Dreams Turned Inside Out

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(How do you explain what only the heart can hold, and the mind can only hope to learn? How do you explain a dream turned inside out?

At the bottom, of this page is a link that will probably only deepen the mystery)

Early September, shadows growing longer, darker, sooner, stretching, inching across my little peninsula making the cold Atlantic Ocean that surrounds me and the earth start to take on the steel gray of winter. And at its precise tip this short stretch of land is only a mere 1.6 square miles, however, according to the United States Census the town has a total area of 8.3 miles of which only 2.0 square miles is land and 6.3 miles of it (76.02%) is water. I guess one could take that to imply that we are already 76.02 percent Atlantis. But according to the town council Winthrop has a land area of just 1.6 miles and not 2.0, I don’t think the town meant to minimize it’s self with that information. But we have cut our selves four tenths of a mile short. Probably has to do with taxes. But if I were to figure the rate that sea level is rising I wonder how many years we have left? Never mind I’d rather be surprised.

The land stretches itself out toward the Harbor Islands as if trying to break free of the small amount of earth that locks it to the shore. At high tide, we are an island, being that there are only two, two-lane roads in and out. One road leads over a bridge the other through a marsh. And at high tide we are entirely surrounded by water. I guess that’s why some folks get a bit jumpy when there is a storm on the way. But on this day, we wait for a hurricane, we don’t get many but when we do we have learned I hope. To batten down the garbage cans. I think this scoach of land yearns to be an island. Straining, pushing, and moaning against the land that holds it a prisoner. Wanting to be where there are no sea walls, no barriers of rocks to keep it from the sea, it was meant to be a part of the ocean, an island. And now the earth remembers that, remembers that ships are safe in harbors, but ships where not meant to be in harbors, this small piece of land Stretching one long, thin arm outward toward the many islands that dot and lead the way toward the horizon.

You can already feel the movement of this small seacoast town as it starts to snuggle in for the months ahead. Shadows grow longer every day. As the sun, inches its way lower in the sky minute by minute creeping as a small cat behind a wall waits to make room for larger animals. The sailing ships that bring a multitude of colored sails to the harbor are fewer now they also left with the setting sun.

The sun and ships seem to be running from the long, cold nights of a New England winter. Just like the land to move further out to sea, go south and find warm moorings in a more hospitable sea. But with its leaving the sun gives us a gift of some of the most spectacular sunsets this earth has seen, they will continue to dazzle through October. When the gray of November starts to overcome and control. But for now the hazel sky mixed with just the right amount of puffy snow white clouds bounces around between droplets of moister as if a child playing, dancing to the music in its head full of innocents and wonder and then bursting into a pallet of colors defying definition. The night air becomes crisp more often than not. And the morning air is fresh and clean with just enough chill to make a warm coffee mug held tightly in both hands a welcome companion. As I watch the steam rising from the old cup I’ve treasured for many years, I watch an old harbor I have treasured for more that time can count I believe there is no air crisper than the ocean air off the Atlantic in late October, as it wraps it’s self around my warming hands

As I look into my past, present and future they seem all with in one deep breath of this fresh morning air, mingling together like the chill of the air and the steam from my coffee. And again I wonder if perhaps the dream did bring me here, or is this the dream… and I have some place else I need to be, maybe just maybe?

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Dan Sanders (9 Posts)