Sand and salt waters' edge

astonish |əˈstäni sh |verb [ trans. ]surprise or impress (someone) greatly : you never fail to astonish me | [ trans. ] it astonished her that Mrs. Browing could seem so anxious | [as adj. ] ( astonishing) an astonishing achievement.DERIVATIVESastonishingly |əˈstɑnɪʃɪŋli| adverb : [as submodifier ] an astonishingly successful program.ORIGIN early 16th cent. (as astonished, in the sense [stunned, bewildered, dismayed] ): from obsolete astone [stun, stupefy,] from Old French estoner, based on Latin ex- ‘out’ + tonare ‘to thunder.’

Some years ago, in a moment of glowing idealism, a dear friend sent these words in a letter "When in doubt, opt for the astonishing". With what I see now as a combination of naivete, youth, foolishness and good faith, I adopted this phrase as a kind of 'live-by' mantra. We have since talked about the paradox inherent in this statement - its weight and promise  -  arriving at what feels like a deeper reading and fuller understanding of both.  The dictionary definition for 'astonish', pasted at the top of this entry, took me a little by surprise. It makes frequent mention of the word 'success' which seems to me incongruous, a miss fit/mis-fit/misfit.  I wonder what associations the word 'astonish' awakens in you? 


On 13 October 2009, I posted the 'astonishing' phrase on my blog here. Mary McCallum (TP curator who blogs at O Audacious Book) put forward a challenging comment for which I was grateful; she asked, 'what if opting for the astonishing is not an option?' A brief but worthwhile discussion ensued. 


To 'opt for the astonishing' - as far as I understand these words today - speaks to me about 'staying open' and present, awake to life in a state of alertness and anticipation.  This can be easier said than done, of course. Sometimes prevailing circumstances - our own and others' - are shocking, bewildering, 'whelming, seemingly impossible or insurmountable. What then? 


Who amongst us is not living with an ever-increasing raft of uncertainty and questions? I know I am. And I cannot profess to have answers to very many of them. I do know that when I feel perplexed, mystified or tossed about, I find it helpful to bundle the questions - both those I am able to give shape to, and those I'm not - into a metaphorical knapsack, and to take them down to sand and salt waters' edge... 

On Tuesday, when I walked the Aramoana coastline with my daughter, it seemed  The Astonishing had run up ahead of us, was there on the beach, waiting to meet us. The Astonishing can, it seems to me, reside in unexpected places, regardless of whether or not that leads us to flashes of insight or neatly-outlined conclusions.


Sometimes it turns up unexpectedly, as a haphazard arrangement - 

and sometimes in a more considered and organized fashion -  

Ali and I walked and talked and talked and walked, amongst red-billed oyster catchers, strutting gulls, muscular kelp, driftwood sculpture - this temporary screen, vulnerable to weather - spiral shells, a decaying seal. On our return home, I was prompted to go on-line to re-read Scott London's interview with ecologist/philosopher David Abram.  I warmly recommend their subtly-nuanced conversation and, too, suggest you allow a goodly chunk of time to explore Scott London's generous and wide-ranging website. In this particular interview, Abram said ". . . so many of the ways we speak in our culture continually deny the reciprocity between our senses and the rest of the sensuous world, between our bodies and the vast body of the earth. When we speak of the earth as an object, we are denying our relationship with the earth. When we speak of nature as a set of objects, rather than a community of subjects, we basically close our senses to all of the other voices that surround us. . . "

And then of course, there's Rainer Maria Rilke who offers us his particular wisdom -


           LIVE THE QUESTION


           Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
           and try to love the questions themselves,
           like locked rooms and like books that are written
           in a foreign tongue.
           Do not now seek the answers, which cannot yet be given you
           because you would not yet be able to live them.
           And the point is, to live everything.
           Live the questions now. 
           Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
           live along some distant day into the answer.


              Rainer Maria Rilke


                    

Aramoana - Open Heart for Christchurch xo