Let it Be

The search for an art studio is over. I am able to spread out under my catamaran neighbor, S/V Let it Be. “Poetic,” said the boatyard owner, saying of course I can use the space. His sister is an experimental artist, so he was completely unsurprised by my need to paint.

Let It Be’s humans are not onboard, and haven’t been for some time. “Divorce boat,” said a yard-mate, but I doubt that’s true. How could it be, with that name? Mother Mary comes to me in the broad shadow of the cat, and colors flow from my brushes.

We are now in the land of Kokopelli, a healing and fertile deity. Does this explain the man on the beach this morning who interrupted my yoga? His arm was injured from a fall out of a palm tree several months ago. “Muerto,” he said, his forearm felt dead. He’d been turned away from the free clinic and then the hospital, and he was in pain.

I prescribed — as I have done many times before — physical therapy exercises and massage. How do I know these things? Osmosis, perhaps, along with natural talent. As a child, I accompanied my kinesiologist mother on her rounds. She used a variety of methods to activate healing, including sound.

Over the years I’ve been approached a few times, by humans and animals, too. “Saint Francis,” my mother poked me in the ribs once, joking. When I lived in Kamilche, a parade usually ensued when I walked the land, dogs and cats and birds following me on the daily constitutional. In Panama City a few years ago, colorful fish coagulated under me as I swam, considering me their personal, portable reef.

Why not capitalize on this skill? “You’re amazing!” said a newly un-cramped dancer about to go on stage. But the cost is so high. As an empath, I feel their pain, which is how I know what to do.

I hear you scoff. Intuitive healer, bah!

“I know what I know,” sings Paul Simon. And sometimes I know what to do, and sometimes I don’t. I used to silence that knowing, rarely sharing it.

But those days are over.