For almost eight years, I have lived in Savannah, Georgia. I moved here from Atlanta, where I lived for twelve years, and to which I had moved from Long Island, NY, where I was raised. Having grown up on a long, narrow island surrounded by water, i have always been a "beach person."  During my married years in Atlanta, I also became a "mountain person," as we spent a good deal of time in the North Georgia and North Carolina mountains beside rivers and creeks and waterfalls. Then, for the last six years in Atlanta, I lived on a lake fed by the Chattahoochee River. I had a little dock and a rocking chair and a garbage can filled with pellets to feed wild-pet ducks and catfish and turtles. I had a canoe and a kayak.  So I remained connected to water.

 Though Atlanta is land-locked, we took frequent trips to Lake Lanier and various beaches, whether a family vacation to the Caribbbean or  Florida, a trip to Maui courtesy of my ex's job at Coca Cola, or a month each summer back up north, including a week in Montauk (which became the setting of my first novel), or my in-laws' house overlooking Gardiner's Bay on Shelter Island (the setting of my second novel). Listening to, gazing at, swimming in water is important to my spirit. To everyone's, I imagine. Water and the spirit are aligned.

Water is baptism, birth, rebirth, transformation in many traditions. Taoists say water takes on the form in which it is held. For the Greeks, water was a symbol of metamorphosis. For many native peoples water represents life.

After my divorce, I moved to Savannah partly because I wanted to live near the ocean again. Or, as I like to say, to live betwixt the ghosts (in the historic district) and the sea (off Tybee Island). I thought I would live as close as possible to the ocean (not all that close, as it turned out, but not a bad drive). The ocean nourishes my vitality, lights up my creativity, soothes my mind.  I know I am not alone in this.  The ocean compells most humans, it seems to me. For artists and scientists alike, the ocean is bewitching. It reflects sky. It is a repository of life forms. And it is a place where storms and waves gather and gain force.

The ocean inspires,  feeds, begets and destroys. The ocean is trecherous and powerful: a heavenly grave.  Water disasters seem, to me at least, to be occuring with more and more frequency. Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil spill, flooding across the nation, and of course the tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan, resulting in the nuclear plant tragedy.  Our oceans are dying as their temperatures rise, and the glaciers continue to melt. Then there are the droughts--the water shortages and crop failures and wildfires. What is happening to humanity's relationship to water?

The ocean calls to our blood, to the fluid in our bodies, and many women will tell you they can feel the moon affect them like a tide. In dreams, the ocean represents the unconscious.  I dream about the ocean, and when I do, I am always at least partly happy. Shades of blue fill me with joy. The ocean connects the earth to the sky.

I spent yesterday at the ocean at North Beach on Tybee. It was my partner's birthday, and the day felt celebratory. Dolphins jumped and spun and splashed their tails against the water, not too far from the line of swimmers.  A show for the human audience that oohed and aahed.  At Tybee, in July, you can just walk into the ocean without much hesitation, it's that perfect. Refreshing, but warm. Yesterday the ocean was new-Cancer-moon gentle. I am grateful to live in a place where I can swim in a warm sea.

Today during meditation I had the thought that the mind is fluid, like the ocean. Like the ocean, it reflects, it creates, it destroys. The mind can move foreward and pull backward and swirl and collect and dilute and swell.  And like the ocean, perhaps the mind can connect with other oceans, other minds. The collective unconscious, or perhaps the unconscious of other individuals (have you ever entered a partner's dream?), or perhaps the universe itself.

The mind is an endless sea.