This week it’s all about lighthouses. I know, I know: they bring up images of tacky shower curtains, or kitschy salt and pepper shakers. But bear with me, because they are also an interesting metaphor for consistency, strength and guidance. I didn’t particularly “get ” this until I traveled to the island of San Juan, off the coast of Washington State. They are often represented in simple, cartoon-like reproductions, but I found each lighthouse I viewed was unique.
Later in the year, I traveled to Sydney, Australia, and fell in love with a few more of these isolated butch beauties. What I realized there, in the joy of a warm spring day, was this: though they might look naked and lazy in the bright afternoon sun, they are simply resting. They do their real work at night, especially when the fog comes in, when it’s dark and stormy, even when there’s an ice storm. And yes, I am aware that GPS and other nautical devices now do the heavy lifting, but as fellow lighthouse geek Jeff Dales says, “if your GPS goes down, a lighthouse can definitely be helpful." Fun fact: there’s only one lighthouse left in the country that is still staffed: the Boston Light, which was built in 1716, and has changed its looks more times than Madonna.
This week, I’m asking you to consider the sturdy image of a lighthouse. Images can produce interesting associations, or remind us of dream images, memories. So take some time with the images in this post, and write whatever comes to mind. But first, to get us into the dream space, this week’s quote by Anne Lamott, from her wonderful book, Bird by Bird, published in 1994.
Even if only the people in your writing group read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town—still, to have written your version is an honorable thing to have done. Against all odds, you have put it down on paper, so that it won't be lost. And who knows? Maybe what you've written will help others, will be a small part of the solution. You don't even have to know how or in what way, but if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can do to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
Hopefully, Lamott’s quote, and the images on this page, will get you writing. And as always, I end this week with a poem by Ada Limón. If you don’t have her latest, The Hurting Kind, you’re in for a treat.
What I wrote is below.
The ferry ride was only 20 minutes from the city, but as soon as I arrived in Watson's Bay, I felt transported. What is it about an isolated peninsula that always feels like home to me? This one had a quiet path that led to a red and white striped lighthouse.
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