Prompt #3: Perspective

12/1/2022

Welcome to Prompt #3 of the Covid Writing Recovery Project online.
Jump in here with a comment/reflection and add to comments on Prompts #1 and #2.
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What does HORIZON mean to you?

What about BEYOND THE HORIZON?

Share your perspective by posting a COMMENT below.

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7 Comments

David Jessee

12/5/2022 07:03:16 am

The horizon may appear straight at first, yet on that plane I see the gentle curve of the earth. Rising gently from from either summit and releasing from the apex either way. Gravity does not discriminate. That ability to judge is unique to us and like breathing, it's a constant companion. Ebbing and flowing through my experiences I create my own horizon of personal reality while the actual horizon anchors my sense of continual hope.

Melissa Michael

12/6/2022 07:55:09 pm

Limits and pushing beyond my limits. There's always another challenge, another mountain to climb. Another limit to meet and exceed. The next greatest thing. The global pandemic put a limit to activity and socialization. It was a chance to look within. Now that we are moving beyond Covid the horizon has shifted, the limits are expanded. Where are my limits and where have I expanded? Is it in a healthy meaningful direction? Where am I ready to expand even further?

I'm awake and moving forward. Open to improvement and positivity. Honestly living with an attitude of gratitude, living to be of service to others. Learning what service is and who I am. Feeling tiny and inconsequential, yet also part of something grand, great, infinite, and eternal. The dreams I'm daring to dream, can I make them my new reality?

Nell Kriesberg

12/8/2022 12:17:29 am

When living in Maine, I often went to a cove called Sand Beach. It was always empty, the water painfully cold even in summer. This particular day was one of those cloudy misty sort of days. As usual, I stood at the edge of the beach and looked out at the ocean, thinking to see where the water ended and the sky began. Freezing, since as always, the waves kept covering my sneakers. But there was no horizon. All I could see was a blue gray cloudy misty space in front of me, going on forever. It was endlessly open, a blue gray space that just went on forever.

You’ve probably seen this sort of thing, when you can’t see at all where the ocean ends and the sky begins, no line, no separation. So you’re in this strange space where there is no horizon, no ending in sight that you can see. You know the horizon exists but it’s invisible, you can’t make it out. You are inside a sort of circular shape, feeling like you are somewhere, but maybe nowhere, since you can’t see where things begin and end. There are no boundaries.

I think this is somewhat like where we are now, after Covid. And of course it’s not just Covid, it’s all that’s happened. Our entire society finally seeing what has always been here, cultural layers of all sorts, all kinds of pain, including that people die. Even sometimes right in front of us, which is not a sight we’re used to seeing. Climate change is finally right in front of us too: fires, storms, floods. We don’t know what will happen next. But we show up anyway. So we’re not really sure where we are except that we are here.

Karen Jessee

12/14/2022 06:22:52 pm

The horizon means, first and foremost, that mythic line where land or sea meet the sky. But it's not that simple. Where is it that sky does not meet land or sea or my pant leg or your kitten sleeping on the kitchen table? Horizons are everywhere--anywhere air filters down to rest, filling in even microscopic spaces which confirm every concrete thing's imperfection.

A horizon always pulls out of reach when you grab for it like the brass ring at the carousel. Horizons seem romantic, but they really can't be trusted. No matter how earnestly a traveler motors towards the edge of land or sea, time sucks the horizon away until we who travel are so tired we might be tempted into letting go of our goal.

Beyond the horizon lies a magic land where the categories of earth, air, and water do not exist because differences between things don't matter except to distinguish them from each other. A blue car is not exactly like a red one, but no one thinks the cars are exactly different from each other either, only that one is red and one is blue. That's all. Colors. Fancy. Quiet and clouds and what's for dinner and in that land beyond the horizon people use rakes to maintain their yards so there's no noise, and there hasn't been a drought in all of human memory, and everyone eats, good food with ice cream and cookies for dessert, however they want it served, at the table or by the couch.

Beyond the horizon is a place where we all know land and sea and sky don't meet along a razor-edge smoothness. We get to imagine life, how it will be there where surfaces are rough but beautiful and nothing is different, only distinguished.

Nell Kriesberg

12/23/2022 08:04:53 am

I love what you say about 'the horizon being out of reach'....it does bring to mind the whole metaphor of space being infinite and also, as you're saying, how in our lives we're always 'searching for that magic place'......yes, over the rainbow, where everything will be ok.....that really does bring us back to insight into why it's so tough right now, we want to go back to pre-Covid when we could believe in 'the horizon' and then."all things will be well.,"but now we know this is impossible....

Coleman Churchill

1/9/2023 11:55:27 am

HORIZON
René Daumal, before he died, set out to write about the last mystic mountains
where heaven and earth brush against each other
and spirits might pass into the realm of spit and dirt.
The base must be accessible by man, he argued,
and the peak forever out of reach.
I think that he was writing of horizons.

From the Greek “Horizon Kyklos”
A “Limiting Circle” centered on the viewer.
As one climbs, so the circle extends.
Even from space, only half truths are visible.

Horizon
A point of conception
Countless human stories tell of the place
Where the Sky Father and the Earth Mother
first met to conceive all things.
An ancient fascination with the vanishing line
where unseen marvels creep into our view.

Horizon.
So often mine is shrouded by the trees,
the walls, the windows,
traffic lights and towers blinking on into the night,
yet I can imagine calm ocean

where,
in every direction,
the last small tips of waves
fall below the curve.

Kathy Putnam

2/20/2023 11:19:10 pm

Horizon frames “the future” and “change” in a hopeful light. As one who has rarely welcomed change into her life, the image of a horizon brings a different response, inviting me to imagine what lies beyond the line, the edge that I see. This horizon, carrying shades of blue, rosy pink and deep violet purple, asks me to imagine brand new possibilities. Who will I meet? What will I learn? What experiences are waiting for me to discover? The open sky above the horizon whispers, “Let go of your fear. Breathe. Walk, skip, amble, swim your way into tomorrow, the next day and into those far off days of possibility.” I listen. And taking a slow deep breath, I look ahead, take one step and then another and begin walking my way into my future.

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