Holding on to the sweet moments

CHERRIL DOTY

“Aren’t there moments that are better than knowing something, and

sweeter?”

-- Mary Oliver

Whew! The last of Laguna’s art festivals has now closed. Labor Day

weekend with its influx of beachgoers has gone. And, lo and behold,

summer has finally come. At least, that’s what soaring temperatures

and bright sunny days and the surf seem to be saying.

The spinning day of my existence is thus begun with these thoughts

in the deep blueness of pre-dawn light. Amid the chatter of birdsong,

contemplation turns to endings and beginnings. Casting back over the

summer’s days in my mind, exploring its edges, I wonder if I have

learned anything from ten weeks of another festival season. I wonder

what wondrous new beginnings unknown to me now are just over the

horizon. How will time flow from the yesterdays and into the unknown

tomorrows?

I cannot know. That is all right. I savor the space provided here

in between and the opportunity to look at the moments of summer with

appreciation for, just as Mary Oliver says, the moments stand out as

the sweetest thing. The moments may be all the “knowing” there is to

be.

Knowing and being sure are relative and changing. Like the words

never and always they seem somehow nonexistent in the realities of

living. But the moments Ah, they are different. Sixty-two can slip

back into 12 in a second when familiar sense-tinglers join the two

times for an instant. We know this cannot be real, and yet we know,

too, that it is so very real in that “sweet” moment.

Sweet moments. Moments of summer 2004. Moments to be remembered

... to be treasured.

There was a moment when the light of the full moon rising in the

east filled the night sky with light, turning the dark into day, into

pathways of possibility across the bright sea. Or the instant that

everything but the moment slipped off shoulders and into the water

with the dip of my paddle as the kayak slid near-silent through the

waters of the bay.

There was an instant when I drifted right out of time and place as

soft Vietnamese voices spoke in an unknown language that felt

familiar somehow in its every modulation. The soft rise and fall of

the words lulled me on a dreary gray summer afternoon now gone.

Or there was the point in time when, footsteps passing over a

stretch of well-known sand, a mind trick took me through many months

at once and infused me with feelings of gratitude for gifts given,

swelling my heart and filling my eyes with tears.

There were those sweet junctures of time, too, in the summer’s

surplus of morning fog. There was finding myself in an ephemeral

moment alone on Crystal Cove beach in the circle of preening gulls

whose soft cooing sounds surrounded and welcomed me. Gray fog swirled

around us, ruffling feathers and cooling skin as we stopped and

listened together to the soft lap of small waves on the sand at our

feet. Everything seemed to be so “all right” just then.

There were times walking in fog with my close friend when laughter

would erupt from one of us in a sudden burst of recognition of some

quirk within one of us. And there were moments speaking of deeper

things, when sudden tears might well up for one or the other.

Also along the beach sands there were sweet moments of connection

with people as we shared the very special space for a time. There

were hugs and words of wisdom handed out like free passes to the day

-- each one some new treasure.

Now, as the summer draws to its close, I hold fast to all those

special moments it held. I know not what place they have in the

larger scheme of things nor if they matter to anyone else. But from

the morning’s pink flush that swells in the east to the moments of

evening when fire in the sunset sky turns to the essence of blue

iris, I continue my watch for these sweet meditative moments. Mary

Oliver knew them. Stephen Batchelor did too when he spoke of probing

“with intense sensitivity each glimmer of color, each cadence of

sound, each touch of another’s hand, each fumbling word that tries to

utter what cannot be said.” Sweet moments abound.

* CHERRIL DOTY is a creative life coach and artist. You can reach

her by e-mail at emmagine@cox.net or by calling (949) 251-3883.