Kinds of Honey

Yes, we did happen upon this boat at the Egg Harbor Marina only moments after I had made up my mind to own a sailboat someday.

Isn’t she gorgeous? The red is so striking. The lines are so clean and pretty. The boat props up that “For Sale” sign like an invitation towards adventure. But the timing! The timing is not right.

I feel about this boat very much like I felt about a gray Percheron I met at a horse auction I went to while I was still a college student. The horse was positioned near the door so as I went in and out I kept walking past him, and I kept stopping to say hello, and even though I was more interested in a riding horse something about this boy made me feel like the universe wanted me to have him. Then someone came and told me the horse was being sold because his partner had died, and I wanted him more than ever. It was like everything around me was pressing in and trying to say, without saying it, This ought to be.

The horse did not come home with me, but I have remembered that moment even after all this time, always with a bit of sadness, and a bit of a sense of loss. But why? I have seen many a horse I couldn’t have. This felt different from simply wanting.

I have to wonder: are such moments times when one’s fate is at a crossroads? When you get to play a hand in shaping your destiny? Is the universe trying to help you know which path leads towards your best bliss? Or is it simply imagination, fanciful desires of what might be? I want to believe it to be something beyond my own self, but then, if I ever conclude that it is, and if I ever take the seemingly unreasonable and impulsive risk, do I have the courage to ride out the consequences, unpredictable as they may be?