[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG

December 31st, 1992
Agua Verde, Sea of Cortez
Baja California Sur, Mexico

I stand on the ladder inside the companionway, journal resting on the bridgedeck outside as I write.  My chilled body longs to return to a still-warm bunk but the dawning of a dying year has called me and I cannot stay below.  PILAR’s motion is comforting, rolling gently over her anchor on incoming swells.  I hear the faint rush of surf washing through a nearby reef and feel myself softening, my edges blurring, floating outward, melding with this morning.

Darkness, surrounding me, slowly retreats as the sun climbs its way upward past dense layers of resistant clouds.  It seems a battle, the heavy strata squeezing the great rays of light through narrow slots, forcing them to wave and slash upward like giant swords. Brilliant slashes of crimson, violet, blue and gold, arc powerfully from one strata to another. Time is tangible, mesmerizing in this moment.  

Silhouetted against the sky’s pageantry--so intense I feel my ears thrumming--trails a ridge of mountains encircling the anchorage.  Its spine radiates massive wedges of rock. My eyes follow their resolute march downward to the horizon.  A low pile of rounded stones meet with the water’s edge and I realize a change...morning light has struck several huge boulders revealing a shoulder, then a bulging foreleg crouching to lower a massive head, eyes half-closed in anticipation.

It is a dinosaur, come to drink the Sea.

My senses are reeling, I am equally stunned and delighted by my imagination’s audacity.  There’s no time to think, the day grows brighter, the moment is almost gone.  I surrender to enchantment, sink wondrously into my role; I am an accidental witness to an ancient rite as a ritual beast silently devours the dregs of a dying year.

Flames of light leap higher into the sky, the thrumming in my ears now celestial music matching vigorous note to vibrant color as I watch and listen to the heralding dirge of another year, wondering, What sort of homage should a neophyte offer?  Is it an honor given to those poised between two worlds?  What kind of tribute to the year-gone-by would be acceptable to an illusion that eats Time?  Could this be an opportunity for symbolic purification?  Certainly I feel the need. This morning’s dawn was not the only summoning I’d felt drawing me from my sleep.

What would happen if I culled my memory, my journals, my letters, for their residue?  Could I bind together a sacrifice of those unfinished, decaying bits of my life and reverently lay them at an imagined shore, my own mental tide line?  Would they disappear or would they be transformed into an endless cycle of life; seeds planted in earth; new growth from old?

I know where I would start my gatherings but I wonder if it is wise to disturb them.