i listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.

I can close my eyes here and breathe until everything disappears into itself.  So deceptive, the softness of sea foam.  As if the ocean didn´t have the power of everything this Earth has ever been pulsing with each swell.  It is no wonder that the sirens are island creatures- the sea itself is a siren and a liar, its flower petal shore break making promises it doesn't even know it can't keep.  We know not to turn our backs, but do we really want to see?

     I've never had a God, really.  I've never prayed to anything but The Universe, and even that has always been born more of hope than belief that anything was listening.  I suppose I could be convinced, though, sitting here like this, the dragon whisper of the Pacific breaking me down until I am as granular as the sand.  Not convinced that there is a God, exactly.  To be honest, I do not think I could find value in one diety who decided the then and will decide the next and who chooses the now.  I've never been one to worship, and I can't imagine breaking that rule for such a control freak.  Nor do I think that our souls and spirits will be carried on the wind into whatever our perception of heaven is, where we are greeted by long lost grandparents and family pets, where ice cream doesn't have calories and we are forgiven our every earthly misstep.


    Rather,  in a very literal sense, I think we are the wind.  We were the wind before birth, and we will be the wind after death.  We speak of life cycles as if they are archways, with a beginning and an end through which we might be able to spy the shine of something bigger.  Something with more purpose than we could possess on our own.  I'm not sure why we don't give ourselves more credit.  The nature of a cycle is circular.  Beginnings and endings fade into one another just as we can close our eyes and feel that maybe the ocean is a part of us.   Like we belong to it.  Truly, it is, and we do.  We are made of the same things, rearranged.  We are the same thing.

     When my grandfather died, I did not know what to pray to.  His God?  The God of my childhood? The God my friends know, and speak to, and love, and trust?  Even on the off chance that those are all three the same, I wouldn't know that God's face if he was staring straight at me.

    Instead, I went to the beach.  I sat facing a little North and a lot east, towards the last place where  our feet were firmly on the same ground, his and mine, and I said goodbye.  And then I said hello as the sea lied about its gentleness the same way hearts do, and as the wind played with my hair the way it does the wild grass and the wild waves.