Not by satellite

August 1, 2011
Big Sur

We are sitting here at the picnic table overlooking a perfectly calm, blue-green ocean that appears to expand forever into the horizon.  A fishing boat is slowly picking its route up the channel and we can't believe our good luck.  I just made my beloved pot of percolator camping coffee and my gal is having her matte'.  It is warm with only a breath of wind.  I can feel the sun against my cheek as it begins its descent into that fathomless horizon.

We were dreading the campsite, unseen, having assumed it would be far too primitive as it was so overpriced.  We spent last night in a Yurt, sweet and cozy but too close to all the others.  Sounds of the guests getting drunk drifting down from the restaurant, we had a partial view of this incredible ocean in Big Sur even with the tight quarters

It is here, overlooking the ocean, so vividly deep and mysterious with swells from the great beyond rolling across her surface wide and immense that I make my longing wish to this ocean's unknown.  I have made this wish many times, kneeling in the ocean during body boarding, driving home eastward at dusk and in my little chair, in my little room in our little house at the corner here in our home town.  I make my wish knowing that I shall not know if "she" exists or even the "she" hears me.  I am a tiny dot in this world though I know a few other dots who make the same wishes.  My heart is with them tonight with this incredible view.

I look up as I write, in this place where we came for a brief vacation from all that seems to stay the same, roll in and roll out like this gemstone sea but not even close to the beauty of this place.  My life.  I have a harder time seeing the precious moments of struggle to find work that counts as treasures packing life's journey.  I am not a Pollyanna.  I feel what it is like to be adrift and hopeless at times, a breathing human hoping for a miracle and asking for divine guidance from a God of my understanding.

What I feel within, that yearning from whence the wish is born, is present physically it seems, in my chest, that torch burning behind the latched door to a heart that also feels an ache of loss as well as the dream.  At times it feels as deep and as wide as this ocean, especially now that I see that many employers where I applied never even glanced in my direction.  The dream that began last summer is now quite faded and worn smooth in some places where I kept making my wish and rubbing it like a magic lamp over and over and over again.  A year of making the same wish wears a person to the bone. 

It was a very simple wish and cast out into the world as I tried to gain attention while employers blithely turned away.  I had a very sweet and plain wish that I expressed with enthusiasm, strength and my deep desire to be of service to others in my work.  The employers simply did not care or had far too many others that were younger, more experienced or just prettier. A year of carrying a wish with outstretched arms gets very, very heavy.  My dream is alive and yet it is frayed at the edges and at times, I rest it on the ground.

I have some regrets but most of all I felt ill prepared to compete with others for entry level jobs.  That is not my way either.  I was naive having left a profession of many years thinking it would be easier to find an honest day's work.  Perhaps it could not have been any other way.  To understand where I would be today, nine months after the end of a professional journey, then might have caused me to waver and stay right where I was in life.  We cannot know many things.  I could have stayed and had cardiac arrest one afternoon in my cubicle after the full breadth of our lies got underway.  It would have taken them a while to figure out I had stopped breathing and was no longer capable of clicking the mouse.

Those of us who are still unemployed are here and just as employable as we were a year ago.  Some of us still have faith and tenacity.  Some of us are damn tired of the fight.  We could use a miracle by land or by sea.