Eyewitness to mystery

[randy_byers]

I'm just back from my second trip to Rockaway Beach on the Oregon Coast with my friend Kristal. Kristal is a breast cancer survivor whom I met at the beginning of the year through my co-worker Abi. Kristal has been a huge support to me while I've undergone treatment, accompanying me on long walks to help me keep my strength up, and sharing her own

Comments

[anonymous]

Wonder full. This makes me think of "Become Ocean." (Or "Becoming Ocean.")

--Luke

[randy_byers]

Become Ocean. I was just listening to that last night, in fact.

[gerisullivan]

Behind that pouting is someone not just open to possibility, but willing to (gently) pursue it. And that is a fine thing, indeed.

Here's to that archaic power, here's to mystery and awe, and here's to beauty that takes our breath away.

That said, I'd favor a world in which you had both the love you yearn for and that sense of wonder. Just sayin'.

[randy_byers]

I feel that I've come tantalizingly close to love and rockets a couple of times this year, but that they eluded me just when I thought I had them in hand. I was talking to Abi about it after the panto last night, and she told me she though I had changed a lot in the past year, becoming more open and transparent, and that this would eventually win me what I want. However, single status has been a stubbornly persistent feature of my life, and I always come back around to the idea that I must value solitude and a sense of wonder more than a romantic connection. But who knows, maybe I can follow my confusion into a combination of the things I yearn for. Love in the time of Cancer, to paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Fly Me to the Moon

[voidampersand]

Beautiful phoots (as Claire would put it). That image of the moon just pulls on you.

You keep searching for the ordinary and finding the sublime instead. I don't know how you do it, but it's an amazing journey. I hope you can find both.

Re: Fly Me to the Moon

[randy_byers]

I feel that phoots is a term that Mike Meara uses as well. I'm a big fan of the sublime, it's true. That's my form of thrill-seeking.

[kalimac]

What an awesome sight, even in a photograph.

What's the closest to this I've ever seen in person? Probably the Milky Way, laid out in all its splendor, in the clear thin ocean air from the top of Kilauea.

Regarding that other matter, I eventually learned to recognize and discount those unwarranted incipient one-way feelings arising within myself. It's just hormones, I told them. Fnck it.

[randy_byers]

I'm not sure my hormones are so easily quelled, but it can't hurt to remind them that in this case they aren't wanted.

The first time I saw the full Milky Way is stamped on my memory. My sister was teaching ranch kids out in far southeast Oregon near the town of Fields, population 6. She drove me out there once when I was around fourteen, and we stopped along the way to look up at the stars. Talk about having your breath taken away!

[rosegardenfae]

Love love love the photos. They give me shivers, the good kind.

[randy_byers]

I'm so glad that the photos communicate at least some of the thrill I felt at the sight, although if I was shivering, it could have been the freezing temperatures too. I'm not sure that I've ever seen frozen sand before.