It was Christmas 1987 and a family tradition was all of us going to the movies together. My Mom and dad were still alive and we loaded up to go the multiplex. The shows looked terrible that year so on a lark we went to see Back to the Beach. I grew up on the beach movies of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello but of course our expectations were low. It became for us a guilty pleasure and to see my Mom laugh who was not given to much laughter was a memory I will always cherish. The bottom line review, lots of cameos from the 1950's folks and a total hoot with no redeeming social value. Something we should all cherish in the current coarsening narrative.
But more to the point I really went back to the beach last week to our second home in Jupiter Florida. We plan to spend at least 4 months there this year and I feel sad a bit when I have to go back to Oklahoma City but business is thriving and that is a good thing. Despite the tropical storm rain that came through we only lost two mornings walking by the ocean. It would be difficult to describe the peace I feel listening to the waves, the beauty of the color, and the light coming through the clouds. Carlos Castenada in Conversation with Don Juan talked about Don Juan saying we all need a place of power and this is mine. it is where I feel whole and at peace wit a world growing more difficult by the day.
What struck me this last week was my thoughts about the oneness of the planet. I am not a religious person but feel spiritual. I don't believe in a soul because that would for me to be a selfish conceit that separates me from all things animate and inanimate. An Ancient Greek philosopher once thought if existence as one big unified egg, and that is how I feel walking the beach. I want to feel one with nature, I don't want to feel that just because I am human that i am somehow superior to all other things. I am not asking you to agree with me, more I want to share the thoughts I have.
We live in a country that for now seems to emphasize what is right about ne thing and wrong about the other. We defend what seems familiar but at times curse what is not. In the grans scheme of things our lifetime is like a nanosecond in the world's history. For myself I will go back to the beach, feel more unity than divisiveness, focus on the sand, ocean, and air, and take my steps like Frankie and Annette and for that brief time, not dwell on problems, and then smile with no socially redeeming quality.
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