The day the tsunami from the Japanese earthquake reached San Francisco, I found myself running in Golden Gate Park thinking about my relationship with water. Sadly, at times, my relationship with my family is better than my relationship with water (and my family and I aren’t exactly close).
After absorbing the headlines about the devastating earthquake, I drove toward Ocean Beach, engulfed by sadness. I knew some endorphins would help me feel better. To my chagrin, however, Highway 1, which runs the length of California and beyond, was blocked at every approach by circling police cars. More and more, it felt like my run on September 11th, when I’d watched the horror on TV and then similarly sought the familiar refuge of my practice. Back then, I worried about a military attack on Ocean Beach.
This day, perhaps a little late, I began wondering about the wisdom of being near a tsunami zone, even though a part of me said, “Don’t worry. It won’t reach us here.” I became irritated when my parking attempts were thwarted at every turn by police cars. Finally, at the edge of their cordon, I ditched the car on Lincoln Ave. Grumbling as I tottered toward Beach Chalet, I noted with a wry smile that while cars were forbidden near the beach, there were plenty of people there, looking out to sea. I entered the park and wondered if the air raid siren went off, whether I’d be able to get back to my car. Foolishly, I‘d left my cell phone in the trunk. Again, I shook off the worry as being unneccesary, and plodded on.
Deeper in the park, I saw more and more runners, and felt safer and safer from the impending tidal wave that could travel . . . how far inland? A mile? No. I raced downhill by the little waterway that appears to flow uphill, and thought about my relationship with water. At first glance, it wasn’t a very successful one. During most of my adult life, I’ve been angry at possessing too much of it in my body, with my system’s heroic ability to retain water.
When I moved to California in 1992, the locals were paranoid about water shortages, earthquakes, and other seemingly ridiculous worries. In my home state of Massachusetts, water was always plentiful, and the only thing that shook us regularly was the occasional hurricane; usually gasping its last after ravaging some Caribbean island.
I’ve always been afraid of deep water. Not deep water as in trouble, but me, deep in the drink.I attribute this to a past life where my current life mother drowned me. (Yes, really. We were both priestesses in an Egyptian temple and in love with the same priest. She was the more powerful one, and as I was undergoing my “swimming with the crocodiles” initiation, she blocked my exit. This led to an untimely demise.) That’s my story and I’m sticking with it . . .
I do love sailing, however, and skimming across a glassy surface on water skis. Snorkeling is up there among my favorite things too. In college, my initial major was Marine Biology, although, had I stayed with it, my deep-water fear would have placed me on the career path of an intertidal/littoral zone biologist, instead of the pelagic, tank-wearing type.
I’ve connected with Mother Ocean, Tiamat, Mama Qocha—name your goddess—in many rituals, and have been gifted with her dance to perform when aspecting her. I’ve cleaned my energy field with her assistance regularly, for years now.
In my hometown, Westport, I’ve slipped into her rivery embrace and felt her womblike peace, as I drifted in her brackish bliss. In my late twenties, I sat by her shores at Horseneck Beach one moonlit night, gazing at her incoming waves, and fell into an inner vastness I never knew I possessed. One of my first numinous experiences.
In Peru, I journeyed with the spirit of the Urubamba River. She took me on a wild ride; flying above the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and other amazing sights.
In Hawaii, I was thrilled to arrive at the end of a hurricane, where her moist gusts blew in and out of my room at the Kalanai all night, as if I were on a boat. I loved to run at the start of hurricanes in Boston, where the pelting rain felt like little shards of glass, and I’d entrain with the power of the churning wind, riding the big blowy high.
In general, we humans don’t have a very good relationship with water. We dump and drain, siphon and dam, leach and leak. We’re growing in awareness, but perhaps not fast enough. And like all the other geological forces of an angry Earth, Water is saying “enough”. Enough of the sirens and blasting by the Navy; disrupting the whales’ migratory paths. Driving them to suicide. Enough of the mercury fouling all the fish, so that soon, nothing from the ocean will be edible. That gets our attention. The dwindling supply of my favorite protein in Trader Joes, and the increase of disclaimers over every bin of tuna, swordfish and salmon. Would you prefer memory loss or mackerel?
Here in San Francisco, right now she’s being madly driven by Wind and Storm; coldly pelting the doors to the deck. This Perfect Storm that she’s played a starring role in quite a bit lately is not my favorites. I long for balmy Balinese showers, her thunderous heralding in the summer storms of August in Massachusetts . . . I really want to love her again, as something other than the maker of mud.
And I will. Perhaps an offering is due? Perhaps a little more gratitude, that this year we all will have enough drinking water in California, thanks to this year’s ginormous snowpack. Too soon the shamrock-green hills of Marin will bald and bake in the summer’s dry season. The newts that you can find in abundance on a walk to Tennessee Valley Beach today will be hidden and desiccated again. The heady pollen that is just starting to be released will be a memory. So I am grateful for the flowering, slithering, greening life that is fed by stormy showers. Tlaloc, Aztec god of water and rain . . . Welcome! Ometeotl. (And so it is!)
