CHAPTER 1

The Beach Between

Time on the Edge

It takes considerable courage to stay as long as needed in a place between, andit requires a degree of holy foolishness to seek one out.

—Thomas Moore, Neither Here Nor There

You don't arrive all-at-once at the beach. Fresh off a plane from the still-frigidnorth, you pad into the bright gleam of sun on white sand like a bearemerging from a winter's nap, squinting and snuffling the air so strangely alivewith the scent of warm awakenings. It takes a while to adjust to the change, tosettle in, to feel at home in this place between.

I have left my big bearcoat and mufflers at home and shuffle out to the beach,muffled now only in sea air and unaccustomed sun on my shoulders. These firsthours always feel like a jolting leap from hibernation into wakefulness.Suddenly surrounded by sea and solitude, I feel, as Anaïs Nin once wrote, as ifmy skin has been peeled away and every subtle seabreeze touches deep. In thisstate of betweenness, I try to get my bearings. My squinty eyes begin to open tothe ocean's wide horizon.

Out near the water, a young father is teaching his son to fly a red, diamond-shapedkite in the high wind. With great patience, the man holds the kite whilethe boy tugs it into flight. Each time, the kite nosedives into sand. But thefather keeps picking it up, and the boy husbands it into the air again andagain. At last the boy seems to get the hang of it and manages to yank thestring to pull the paper diamond aloft over the sea.

"Let it out!" father shouts. "Let all the string out—let it go!" The youngsterlets the wand of string unroll as the kite soars higher and higher to become adistant red patch against the blue sky.

That's what you do here, I think, as I watch father and son stand togetherbeside the wide water, looking up at the red-winged kite, ascending. You reelout some long-restrained part of yourself. Let it take flight over breakingwaves. Let it find its own height. Mustering that part of you into flight takespatience. The thing that was born to fly has been forgotten for a while, packedaway on a closet shelf, perhaps, among the beach towels.

So it is with great care that you tug it aloft and let it have its head. Youcoax. Cajole. Shepherd it into the air over the sea. After a few tries itremembers how to fly again, to see beyond the horizon's edge. From high up, theflying thing can telegraph other realities along its string. It can send dreamsof that far-off place where words are lost and thoughts dissolve of dishes leftunwashed in the kitchen sink.

Where land meets sea, solitude unfolds. This wrinkle in time materializes on theedge between familiar, distracted unravelings of everyday life and unplumbabledepths of the vast ocean. The shore of these Gulf Coast keys defines the solidground of the ordinary world—earthy, substantial, firm. Its sandy lip containsthe unruly sea. Like a basin, it holds. It holds while the sea beyond indulgesits nature: free, emotional, fierce, playful, irrational, wild. These two—seaand beach—live in continual struggle, like the wild and tamed sides ofourselves.

The sea is nearly the only place on our planet that we haven't completelymapped, explored, subdivided, and conquered. Mostly, it remains a mystery. As myfriend Howard says, "The ocean is profound because it is unknowable. Subject toits own internal laws and rhythms, the human world must accommodate it ratherthan impose upon it." Howard knows a thing or two about oceans because he'sspent some time photographing and getting to know them. He sees the edge betweenland and sea as the bridging point where opposites meet.

The seabeach is fulcrum. It keeps known and unknown in balance, which is why Iseek its companionship. It provides a way to right my leaning life. Withregularity, I am as out-of-kilter as the Tower of Pisa, tilting. I keep gettingcaught up in a treadmill of to-dos, forgetting the importance of allowing timeto reflect. The seabeach puts me right again. It reorganizes the scatter of mylife. How this works, I haven't the foggiest notion.

Too much world dries you out, gets you stuck. Too much introspection leaves youfogged and disconnected. Both extremes are unhealthy. Whenever there is animbalance between two poles, life becomes lopsided. In our modern mechanizedrush, the pole that's most often neglected, given short shrift, is the one thatconnects with the enigma inside.

The balance between the two sides is constantly changing, just as the edge ofthe seabeach is constantly changing—eaten away and restored again by current andstorm. I come to the water's edge to set things straight, to add to the sidethat weighs short. My way to find my own equilibrium is to sit beside the seauntil the inside begins to clear. You may be able to do this just as well, ifnot better, in some other place: in the thin air of pine mountains, in theseclusion of cloistered walls, or wherever your own place of incubation may be.

Once you're in your refuge, you may feel the urge to connect the flying thinginside you to the ground, like a kite anchored by its string. My way is writing.You may be drawn to creating images on canvas, trading insights with friends,practicing simple mental mulling, or some other means of processing. Reveriebegs for expression. It hangs onto your sleeve like a child intent on having itsway, and it won't let go until you wrestle with your innards long enough to makethe unknown, known. Solitude provides the arena.

Solitude by the sea takes some getting used to. You wade in little by little. Inmy case, I'm always and continually out of practice, uncomfortable at first withempty hours. Awkward, as if I've never done this harebrained thing before. It'sa feeling I have every time, no matter how often I seek time away from theeveryday. Solitude always brings up the familiar love-hate relationship I havewith being alone in unstructured time.

I remember my first and only silent retreat, driving two hundred miles to aCatholic convent...