Skipping Stones and Spots of Time

Once I was hosting a University lecture with a very large group of first year students on the topic of William Wordsworth's epic poem, The Prelude. The poem itself is some 400 pages long but filled with some of the greatest empathetically engaging text in poetic history. After a timely length of highly lacking interaction on the part of the students, I was slowly getting the sense that I was lecturing into a vacuum. "Better to keep silent and be thought the fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", so the proverb goes. The poor brave soul that finally breached the silence was the one who showed his ignorance and removed the doubt. After nearly an hour of class, he put up his hand and quite candidly asked, "If this is just the prelude, how long is the poem?"


In the poem Wordsworth refers to "spots of time". Although my memory of the interpretation offered by my second year prof when I was under Wordsworth's posthumous tutelage is vague at best, my own interpretation is probably similar. Wordsworth refers to childhood memories that are triggered by a scent or an image or some abstract combination of sensory inputs that is just right to travel the memory back in time to a moment, an emotion, an elusive spot of time that registered in our childish minds for some reason that may have been entirely beyond our cognitive realization at the time. In the revisitation, via sensory memory, our adult mind is "repaired" in some way, the world is categorized in childhood terms and put back in order. Wordsworth was not just waxing romantic poetic drivel. It's happened to me. It's happened to everyone I should imagine. And when it does, it's absolutely magical. One of those authentic 'stop and smell the roses' moments that genuinely slows time and is worth it, to the astute observer, to try and live in it for as long as the moment will last.
The other day I had just such a moment. I was not actually returned to a childhood memory, but the emotion was just as strong. I'm not sure what triggered it, but I think it was an attempt to skip a flat stone offered to me by Blair into the choppy ocean surf at Willow's Beach. It was a brief image of stones interrupting fast moving water on a sparkling sunny day filled with the laughter of children. And suddenly there I was . . . at the Sooke Potholes. That is the nickname given to a particularly beautiful rocky and weaving little river park area in the township of Sooke, just outside of Victoria. It variously offers enough depth to rock jump in places, enough placidity to swim in others, and enough shallow areas for children to wade and be idle and capture little water creatures with a net. The day had been filled with just such activities. All the kids joined myself, Dad and Anita for a day excursion to the Potholes. Eventually we found a nice, relatively secluded place to have a picnic lunch. The lazy day was glimmering and gorgeous. Dad got up and selected from the rocky shore an ideal skipping stone. Now Dad is an expert stone skipper and he managed to skim it across the surface with several light bounces almost all the way to the other side of the river. In fact, this calm, narrow stretch of the river was a perfect width for just such a contest. Not to be outdone, I stood up and rose to the challenge with almost equal near success. The next half-hour turned into a full-fledged male ego/skill contest with Dad parading for his wife and I for my girlfriend respectively. The kids got involved by cheering us along and either harvesting stones for their chosen champion or joining in the efforts and attempts to skip. Dad and I taught Rory, Blair and Milo how to select good flat stones and give with a whirl. Although the girls feigned disinterest, we could tell they were impressed. We left later that day with sore arms and big smiles.


Often when I am melancholy, . . . which is often, I head down to the nearest ocean access and reflect while I skip stones into the surf. I like brooding and I like melancholy solitude and often seek it when life has become too . . . well, too life. Merely selecting a stone from a sea of beached geologic choices is a pensive activity which seems to slow time and gives one pause to reflect, or to avoid thought altogether. The serenity achieved getting lost in the rock hunt is worth the time itself. Even as melodramatic as I am accused of being, I have earned my tragic right to melancholy only too well and have enough to last this lifetime and many others. I hope better for my kids. I fear not. Alas, however, as much as I cannot escape my sadness, I have learned that I cannot escape the more buoyant parts of what I am either. Every time I go to skip stones now, I am foiled in my melancholy as my spot of time, at the Sooke potholes, with Dad, invariably creeps into my mind, and similarly creeps a smile across my face . . . even if I don't want one. A teary smile in a spot of time: inescapable and wonderful. Have you ever tried skipping stones? You should.

See you in hell,
Shakes.