Grey Matter

I drove down to the lake before I went home from work.

I love this spot where there is water as far as you can see.  It makes me think of what it must be like to travel the ocean as a sailor or even as a guest on a cruise.  One of these days I'll have to try it.

Today everything is grey, much like my mood.  I'm not depressed or sad about anything.  It's one of those days when I feel like I don't matter much in the scheme of things.  I am neither black nor white.  Like an old photograph, I am shades of grey.

The sky is grey, indifferent shades from the dusty, dirty grey in the east to the talcum white in the west. No blue breaks the monotony.  The trees near the shoreline have lost their gold and red to the autumn wind. They, too, are grey and brown, not beautiful enough to be called taupe.

The sand is grey here.  It stretches unbroken, smudged with the leavings of gulls, the slimy remains of seaweed and the occasional bones of a dead carp, picked clean by the gulls and crows.  I know that amongst the grains of sand there is sparkling beach glass in many colors, like the coat of Joseph, and shells of tiny mollusks that glisten white.  I can't see them today with the lack of sunshine.  It's all the same.  In the distance my eyes catch the startling white stripe of the lighthouse, its red light barely visible through the rain.

The saving grace of the greydom is the water.  The lake is grey, too, a reflection of the sky. It is hardly distinguishable from  the horizon.  Look closely. You can see the easy movement of the  ripples as they come toward shore with the north wind.  Closer still.  Whitecaps; rolls of waves breaking on the sandbars.  At last they crash on the breakwaters spewing the foam high so it mixes with the rain....indistinguishable from it, like the horizon...like me.

I love this place.  I love the lake, whether it is the cold grey of a rainy fall day or the sapphire blue of September.  It's a great place to be with someone or alone.  It's a thinking spot.  It's a place that helps the grey in my soul today feel not so unimportant.

There are reasons why things are as they are.  There are reasons--sometimes of our own making, sometimes not--why we love or hate, why we are dissatisfied or lonely, why we make the decisions we do.  Circumstances dictate who we are and what we become all too often.We make good choices and bad ones. We win, we lose. Sometimes we aren't ready, sometimes we are.

I'm pondering who I am, what I am, where I am going.  I feel like I am starting my journey all over again.  That's a good thing.  I am not ready to be finished.  I feel something in this cold, grey air--something that will change me.  I can't see the future, but I can feel it.

Is anything ever black and white?  Or is it always shades of grey?