I really didn't want to go this morning.

The day grey like I felt, the ocean spitting foam, the rain horizontal, yet surprisingly not cold. Come hell or high water I had said! So, without a second thought, without even coming inside after the school drop off, I go. I can't run, my back aches and my legs feel heavy. I try to honour that.

What do I see? What comes into sight, there on that shoreline between the worlds? Who is here?

At first there's many things I notice; little spiral shells & cuttlefish skeletons; hundreds of them which I like to step on to hear them crack. There are fibre balls & sponges intermingled with piles of dog shit; all resting up on the high tide mark.

The little spirals though, capture my attention & I'm delighted to discover later (according to my Beachcombers Field Guide), they are the Ram's Horn Shell. Rather than being a shell, this is actually the internal skeleton of a small squid like animal called Spirula spirula, which lives in the deep open ocean. The separate small chambers are gas filled & allow the Spirula spirula to move up to the surface of the ocean at night.

Wow!

Later when I'm back in the comfort & safety of my home; with the rain pelting down & the storm increasing in intensity; I presume that's why so many of them are washed in now. We humans, with all our free will (particularly in modern culture), can find ways of sheltering through storms, but Spirula spirula cannot. We can perhaps learn to move from places of depth to places of shallows, as necessary.

Which brings me to, what I ponder on a lot: human response-ability, in the midst of the chaos of change. Where cognition & perception either works for us or against us?  In the wholeness of this life - which includes both the good and bad; the right and wrong; the left and right; the war and peace, the birth and death. If only I could let go of my rigid ideas; my projections & personalisations, then just like that Japanese poet from the 14th century I might know for myself the enduring truth...

All tempest has,

like a navel,

a hole in its middle,

through which a gull can fly,

in silence.

For now I settle for glimpses. But I know this is why I am continually called to this Way of Creative Living. Thank you Spirula spirula for your lessons today.