Sea Change, A Journal of Reflections and Waves

Full fathom five, thy father lies,
of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding dong, Hark! Now it hear them.
Ding dong, bell.


William Shakespeare, of course, sung by Ariel, I believe, in The Tempest, one of my favorite of his plays. For those of you who know the quote well, I'm aware that the punctuation is a bit off. Perfectly functioning keyboards are a bit of a rare commodity in Peru. This one doesn't do anything but type arrows when you try to use the upper symbols on the keys.

In any case, I can correct them when I return home next week to the States! Hurray! The exclamation point works at least!

I had the idea last spring to start a journal called Sea Change, A Journal of Reflections and Waves that would focus on the subject of change on Block Island. I want to include all aspects of change, both the good and the bad. How it affects our life and how we want to affect change on both a personal and collective level. For me, specifically, I see this as an opportunity to focus our intention on our ability to create the world we want through our emotions, on both a personal and political level. I am interested, as Martin Prechtel puts it, in awakening the indigenous soul of Block Island. You may remember the Manifest Manisees Manifesto I created last winter. Some of you were in the beautiful ceremony with me at Jill Helterline's house last Lammas....Groundhog Day.....where we spoke our wishes for the island aloud as if they had already come true. In case you want to review it, or to read it for the first time, go into the archives on this blog for Feb. 2007. It can be read there. And if you have anything you would like me to consider adding, please leave your suggestions in the comments or write me personally at jenlighty@hotmail.com.

Why Sea Change....

Well, obviously, we live on an island and are surrounded by the sea. There are few places on the island where you can't hear it, unless the wind is very still, which happens rarely. We sleep to the sound of the sea. We don't need lullabies, or we are haunted by the sound, kept awake, confused by our dreams. I want the journal to be a call to clarity. A place where we examine the different reflections that death takes in our lives, and a place where we envision reflections we would like to see. We live in a paradoxical time, participants in a dying culture that is also coming vibrantly to life. My recent experiences with ayahuasca have helped me to actually go through the process of death. It was both terrifying and beautiful, peaceful and full of contentment, a quality I find is missing so often in contemporary life. To be content with change.

And what does Shakespeare have to do with all this....

In this little song from The Tempest, Ferdinand's father is dead. The father is associated with the patriarchy, a system controlled by men based on domination of the feminine earth which scholars say has governed most of our planet for the past 6,000 years or so, I believe, replacing the matriarchal cultures, which some other scholars say, was more peaceful and egalitarian. This is misplaced thinking in my mind which continues to place the blame for our current ecological crisis on someone other than ourselves.....each of us is responsible for what we have created through our emotional bodies, whether we be in a male or female body. Truth be told, my teacher Maria opened my eyes to this erroneous and accusative way of thinking, turning my whole thought process around when she informed me that all of acts of creation are female. All acts of creation include the atomic bomb and chemical weapons. It is time to look within ourselves and heal the schism between the male and female which has caused us to project our unresolved anger onto a world that is patiently serving our needs.

I don't believe the world is in crisis. Dead eyes become pearls and bones become coral, which is a living organism, filled with thousands of miniscule polyps sharing space like a colony of undersea bees, working together to sustain life in all its wondrous mystery, rich and strange. And sea nymphs, of course, are notorious for their ability to seduce. That great explorer Ulysses survived them only by strapping himself to the mast so he wouldn't throw himself into their arms when he sailed past on his way home to Ithaka.

It is time though, perhaps, to throw ourselves into their song. To let ourselves die and be reborn as naturally as waves breaking on a shore who are pulled back into life by a force they can't see, something beyond eyes, something hidden but fully known the way a pearl inside an oyster is sure of its own beauty.

See Change. It didn't even occur to me until after I'd come up with the name for the magazine. So obvious it slipped by me, through the song of my unconscious to my fingers who began typing, letting the ideas come in clear currents that will take us home when it is time for us to get there. It doesn't matter when, really. That bell that's always tolling isn't doesn't have to be marking time past, or time remaining. It could be the siren's have decided against drowning, or maybe they want to teach us to breathe underwater, to bring the darkness into the light and let them play, rolling on the surface like otters.

What do you see......