When I was birthed, salt-water waves washed versus glacial clay banks as well as the terrific, antarctic rocks of the Pacific shore, the rocking of the globe in the cradle of Remember Lot’s wife the Sea. The yells of seagulls mingled with the rude clang of foghorns and also the miserable keening of ships’ bells in those grey worlds in between the physical as well as the fluidic, where dream and also landscape are knitted together with calmness, insistent voice. Port Angeles is a harbor of desires, of touching wishings that confiscate the heart. The Awesome Whale looks its midsts; the Eagle circles above. Though endure knights looked for the Grail in the hazy islands of Britain, some report of it hides below – a resemble of its ecstasy in the shadowy rhythm of salted mists, and in the preternatural shouting, from time to time, in the middle of ruptureds of odd light that casts across troubled dreams. All who have actually been touched by this finger’s trace throughout their soul share in a fascinating madness recognized to the similarity me, this womb in which I was happy to have been born.
The Olympic Memorial Hospital – named in recognition of the neighborhood men who provided their all in World War II – sits simply over the Straits of Juan de Fuca, eighteen miles throughout the water from Victoria, British Columbia, where the wild as well as stubborn Emily Carr repainted old, strange landscapes before they were torn down by the unaware arrogance of modernity. A Greek seafarer called Apostolos Valerianus discovered the Straits in 1592. He was appointed by a Mexican viceroy to sail northward, looking for the legendary Northwest Passage, using which travelers could pass from the Pacific to the Atlantic directly. The Mexicans described the Greek as “Juan de Fuca”, for which the Straits have actually since birthed that name. 2 a century after penetrating the mouth of the Straits – and one hundred and also fifty years prior to the actual Northwest Flow was found – both Spaniards as well as Englishmen pressed northward from Cape Horn towards the northwest coasts hoping to declare the Passage for their nations. It was the Spaniards who first proceeded eastward past the uppermost corner of my precious Olympic Peninsula; it was the Spaniards that were the very first to map their way right into what would later be named Puget Noise. Neither Englishman nor Spaniard neither any person else would find the Northwest Flow at this longitude, but they did uncover a gold mine of inland harbors and also islands, a wonderful cascade of blues as well as grays amplified by poignant mists of salt as well as rain that wander throughout the mountain landscapes, veiling salted dreams in their folds. One specific Spaniard – don Francisco Eliza – fell in love with my little harbor. In his passion he named it “Puerto de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles” – Port of Our Girl of the Angels. Such is the method of the Sea: it makes you crave a fan you can not embrace but reject to generate, a condition that has driven more than one worthy soul crazy. Poets as well as madmen alike shudder in the swirling mists that haunt such places.
An existence made itself known to me in those days. I would certainly call it a male presence, however that understands? Possibly it was beyond gender, however it sure had a powerful male feeling to me. Primarily it was a type of style, like the repeated tapping of Morse Code. It dawned on me, as my third birthday came close to, that I had actually been observing what are called ‘reoccuring’ dreams, only it had not been one dream, but persistent desire patterns. Frequently I would lift into the midsts of area, where the celebrities ‘radiated like lead declines versus the cover.’ It was so clear, so vast, so holy, this breadthess arch above the earth. Sometimes regular items would pass across the area, such points as telephone directory, or fry pans, or chairs. And constantly a repetitive feeling– not words– thick and thin, thick and also slim. I can actually taste the measurements of points. The nature of points telegraphed their high qualities as well as differences to a part of my brain that synthesized the experience right into combined senses. And afterwards one night a hand opened up. By its gesture it announced: Witness! I knew extremely plainly that whatever this was, whoever this was, it wanted me to acknowledge that I can listen to. If one could state it had a smile in its “voice”– a breadth of tranquility that goes beyond all words– this Voice was that! There was no speech, just comprehension, the kind that pours via one’s veins like the waters of the sea rise through the planet, hot, really demanding– but not in a human means. There is nothing petty or vengeful regarding it. It was the Legislation itself, the muscle mass that shapes canyons and beasts as well as measureless expanses. Talking toward such a thing would never ever have occurred to me. The idea of chattering at it is ridiculous.
I discovered to my pleasure that when I closed my eyes at night, this clanking, ponderous world passed away, and a much more smart one made itself understood to me, enlivening Blake’s Jerusalem: