Free Write, Cape Cod 2017

September 26, 2017 North Truro, Cape Cod 7AM

Sitting out the back deck off our kitchenette room facing the bay. Can see Provincetown to the right. The sun sets over Provincetown every evening. The bay is quiet, no waves, really. But look again and there are some small ones lapping at the end and at the feet of an assortment of sea birds of varying shades of brown and white.They stand in the shallows passing time waiting for schools of shiny little fish to frenzy the water.The birds pass the time preening their brown and white feathers. A short distance away, larger fish are feeding. The water is boiling with activity; fish flopping and making slapping sounds on the water, and smaller white birds wheeling and diving into the water to catch them. The sun is burning through the fog, illuminating the sand along the shore, a silvery ribbon littered with treasures left by the surf.I love to walk along that ribbon picking up shells and stones of all colors. Beautiful stones of turquoise blue, or green, and I pocket them greedily, only to find they have turned gray when they dry in my pocket. They become ordinary when removed from the magic of the sea.Like me, when I will return to the inland of my life, will I become gray again, when removed from the magic of the sea, the sun and surf, where hidden drama below the surface occasionally boils over for all to see? Back to my ordinary life, ah but what drama lies just below that surface and what treasures can be seen with a little patience and effort? The path of my ordinary life is also littered with small gifts that gleam with their own magic. If you just take the time to stop, listen and look. My meadow is my sea, and instead of seals and gulls, I have Brother Bear, the watchful doe, curious fawn, and lurking fox. Soaring over all is the ominous vulture, that hawk with his piercing cry, the throaty owl at night. Below the birds, there is a mid layer of drama and the fields have their own frenzy when swarms of dragon flies take flight, chasing their own prey of Beatles over the tall grass.The occasional solitary bobcat slinks through, and nobody knows but the field mice and perhaps a rabbit or two. The lumbering bull moose could slip by at midnight and we would never have known, had it not spooked the horse, and walked straight through the electric fence like it was mere fairy floss, taking it with him over the stone wall and into the surrounding woods. Talk about drama! Tell me about magic! Tell me about magic, when I wake up in the middle of the night and look out my bedroom window to see my gray horse, turned a magical silver, glowing in the middle of the field, Only to turn back into an ordinary gray horse in the morning, nickering his ordinary greeting to me when I give him his ordinary morning grain. There is magic In every ordinary life. One must look for it and recognize it when they see it. My advice: pay attention and sustain yourself wherever you are, whenever you can.