Who is the Knower?

I feel all scrambled up this morning for all right and wonderful reasons. It’s a type of scrambling that is at once disorienting, unnerving but utterly delightful. I move about my morning in a half daze as a fire burns quietly under my bed. I only hope I can contain it before it threatens to consume my entire home. I’m trying to get work done but there is a wind blowing in my face that holds the scent of roses and sandalwood and it’s moving in the direction of my bed and I hear those embers crackle. Perhaps cause for concern. Perhaps not.

I’m texting with this person who I have found myself texting with more and more over the last couple months. These texts feel like they are reaching a sort of crescendo and I am not sure what is next but I’m eager to find out. How did this happen? I feel like I have known this person in another life. There is a familiarity that I can’t quite place. I have to get work done but I don’t want the texts to stop. Each one is charged with dopamine and I am quickly becoming addicted. The texts rattle my insides. They boil my blood. Have I ever felt this way before? I can’t remember. Where is this person on the other end of the line? Is she local or transmitting from some celestial outpost? Or are the texts coming from inside the house? I want to intercept these signals before they drift into the ether and trace them to their source.

After it’s too late I realize that the texts are laced with a mysterious narcotic and it’s probably best I get to the beach and into some ocean water in the hopes of achieving even the tiniest bit of sobriety and lucidity of thought. It’s questionable if that will be possible but it is worth a try.

As I head out the door around 9:30, the texts are still coming and they are increasing in their potency. It’s all I can do to get myself to the car. I start my engine and then more texts. I stop the engine because I fear I am being rendered paralyzed and I don’t want the engine to be running when that happens. I throw a couple texts back in the direction of wherever these messages are coming from. I barely know what I’m writing. I think I am composed enough to drive. I reach Golden Lantern and then I have to pull over because clearly the composure I had hoped for has dissolved.

Ok. I think I can do this. I head to the beach. It’s about as overcast as it gets and there is a light southerly breeze blowing. I would normally be examining the shape and texture of the clouds. I’d be analyzing just how clearly Catalina is rendered on the horizon. Today I have forgotten about Catalina. The clouds have no impact. Would I prefer sunshine? Why would I? What is sunshine? Sounds familiar, but the texts are blinding my sense of depth and distance. I can only focus on getting to the parking lot.

I manage to do just that. It’s a small miracle. My insides are all snowy static. Where is the ocean? I am close right? If memory serves me correctly, it should be at the bottom of those stairs. I leave my phone in the car and the texts stop. I wonder, if I can’t see the texts, is there still a texter? I certainly hope so.

I make my way to the water which feels good as it rolls over my feet. It feels warmer than it did yesterday afternoon. No jr. lifeguard canopies here today. I wonder where they have gone. I was walking here yesterday with that person on the other end of the aforementioned texts and there were so many people and now they are all gone. It’s just me, the lifeguard and a single surfer in the water.

I get in the water and I feel the ocean on my skin and I think maybe my thoughts are starting to settle on the surface and my insides are reaching some kind of stasis. I try not to think of anything but just look at the water below me and the clouds of sand that blows this way and that with the current.

I try to feel what it is that I am feeling. Have you ever longed for a particular feeling for what seems like ages without really knowing what that feeling would feel like when you would eventually feel it? Even though you could not possibly articulate the shape and texture of that feeling, you wanted it and yearned for it. Then one day that feeling arrives. You had nearly given up. Yet here it is. You are feeling it right now. Perhaps you can begin to give it words and on the one hand you are surprised and shocked but on the other hand there is a sublime familiarity. You know THIS is the feeling. Then you wonder, what is it that knows. Who is the knower? It’s slightly offputting because you didn’t know before. So am I the knower? Perhaps the knower is just this cloud of cosmic dust that connects me with everything else and especially that person I was with on this beach yesterday. Perhaps we both just so happened to cross a meridian at just the right time and got entangled and now what was wondered is known. Not that there is no wonder left. There is plenty of that.