POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

Greetings from California.

Dare I say it feels good to be home despite chronic exhaustion and lingering malaise.

I landed a week ago, just as a brutal heat wave hit Southern California. I arrived to find Laguna Beach drained of its vibrant summer light. The Pacific Ocean outside my office window dull and muted, as if someone had dragged the saturation all the way down on a generic seaside postcard.

Still, my office is always a relief to return to—an aura unlike anywhere else. I’ve always suspected the building is situated on some coastal vortex (yes, they exist in Laguna) that no one has bothered to examine.

Home is stranger these days.

I’ve spent most of the summer away, following a series of unravellings that began on a flight home from Washington early June. June feels like a decade ago now. Since then, much of what I believed to be real and true has gradually dissolved into the unfathomable. Time falls out of sync. Locked in heartache, days bleed into one another and weeks collapse until there is no clear distinction between calendar dates we use to catalog our lives and curate our memories. My journal notes are sparse and scattered, too. Nothing under my care is cohesive or coherent. I tell myself it won’t always be this way. Eventually, I will realign and return to sharper wits, but lost in limbo it’s hard to find solace in promises you make to yourself.

Gone sixteen days, navigating an accidental odyssey spanning four countries and three major American cities, with a little work mixed in, I drifted in and out of dazzling, exotic scenes amid dramatically shifting moods. Occasionally, I found myself forced to contend with quiet rage that festered despite stunning landscapes. My internal monologue took a sharp dark turn at times with no outlet to expunge jolts of fury. Without creative release, ordinary moments became harrowing feats to conquer rather than enjoy.

I did my best to overcome self pity, to focus only on what is within my control. What was meant to be a celebratory trip with friends—one our family looks forward to every year—was interrupted by a series of unfortunate circumstances, trials I’m still struggling to process. Because of this, a dreamy international vacation served more as a spiritual escape.

Eat. Pray. Dive.

“Mediterranean waters will heal you,” traveled women assured me before we left, recounting personal tales of how the waters helped heal their wounds. They spoke of death, divorce, the destruction of marriage—how it led to loss of identity in middle age. Whether combating fresh tides of grief or resentment, they all testified to some measure of peace intrinsic to the waters of Greece.

On the flight over, I started reading up on it to see if there was really something to this. Several travel sites backed their claims, weaving in ancient lore tied to hundreds of therapeutic hot springs rich in minerals said to remedy everything from eczema to heart disease, dotted across Greece. The region’s waters are steeped in mythology —connected to goddesses, water nymphs, and notoriously wounded heroes. Roman generals and philosophers like Aristotle sought the waters in places like Edipsos for mineral relief from debilitating arthritis and fatigue. Nessus washed his wounds there after Hercules shot him.

Placebo or not, the ladies were right. Foreign seas do offer a unique cellular recharge. A remedy I came to crave as routine during those two weeks.

I turned my phone off and floated for hours some afternoons in the pool overlooking the shoreline at our rental in Corfu.

Sank my whole body into turquoise waters on the island of Paxos.

Lay topless alone on a remote beach, outstretched on hot white rocks.

Grew seasick on a high-speed ferry with the boys, shuttling us to another island.

Napped through rough waters in Lugano, Switzerland.

Dove awkwardly off another rented tour boat in Lake Como, then had to walk back to the car in a soaking wet bathing suit because a wave had drenched all of our clothes.

What I concluded is the sea doth live up to ancient poetic metaphors. As a general rule Greek deities have long inspired classic literature. Writers since the dawn of time love any reason to meditate on the sea as a mystical force. Homer’s Sirens, for example—not the enchanting mermaid-like creatures they are often imagined as now—lured passing sailors toward destruction with an irresistible song. At closer look, through jaded lens, Homer’s idea is less poetic than pathetic proof that men have always been this stupid, willing to sail themselves toward destruction rather than resist being distracted by evil-natured creatures plotting to destroy them for sport.

What’s more pathetic is allowing their reckless actions to effectively dissuade us.

The Ariel passage I returned to a few years ago. We were still living inland the summer we found ourselves wandering the shores of Salt Creek Beach on an eerie, fog-drenched afternoon, searching for a missing body instead of relaxing on the sand together as a family, as we had planned. It was the kind of tragedy that resurfaces annually in local newspaper blurbs each summer as a grim reminder to tourists of just how dangerous coastal tides can prove. My friend’s father was an avid body surfer visiting from out of town who disappeared right in front of her after diving into a wave, with her husband only a few feet away. When her father failed to surface, confusion onshore turned swiftly to panic, panic to shock, and days later, after every rescue effort had been exhausted, shock gave way to grief.

His body was never recovered.

On the anniversary of his disappearance, I sometimes stumble upon images of her and her sister on the beach tossing flowers into the water where it happened, wondering what it must be like without closure. To have the sea as his grave, to live with the mystery of how he was swallowed whole by a sea he was trained to navigate.

I always thought I would write about it eventually.