Time is of the Essence

Time is of the essence, as my dearest friend Willie told me. No more waiting. That's right.

Today I'm in Shalimar, Florida, and it is peaceful heaven. It is next to Fort Walton Beach, and Destin, and an hour east of Pensacola. I've been staying with this wonderful kind lady Kathy and her three kids Chris, Raymond, and Sebastian. And the beach is right across the street. There's not too much to worry about around here. Just go from the house to the beach, the beach to the house, and repeat indefinitely. From the little beach is a beautiful view. We're on the north shore of Choctawatchee Bay, and you look across the big water and see Fort Walton to the southwest, and Destin to the southeast. And between the two on the horizon is a tiny strip of land with a highway, amid big sand dune mountains, and that is a stretch of Santa Rosa Island. On the other side of the island strip is the Gulf of Mexico. To go around the bay and thru Fort Walton to reach the Gulf is only 5 miles. Sort of a long walk, as Bob and I found out; but we were carrying heavy bags of groceries from Publix so that made it harder. But it's a nice bike ride, for sure. I guess they have real smooth sidewalks because a lot of old people live here. They also have lots of bingo halls.

Sitting on the beach across the street is kind of like sitting on Joni's Beach on Madeline Island. The Fort Walton lights are like Bayfield, and the Destin lights are like Ashland. And there's a huge condo building (that stands apart from all the rest of the condos) in Destin, and that kind of represents the power plant in Ashland, or maybe the Ore Dock, which you can just make out as a larger feature on the distant Ashland shoreline.

So it's kind of like Joni's Beach. Except, of course, this is the Florida panhandle and not northern Wisconsin. It was beautiful warm today, and I sat on the sand in the sun while I talked to Georgia and Willie on the phone, until the sun went down, because then it was a little too chilly. I was going to get on the bus back to New Orleans yesterday, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I've been here 2 weeks now, this time around, and it's such a comfortable home that's helped me so much that I wish I didn't have to leave soon.

What's so good about it?

1. The peace. It's just us. No drama. No swirling vortices of chaotic energy. No responsibilities or attachments or history. Just the house and the beach. A simple pattern. Sleeping, eating, writing, reading, Internet, talking to Kathy, talking on the phone, watching the waves and the sunset. It's all the break that I needed.
2. The clean. Clean air, clean water, clean silence, clean relationships. The toxins were really building up in my system through all that time in New Orleans, and they were beginning to manifest in sickness and pain. Some physical, some energetic. After coming here, most of them got the chance to come out, and it feels so good to almost be back to normal and healthy again. 6 months in New Orleans was beyond my limit. I look forward to the deeper detox I'll have when I go back to Kansas for Christmas, and then back to Ashland for long-term.
3. The sacred time that I had here with Bob. After the SOA, we spent Thanksgiving week here, and it was for sure one of the best weeks of my life. It feels like my whole life has been leading up to what Bob and I have now. Of course that's true of the connection between any past and any present. But the magnitude of this present, that week we spent together, definitely stood out as one of those shining milestones, a magical time when tons of spirals have come back around on a higher plane, and you see all the connections, all the BLINDING PERFECTION. The times when you see the manifestation, the results, of years of work or pain or joy or learning. A path you've been traveling a long time, and finally you see where it was going all along. You remember all those strange cryptic billboards you read along the way, and now they make Perfect Sense. It's times like that, the Thanksgiving week we spent here, that I cry and laugh again and again, struck with the insane beauty of our lives, and God's supreme sense of humor and absolute love for us.