I
SWING OF THE SEA
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,/Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;/Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,/Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea! (W.B. Yeats)
A heart broken may open with empathy for others and for oneself. Or, under the weight of pain, a heart may close until it does not feel pain—or pleasure. Hope recedes in the humbled heart, abiding—in the dark, eclipsing the heart’s deepest longing. And yet, a gift of grace (who knows how or from where?) in quiet advent comes to illuminate what is, rather than what is wished for.
****
Celia lies restless in the dead of night, her husband warm next to her, but she is cold to the bone, and the house quiet as a grave. She tells herself, “Count your blessings. Things could be worse, so count them and be grateful. Oh, if only they could. She cannot remember how it feels to feel good with a hopeful heart. In her despair, she wishes to disappear, or alternatively to flee to a place where “few lilies blow…out of the swing of the sea.” She once thought a place like that existed—somewhere. Celia conjures up, as she has countless times—that lucid dream on a rainy day long ago in Boston.
She ducks into a cafe and takes a window table with a single white lily in a red glass vase. In a moment, she feels an intense warmth overtaking her senses, like a rising tide. She inhales the flower’s perfume, the aroma of espresso, delights in the fanciful arrangement of delicate fruit and cream pastries, hears the sound of falling rain. Across the way she notices a brownstone—a lamp lit at the window. In the rapture of it all, she imagines she will leave the cafe, cross the street to her true home and while away the afternoon gazing through her very own window on the world, raindrops gathering on the glass pane—alone and at peace.
Just then, a petite woman who looks both young and old is before her blocking the view. “Bon jour, Madam,” Celia hears as a song and marks her enigmatic smile as she places a cafe au lait Celia had intended to order on the table. “Anything else you desire, Madam?”
“No...no, nothing, nothing at all," as the mood evaporates like a fading dream. She picks up the pink paper bill left on the table and thinks, a small amount come due for a castle in the air. So strange is the experience that, after reluctantly leaving the cafe, she wondered if the light across the way went out, and the once-warm cafe is now only a cold, empty store front.
Remembering the experience brings back the feeling of concentric circles of longing emerging from her center, drawing her toward the peace felt on a drizzly day of daydreams—a misty memory to lie awake with—again on this night.
Is it truly my heart’s desire to dwell in a timeless room, in a Brighton brownstone, in the city of Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, on the North American continent, on planet Earth, in the Milky Way—one of billions of galaxies in an infinite universe? Have I lost all hope or just struggling with letting go of a false hope? They say, "The truth will set you free.”
She turns over, fluffs her pillow and pulls the covers up to her chin, as she drifts off into the few hours left before dawn, imagining angels circling above. She doesn’t believe in angles. She doesn't believe she is one of the lucky ones who can.
****
How does one let go of a dream, an illusion, the pain of loss or betrayal, at last to grasp that nothing is ours to let go of? A letting go would seem to bring release, but bittersweet though—the “comfort” of truth gradually awakening consciousness, its waves crashing over the heart.
Consciousness is thus: We do not know what we do not know—until we do. Then, the truth may set us free to see the reality--but also to endure it.
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