recognition of wonder

groundlessness and sea air

Right now, I fly back and forth between Seattle and Oakland every few weeks. It makes me feel dizzy and groundless and on each end of the trip I anxiously gulp in sea air to let me know where I am. That there is depth. That I am too water, clouds, fog, and reach all the way down to whatever is underneath.

Today, early in the morning on a day with relatively few clouds, I am looking out the window. I see the island I live on, the pier by the salmon farm jutting out, the graceful curve of the harbor, straight lines cut into the forest that mark roads, deep blue dots of ponds..

I see Tahoma, now known as Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, huge, potent, pulsing. The Columbia River stretches out long and wide, the long fertile reach of the Willamette Valley. I see the whorls of clearcut lots next to standing forests, disjointed checkerboards, manic really. I see the bright reflections of rivers and industrial buildings glinting rhythmically. All part of patchwork of fields, suburbs, and ranging wild spaces. It is marvelous.

And for some reason I am reminded of last week going to the doctor with my two year old daughter. We practiced for itthe whole day before…she was going to get her bright pink cast removed. She was nervous, and excited. We talked about about how the castmaker would use a saw that wouldn’t cut her to cut off her cast, then the doctor would say how strong, how fabulous, how incredible her arm was, bones mended. And they did. And her eyes shone. And the hospital made me nauseous, and I filled up with worry for the families looking at the post-op board in the cafeteria. And I wanted to drink all the coffee and not touch anything or breath. And also I loved the big knuckles on the hands of the doctor, the glint of his huge turquoise ring and earrings as he talked to this two year old person with kindness and earnestness.

We left. And I marveled at my luck to hold her hand as she marched onto the elevator. We ate peaches. We rode the ferry. We listened to a terrible song called, ‘the floor is lava’ many times.

And I thought okay, now I am here. Here I am at the hospital, here is what being at the hospital feels like. Here I am on an airplane. In the middle seat. Mountains. Body odor. Recycled air. Here I am. Here I am gulping air, or fog, or rain.

And maybe this wanders into something close to sentimental but I don’t feel sentimental. I don’t feel nostalgic. I feel like I am an animal naming sensation. I need to list, to draw my attention to here. To bring it back from spreading like the light of stars, from traveling so far away that it’s not perceptible.

I need the scratch of the plastic airline cup. Water, cold and welcome. The phenomena of sensation. Experienced and named, not in the hopes of knowing but in the recognition of wonder.