Last night, I went to bed thinking about art, process, and my place with it all right now. Somehow this led to remembering days at summer camp at the Oregon Coast...
Every year, on Friday, the whole camp would go over the dunes to the beach, working together to carry a long thick rope. I couldn't tell you how long, or how many of us there were. A hundred children? Fifty feet? We would march down the sand, parallel to sea. Once we arrived at the designated spot, the counselors would spread themselves along the rope and carry it out into the ocean until they were waist deep, creating a barrier between us and danger. When the signal came, we would all run in as hard and fast as we could!
I remembered that feeling of jumping into the waves, and the occasional momentary drowning panicking feeling when overwhelmed by a surprise surge, and then being upright, breathing air again, excited it might all happen again, and the anticipation and elation of jumping just right, so that the swell carried you almost to shore... It was a joyous kind of baptism.
(You should know that it's hay fever season, and I'm in those first loopy days of meds...)
