early spring wanderings

through the mind of the motionless traveler


I love limpets. There, clinging to boulders at low tide, they embody the very spirit of dreamers. Immobile, intriguing, eyeless under their carapace of nacre, and yet, so sensitive to the motion around them... Our world may spin, they have to wait for the next tide. In the meantime, they owe survival to one muscle against rock, and salt water under their hat.

Their destiny on one island. 

The light was soft earlier this week.

Water in the bay  tainted jade in the shallows,  I let my spirit watch the world in its vastness for the first time since the few days that followed the Vernal Equinox. I was tempted to step barefooted inside sand, although I knew this would worsen the very cold I had nurtured for a fortnight. So I abandoned the idea and hopped in between rocks to catch a glance of the dragon and the turtle through the fisheye.  

And I listened to the shoormal, gentleness of rollers, like a rengaine.

At the very edge of the sand, oystercatchers gathered and conversed in their traditional tongue, oblivious to my armoured friends clutching at rocks. They know they'll have to forage inside the softness of wet sand to hope for lunch. 

A rude redshank slashed their rowdy conversation.

   

But limpets have a secret life. As soon as the water returns, they unglue themselves from their rock and wander free below the surf in search of food and adventure! A bit like us, when we unleash our deeper self and dare to leap off the bubble of the artificial world. It takes courage to dare and glide without fretting from others' thoughts. Poets do this across their verse; artists, on paper or canvas... Musicians score theirs with a quill or keyboard of a computer. Writers heave worlds inside pages... The reader turns a traveler. 

As a regular on this sand, I record treasures on a chip. 

My deepening into the majesty of the real world, regulated by irrefutable laws of physics, allows my spirit to attain a greater sense of belonging and reach out  to plenitude.

Our world is generous enough to offer us the gift of life, a sense of place and generates so many dreams, as we tune in.  Now, we glide like kites in the wind, or limpets inside surf.

We attain stillness in our hearts.

Spring tides, equinox, the great pulls towards light, solstice. Some called it great cosmic clockwork time keeps unfolding in circles (or ellipsis). I ate my sandwich at the beach and wandered off to other parts of the island. As I went south, I watched the magic of late March: common seals gathering on deserted white sand, two Red-Throated divers (looms) courting in emerald waters, common eiders congregating (males in full regalia), and wren song erupting in darkening Atlantic sky.  Moments of joy deep in my heart.

Light games

I love the island at springtime. As I type, gardens drink light rain. Our every tree, bush and shrub reveal their colours. Flower before leaf is a game that need water to burst and shine. What a contrast with last weekend, as we bathed in unashamed blue! 

Festival from our star inside our very own patch of life! Its great energy, so precious, has delivered us from winter. There is a local word for spring, Voar. In the mind of one great motionless traveler, Jean Giono, I re-explored his Provençal world, Regain. Jean Giono Regain, spring, voar... Renaissance, rebirth.  I first discovered the Manosque-born writer as a pupil back in my lycée years in Aix-en-Provence (France). Giono celebrates the earth, la terre, with a lower case "e" as well as man's place through two parts, winter and spring. I love the way he speaks of the elements, and the wind in particular. Giono paints a very sensual world that speaks so loud to the poet and day-dreamer that I am! Monsieur Giono remains one of my main influences without a doubt. Re-opening Regain at the beginning of spring remains a source of sheer self-indulgence.

Geopoetics in motion

And whilst I deserted the monitor of my computer to enjoy the bounty from our sun, like-minded friends congregated in Cumbria (northern England) to celebrate the poetics of the real world. The former home of John Ruskin harboured a weekend of magic. Please click on the link to find out more geopoetics . Three fascinating videos to let you arouse your senses as well as different insights inside of the world(s) of respective creative hearts. If man remains an amazing machine made of stardust, his sense of celebrating the world shines through geopoetics, the making (or re-making) of the real world. Geopoetics and John Ruskin: a conversation

Spring has arrived on the island. The land is warming to longer days, game of light, mist and life. And as night shrinks, this boreal latitude begins to glitter in colours.