House on the Water

 -- By Tom Phillips 

It was hard to leave at the end of our annual family vacation on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. On the last day, my sister-in-law Linda and I have a tradition of walking down to the shoreline wearing pure white robes.  

This year we got up at dawn, and sat at the high-tide line watching the surf roll in as the sun emerged from clouds on the horizon, lighting a spark and then a fire across the waves, practically into our laps. We chanted OM three times, took some selfies and shots of each other, and then just looked out into the distance, as dawn went down to day. 

On vacation, I don't read much. I prefer to sit and stare at the ocean, watching people in the water, thinking about nothing in particular. Normally my mind is busy, but by the ocean it rests---in the natural trinity of sky, sea, and sand. If I have a mental focus it's the shifting line where the water rolls up on land, then flows back, sometimes rippling sideways, sometimes just slipping back under the next wave.  

On the verge of 80, life's a beach. It's the borderline between life and death, the known and the unknown, being and nothingness, the light of day and the darkness of the deep.  

John Lee Hooker wrote a blues about it, "I'm Going Upstairs."  It's about an old man, unwanted, with no place in the world to go.  

I got a house on the water, I don't need no land.
When I'm dead and gone, bury me in the deep blue sea.  

--  Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips