"When the Sea Catches Fire"

By Claudia Ricci

Dark green waves. But no peaceful sandy shore. These waves are roaring inside me. Salty flames slip up and down my arms, the ocean a flood of anxiety that settles into my guts and twists and turns so powerfully it threatens to drown me.

That’s how panic can sometimes feel.

Well, so, here is how on a Thursday morning, an ordinary day, it went away.

I am lying on my yoga mat, cloudy and powdery blue. I can see the outline of the gigantic maple tree outside my farmhouse window.

It is nine a.m., the agreed-upon time. Denise, more than 100 miles away in the hills of Vermont, has told me to lie down at just this moment. For an hour. She has instructed me to close my eyes, and just lie there.

Quietly. She has told me that because I cannot drive to her house today, she will do an energy-balancing session from afar.

I close my eyes, and lie there, and almost immediately it starts: I see an eye, a large rainbow-colored eye, and it’s gone and then, a mermaid squirts into view.

Not her face, though. She has her back to me, I see her head and bare shoulders. She is bending backward at the neck or waist so that I am staring at the top of her head, and her long mop of glossy black hair. It swings very gently, back and forth. Back. And forth. Across her back. Just as quickly as she swims into view, she simply slips away.

That’s when the spiraling yellow and red lights begin. They whirl somewhere, and then, they settle in my chest, sinking inside like some kind of an energy drill. Or a cleaning tool. I see the light scouring.

Cleaning me. Clearing the site of that awful tumor I had some five or six years ago.

Finally, the green spot appears. It begins small. It quivers. It is a living spot of emerald life energy. This green is…

Oh my. The sea is back again. But it is another ocean altogether. On fire in the sun, glistening and foamy. The waves lively but gentle. So bright I have to squint in the light.

And if I had more time, I would tell you each of the colors of each of the fish that swim there. And I would paint you the frog-green palm trees on shore.

And I would tell you how all of these visions, and writing them down here, leaves me. Calm. As if I am lying on a blanket, sinking into warm sand.

On shore.

Claudia Ricci, a professor of English, creative writing and journalism at the University at Albany, SUNY, edits MyStoryLives. Recently, she helped launch a new blogsite on matters related to body, mind and spirit. Called Holistic Health, it is available at the Albany Times Union blog page at: http://blogs.timesunion.com/holistichealth/