Granulated and Refined, Graduated

The graduation experience feels much like a time I went body boarding with my brother.

The San Diego waves were welcoming to two Colorado boys trying to act like they knew what they were doing under a warm California sun.  After an hour or so of awkwardness and spitting out salty sea water, I managed to catch a particularly "good wave."  I felt pretty damn accomplished as I rode it towards the shore, my board, with my body perfectly balanced on top,  riding in the crest of white wash on the top of the curl.  I could see the sleek curve of the cold blue water below me.  The power of the wave, as it catapulted me towards the sand felt like someone had tied a pickup truck to my belt and hit the pedal.  I gripped the front of my board, trying not to let the power of the wave throw me off its back and I'm sure I had a shit-eating grin plastered across my face.  As the four-foot crest carried me closer to the beach, I reveled in the experience.

However, the wave preceding my monster was beginning its retreat to the open ocean and began to pull my wave with it.  In a couple of seconds, the waves had come together and the power of the first redirected my wave out from under me.  I sat in mid air, like the Coyote aboard his ACME rocket, having just gone off a cliff and waiting for gravity to kick in.  The faceplant into the sand taught me quite a lesson.

I'm on my way back to California tomorrow.  Back to a new apartment in West Hollywood, a wonderful and loving boyfriend, his beautiful dog, and the prospect of a very exciting summer.  Looming in the background, is of course, the sudden Coyote-in-mid-air feeling that comes from a busy three weeks culminating in a full-stop.  Finals, family, graduation, friends, accomplishment, home, Kyle's graduation, parties and prospects are leaving me quite anxious in the face of a new chapter.  The job will come, the adventures are to begin, and I'm sure I'll find a wonderful way.  But for now, I'm trying to at least get in touch with this feeling of slight,  not exactly uncomfortable anxiety that seems natural of these times and keeping it from disrupting my thoughts.

Like the sand that I hit after my wave ran out, I have been granulated and refined.  What was a block of stone in the beginning, is now a multi-facetted collection of millions of parts - experiences, people, places, times, adventure, lessons.  A beach as a whole, made of parts - granulated and refined.  Tomorrow, the beaches of L.A....