about cyprus

about cyprus …
 
It is a longing.  This place.  When I am away from it I remember it like a lover.  A
lover that is gone.  When I am there, my skin wakes up and my wholeness is alive.
The heat and the softness of the light on my skin filter the sensations around me.  
Seeing the sea every day connects me to a place I know and, at the same time, never
look at enough.  When the sea is in front of me everyday, and I can swim and gaze
and touch into its warm waters … there are pools and glades inside me that come
alive with new energy.  Mostly I am sad to leave this place … and I always dream of
returning.
 
It is a longing.
 
And so to create something in this place is to bow down to the beloved and be with
the body of every day slipping into its secrets.  Cloth of my skin matching the floor of
the studio as I lay down on its surface and heat up from the days and days of sun
that it holds and releases as I come close to its surface. 
 
Whenever I am part of this place, I am shy, at the beginning.  How much to reveal?
And soon enough I realize that seduction is personal and our ways with heat and
coming close are discovered anew each and every time we engage them.   I am
renewed by this place as I rediscover my senses and their thresholds.  I am more
alive here; engaged in the activities of being with my body and being with a place.
There is no ignoring Cyprus.
 
Everyday I am greeted by the sea and long to look out from being submerged.  She
is the same and different and my body’s gaze meets her with joy and expansion.  I go
out to her immediately and bathe in her amazing waters.  As the salty waters lift me
and float me I swim out to the horizon and the red buoy every single day.  It is an act
of love to swim out to a floating bit of red every day.  I want to keep swimming out
past this floating bit of red and keep going towards the horizon, this never ending
meeting of sea and sky; but I am that wise.  The sea will swallow me whole if I am
left without land; if I allow her to take me into the hugeness of her salty body.
 
And so I swim out to the red buoy and back to you.  You join me everyday in the sea.  
You are floating and treading water and staying closer to shore.  You are elated to be
in water; floating and free of the weight you carry daily.  You are from here but like
me you were born somewhere else.  You and I are finding our way back to the sea.  
This heat allows us to get close to ourselves and touch into one another by seeing
ourselves reflecting back.  We are more porous here and breath becomes us.
 
I see you floating and smiling while this sea buoys your body.  I swim back to you
treading water.  The vision of your face wet and full of morning sunlight will be
forever part of this longing I speak of.   
 
 
Lin Snelling