I’ve just started the book, Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino, writer of Invisible Cities. (This reminds me that I have not updated my reading list in a very long time or reviewed any of my awesome books.)  Am I wrong to be drinking red wine at 2:00 in the afternoon, as an accompaniment to my plate of home made lasagne?

The protagonist in Mr. Palomar…a man after my own heart.

I continue to explore my memories of summer in Comox,  some of the meaningful experiences that I had, absorbed, and influenced my present day choices and thinking.  Being on the beach and making observations there, left me speechless and so content. 

Every moment that I’ve enjoyed or suffered to this point has been generally linked to the sensory connections that I have had with those moments.  It was like that at the beach.  I can not separate the notion/idea of beach without also remembering the smell carried in the air, the feeling of sand and shells under feet, the coolness of ocean breeze on warm skin, the appetite for cold water and bursting flavour of a piece of fruit, comfortable silence in the circle of people who were also gazing, along side me, out onto the water, the sound of sea birds, water lapping again and again creating a rhythm…a heart beat.  The beach is a sensory memory.

Being on a beach, caused me to slow down and look up close.

One very clear image that stands out for me was watching my daughter swimming…head back…chin raised to the sky…floating in salt water.  I celebrated her vulnerability, peace and magic.  I was witness to a moment of freedom from thinking, worrying and rushing…total and profound being.  I had no camera, but the image is deeply etched in my imagination.

At one beach, I found playground equipment constructed in the manner of equipment from my childhood.  That memory was very powerful.  I represent the experience with a single image here.

The sharing of several evenings as the sun disappeared and the moon appeared…light, air and water becoming one.  The night of the super moon…one of these.

  Playing on the beach…discovery, laughter, loud hoots.

 Painting with my sister, my daughter, my niece…observing shells, seaweed and stones on the beach.

  Our responses are brought home and captured in these compositions…

 A person’s life consists of a collection of events,
the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole,
not because it counts more than the previous ones
but because once they are included in a life,
events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather,
corresponds to an inner architecture.

― Italo Calvino, Mr Palomar