Seal mind

 

"When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink. " — Louise Gluck, 'The Untrustworthy Speaker'

I haven't been sleeping well. We're looking at buying a place, I'm in the middle of a new project and the 'whee!' of starting something new, and the 'woo-hoo' of finishing something are distant shores. I've had a near constant feeling of being lost couple with a chattering monkey mind of worry...and I'm not sure where the shores are anymore.
So Sunday morning I got on K's boat. Unlike the rest life, I kind of prefer 'dull' sailing. Conditions were perfect for me: flat, chop-free and light wind. The bay was like a big bathtub (though not a warm one). We headed south where there weren't any boats and drifted a bit. Calm. Ahh. A certain point we came across several harbor seals in an easy repose. Heads up, looking south, spaced at a distance from one another, they sort of bobbed open-eyed in the water, as if meditating. It was a slightly surreal scene, at once magical and ordinary. They looked at us with only mild surprise and swam a little further away, unhurriedly, to resume their float. Ah-ha. A clue.