm. Sooner or later the clouds will come, winds will batter the dunes and great waves will tear up the beaches. I’m not inclined to breakout my yellow slicker and fill the bathtub with water just yet.

Sometimes, our lives seem so perfect that we fear our happiness will be drenched. Looking at the weather map – that seems true. If you’re in Indian Rocks Beach or New Orleans today – you’re stuck in a low. It’s a far cry from my High but hold on, no pattern holds indefinitely in a world that spins through space on an axis. The way a multitude of factors in Earth’s atmosphere interact assures us that tomorrow can never be a perfect copy of a perfect today.

Why not treat today as one does during a Bermuda High in New England? Try to be comfortable and chill out. Tune into what you’ve got and stop worrying about what you may get or could lose tomorrow. Carpe Diem.

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Life is Good

Wormholes

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When I was a little kid, like everybody else growing up in the 50’s, I knew a short cut to just about everywhere. Taking the short cut might mean sneaking over a neighbor’s fence, hiking through a patch of swamp, or swimming across the cove. The point of a short cut is to save time and be there.

Yesterday my brother and I pondered the difference between

Wormholewhat we feel is a short cut to Connecticut versus a much prettier route. It’s a classic debate between the highway or the scenic way to travel. The crux of the argument is whether the travel is worth the time on either road. On one hand, the faster one travels, until reaching the limit, which is just a tad less than light speed, time, slows down. That would put a check in the plus column for taking the highway.

Maturity in part involves skipping shortcuts. These appear to be rational decisions. After all, you could get cut on the fence (and by the way, trespassing is rarely socially acceptable), wreck your shoes in the swamp, or be caught in the current. There’s another reason for skipping short cuts. We reach a certain age when its understood that we can plan all we want for tomorrow but the future can change on a dime. Most of us hang on to memories of our past, especially the good times. Few among us want to know the excruciating details of our future.

According to physics, there are short cuts between space and time. These wormholes come in very handy when theoretically traveling between universes.  The neat thing about wormholes is that they make time travel possible. Whether the traveler gets one way or round trip tickets is still a thorny problem.

Time Travel via Wormhole

Time Travel via Wormhole

When we don’t see family and friends often, the rare get-togethers are just like wormholes. We can slip effortlessly into recollections of past times shared and transcend today with plans for tomorrow. The wormholes also seem to speed up time so that the visits go by in a blink and are quickly stashed as Facebook posts and fresh memories.

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Wormhole

Sailors know that the quickest way to anywhere is rarely straight ahead. Being on the water is about being here as opposed to just getting there. Long summer days can be measured by time spent better than by time saved. These are days for taking a time out to slow down and be present with now. Which is why, we should all be choosey about who and when we spend our time. Wormholes are hard to find and there is just so much time allotted to our journey.

The lesson learned from wormholes is, wear wings. Tempus fugit.

21 Solstice

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photo-3 Cairn Garden @ Narragansett

 

Welcome to the year’s shortest night and longest day. Rhode Island kids celebrate today’s Summer Solstice as their last day of school and the first day of summer. The sun is up, the sky is blue. Yes, dear Prudence, it’s beautiful.

The Druids erected a megalithic monument to the sun, Stonehenge, as a sacred center for healing. Recent visits to a dermatologist present a challenge for visualizing the sun as a healer. It’s almost impossible to imagine our brilliant celestial body as an evil spirit who entices cells to unceasingly divide, multiply and invade.

Settling into the Sea

The Roman’s accused the Druids of human sacrifices to the sun. The belief that humans must give life to protect life is a conundrum for healers.  Then again, as people  altered the earth and compromised her protective sky  we find ourselves more and more under the power of the sun. It’s only recently that sunbathing was condemned as a death wish. But we are human, after all, so we don’t have to sacrifice being out in the sunshine. As with random sex, we just have to wear protection.

Nick Copernicus ignited a revolution when he proposed that the sun is the center of the known universe. Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of astronomy is simple; the sun rules. Copernicus, like DaVinci, was a classic case of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. He enrolled at a university in Poland where he became fascinated by math but dropped out like Bill and Mark did before altering the world. He changed his major to religion and quickly moved up the cross to a position just below a bishop’s toe. Later he enrolled at another university to study canon law. He was distracted from his ecclesiastical studies by a theory that man not God rules the universe. With this in mind, Nicholas went to medical school. What better way is there to know the inner workings of a god?

Image A siren call for Mermaids?

Long nights of study gave the scholar time to probe the skies and ponder the mysteries of God and the universe. Copernicus’ thoughts were illuminated by the moon, stars, and candles as he tried to figure out the scientific and divine order that rules the universe. Rather than squint through a telescope mathematics were his vehicle for  exploration. As with Einstein half a millennium later, the numbers created a tapestry of brilliant insights. Copernicus understood that neither Earth nor man was the center of the universe. The cleric, physician, mathematician cum astronomer proclaimed that the sun was at the very heart of the world. Earth, he summarized was only the center of gravity and center of the moon’s orbit, but like Earth, it too circles the sun. Copernicus concluded that the circles go far beyond our ability to imagine such a vast expanse of space.

Many a time it is the warmth of the sun enveloping our bodies that illuminates our spirits and brings forth great thanks for the joy of living. We are all planetary bodies that orbit the sun. Each of us has a relative sense of gravity for little moons to circle around us throughout our lifetime. We’ve all been able to endure great grief and serious illnesses during long dark nights because of the most reliable fact known on earth, the sun will rise in the morning even if you are not there to welcome the day.

Today Druids greeted the summer solstice sun at Stonehenge. They still hold to a tradition that as stewards of the earth we are charged to love the land, sea, and sky. From here on the beloved shore of the Narrow River, I send love to all the moons who circle my life and make it bright – you are my sunshine.

Tidelines

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When two ocean currents converge, driftwood, floating seaweed, and other flotsam tend to accumulate and create a long serpentine tideline. Lots of different things can cause currents to mate. Sometimes one body of water, like the brackish flow from our Narrow River, sinks beneath or rides over the surface of Narragansett Bay. Sometimes the wind currents play matchmaker as they take command and blend two diverse streams. When this occurs tidelines are formed by internal waves that oscillate in deeper water rather than on the surface. Sometimes the water just gets caught up with itself – swirling and whirling until it flows backwards.

ImageTidelines aren’t about tides. They are noticeable when boaters and surfers come across a line of junk that’s been cast off by nature and humans. We encounter metaphysical tidelines when summer days converge with workweeks. The former promise relaxation and the later are constrained by tight schedules. The line between the two is composed of whatever gets scuttled. Personal tidelines are created when our mind and body are blended and each gives up what it least needs to surf deep and surface waves of contentment.

Some people avoid crossing ocean tidelines because they look offensive. Ditching the debris that weighs heavy on our spirits is what summer is all about. Letting go of personal flotsam and jetsam makes summer days all the more enjoyable. Tidelines are temporary. During their brief existence they relieve two currents of stuff neither needs.

The lesson from the sea is that in order to optimize summer days, vacations, and holidays, let go of the emotional baggage, extra items on the Do List, and resistance to the natural flow of our lifestyle. At the same time, avoid cramming leisure time with unrealistic expectations and few opportunities to go quietly and deeply into your mindbody. Our work and play personas need a certain lightness of being so that we can go with the flow and take deep pleasure in waves of contentment.  That’s at least one good reason to love summer.

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Day 4: A Fairy Fine Day

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Day 4: A Fairy Fine Day

Working on the balcony of the Nest isn’t exactly working in a coal mine. I read in the Largo Times that morale among city employees is low. That is simply not true. The barefoot, helmet-less guys working on the new handicapped accessibility ramp are truly in good spirits. They have donut breaks, water breaks, chicken breaks, and sent a runner for beer so they could relax after resinking the timbers the third time. I took a conference call, listened happily to three Statistics lectures and am proud of my newly honed ability to calculate Box Plots as well as Upper and Lower Inner Fences. My homework is to do a forensics problem to date skeletons. Very University of Toronto, I think. Since we are here playing with Canadians they are affirmative of my new knowledge set.
After a productive full working day, I kept my promise to Andersen’s two grand daughters from Saskatoon and taught them how to build Fairy Homes. Nothing artificial. Being good stewards of the environment, whenever they found something not organic on the beach they pitched it. IRB

George and I went to Crabby Bills for dinner and slurped raw oysters and steamed shrimp. Best news of the day, besides the four new Fairy Homes, is that they have resumed giving out Crabby Bill cups with the cheap draft beer. We will once again be able to stock the Ex Libris with high class glasses.
Poppy bought himself a new sleeveless shirt, just like Uncle Philly CheeseCake in RI wears. But this is as classy as a Crabby Bills Go-Cup. It says,” Indian Rocks Beach, quiet drinking town with a fishing problem.” Oh, that Poppy.
Everyone is getting along today. Mike Davis’ Mom, Dad and Aunt visited so people were on good behavior. Cecil is very proud of Mike who just got rehired as a big exec at La Quinta Hotels, Not the source of Poppy’s bedbugs. He will be moving his family up to Atlanta and enroll Jessica is a good school where she will be in Kindergarten. My goodness, we certainly will miss our neighbors here at the Nest.

IRB