#awakeaugust 24

The golden days don't come so often on the Wild Atlantic way, but when they do, oh. They are the distillation of picture postcards, the sea dancing turquoise with its white frilly knickers on display for the world. The sands are warm toast and butter. the wind runs past you, queen of the sand dunes with the green marram stalks chattering and bowing towards you.

Bella stands in the waves, all lithe backbone, her mermaids tail hidden by the surf.

#awakeaugust 23

Sitting chatting on the sand, each of us half in, half out of a wetsuit, in the swash. The upwash strong enough to push your legs, and in the backwash the bubbles scurry back to the sea, little creatures returning to their element.

#awakeaugust 22

A Yorkshire terrier, the same colour and raggedness as the piles of seaweed washed up by the tide on Traught beach. The Atlantic waters a frigid challenge under the scudding clouds. Shrieking and cursing, four of us duck under the waves.

#awakeaugust 09

The flour dusting on the top of the soft white bread rolls took me back to Yellowcraig campsite.
My memories of these childhood holidays are all outside, outside the shop waiting for the bakery delivery in the morning. The seemingly long walk to the beach, both sandy and rocky, and with Fidra on the horizon. Off to the right, a pine wood with trees to climb in. The ruined castle at Dirleton, stones gritty and hot and irresistibly climable. Chip shop chips on the long rocky spit at North Berwick, by the open air pool.
A whole wealth of memories from something so simple as a bread roll.


Awake August facebook page here

papersquare 003: Light on the water

An east coast girl is gold-limned in the morning; sunlight dancing on the water and playful.  Light and water have a natural affinity, turning drops into semi-precious glass beads. She is a gold limbed surfer and dances too.

The west coast girl has dark mornings, shadows from the cliffs by the sea make it darker still; swallowing navy waves with opal blue fringes.  She knows how to wait. Darkness and water have an affinity too. She is Sigyn and she knows how to sink.

The east coast girl is taken in thrall, by a dark lord, on a raid.  Transported away in the belly of his longship.  He is momentarily puzzled that she does not shine or dance on the boat like she did on the shore; more puzzled when back on dry land, his home shores, she fails to sparkle. She has grown sullen, and he uses her, hard and often to draw some reaction from her.

Sigyn watches.  Her mornings may be dark but her evenings end in a blaze, often gloriously red. Her lord is absurdly taken with the thrall, the dirty blonde woman from over the sea.  Her lord is foolhardy, always full of his own glory.  Glory in the raids, yes, in the year before last; but this year he did not venture abroad, choosing to relive past glories in sotted feasts and boastings.  The thrall is ever at his feet, and the less she likes his attention the more he lavishes upon her.

Sigyn whispers to Snorri.  One evening there is a fight at the feast, harsh words are spoken about those who are fit in body to go raiding, but do not, and her lord takes offence and is drawn into a brawl.  His wounds did not seem serious to the other shield men; but despite a wife's loving care, they fester, and within a fortnight Sigyn is lordless.

The east coast girl is chosen to follow him.  Sigyn tells her her fate. She will be plied with strong liquor, the shield men of her lord will take her, in honour of their former lord, so that she will tell him in the afterlife that they did this for love of him. All of them, one after the other, will use her to prove just how much they loved her lord. 

The east coast girl does not seem to be afraid.  There is an end in sight, and the west coast girl has the last hours, that is the way of things.  Gold burns on the water and she is taken down under the waves.

#013 - littoral

because my favourite place to be is on the edge of land and sea

fading places

Mostly on business trips, I get to see the inside of a hotel room and the inside of a range of factories. This last week I went to Israel, one of those places that had never been on my "must see" list, and I wasn't really looking forward to it all that much, mostly because of the high temperatures. We arrived as it got dark on Sunday evening, in the speeded up way that dusk falls in countries nearer to the equator, when I am used to the long northern European evenings. 

There were five of us travelling together, including one of my best friends, and we managed to have some time to make a couple of evening trips, firstly to Jerusalem (more of which later), and secondly to the Dead Sea. I read this weekend that unless millions of gallons of water are pumped into the sea, it will disappear in the next 50 years. We drove through hilly desert to get to the sea at Neve Zohar, the colours in the desert ranging from double cream to butterscotch, to burnt meringue... (yes, I was hungry as we drove through there)

As we got near, signs at the road's edge indicated how close we were to sea level, and then we dipped below, and still the sea lay far below that. It was striated with barriers, banks, build ups of salt and sand, looking more like the edges of Holland, where the sea is enclosed in order to drain it for land. I'm not sure why the banks are here, I assume they are emerging naturally as a result of the continual evaporation. As we got to the water we could see the salt crusts bulging out of the water, the banking process starting up in miniature. The sun was setting behind the desert hills, and opposite, the "coast" of Jordan was rinsed in an appropriately rosy light.

The salt lines meandered across the water, astonishingly turquoise where there were deeper pools. Dividing and fractal, they fingered they way under the surface, poking through in places and segregating the sea into lakes, pools. The skin of the earth pushing out the natal fluid. Grasses at the edge of the sea turn into crusty coral polyps. The landscape is fading away.

the edge

Being at the beach should be one of the simple pleasures in life. The best sort of beach has shelving sand dropping steeply into the sea, the waves rush up and tug at your ankles as you try to walk along. Standing still in the swirl of the sand and water results in your feet being buried up to your ankles, deeper each time the surf surges in. The icing on the cake is the rocky outcrops that make the perfect beach, so that the waves crash and send pearled and diamonded droplets into the sky. Spume. And over and over the waves come, in a rhythmn that never gets boring.

The joy of being on the edge, between the elements of earth and water, land and sea is what makes it more complex. I am most at home in the limbo between them, on the beach when the waves crash. Some people are happy at the centre of things, I am an edge person, happier looking in and observing.

The land is a mass where humans live, millions and millions of them, whom I will never know. The humans I meet, talk to, write to, watch on the telly or in films, they belong to this mass. I do not know them, in a Venn diagram of all that we have in common, the two circles barely kiss. I do not feel encompassed by them, I feel a thing apart, I prefer to watch them and carefully pick my interactions.

I feel drawn to the water and its vastness and energy and seeming emptiness (ignoring the scientist part of me that knows the biomass of the oceans is greater than that of the land). I feel drawn to it, I would like to wade into it's depths and swim out away from the shore, I would like to be that bold and adventurous, but I am not. If I stay here long enough, thinking, watching, reflecting, perhaps I will get the strength?

The beach is where land and sea come to interact, where sociability flirts with the empty wet horizon. An edge person needs the land, the mass, as well as the waters that move to their own tides. And so I come to the beach, not such a simple pleasure.



originally inspired by a T10 prompt 3rd June 2010, revised for >language>place blog carnival edition #6 on 21st May 2011 after the world did not end again.

shades and shapes

A couple of weekends ago I went home, home to England, home to my parents house where I spent 15 years of my childhood, home to the English seaside in all its summery glory. It was 25°C in my current hometown, and even warmer in Amsterdam, flying through there. On the beach, although considerably cooler, it was warm enough for walking around in t-shirts; despite the overcast sky it did not rain until the pub lunch was finished and we were on our way back, skirting the industrial zones.

I took a bunch of photos on the beach, kids paddling bare legged under the struts of the pier in seemingly windswept surroundings, grandparents in parkas looking on. I usually avoid taking shots of people in pictures, I must have had some sort of social commentary running through my head as I was framing the pictures, but whatever it was evades me now that it has faded from my short term memory. I took one photo the year before of a young boy running and playing on the pier in a Superman outfit, it seemed that I would be able to do something with that picture, but as yet I have not. 

I am drawn instead to the muted pastel shades, and the shapes of the pier and cliffs. To how the sky looks sandy and how the sand looks full of sky. I must have looked at the picture dozens of times before noticing that there were people in it. I think I got rid of them all for the one below ;)

gone surfing

Abandoned surfboard

Saltburn-by-the-Sea

May 2011

Sea

Today the sea is almost monochromatic, but you can, if you look closely, distinguish several shades of grey. Blue grey predominantly but lying across it are patches of silver grey, glinting in the light from the barely seen sun. Stretchmarks from the swelling sea, ebbing and flowing. The sea stirs under it's skin.

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm coming, it's not only the sky that is the colour of old ten pence pieces, the whole world is. Standing outside on the patio in the dark, feeling the swirl of the wind and trying to ignore the suburban surroundings, waiting for your imagination to carry you away to a shoreline. Thinking crashing waves, and the rubbley rumbling of the water turning pebbles over and over as it retreats back to the sea, gathering itself for another hurl at your feet. Waiting for the rain to start so you can convince yourself you taste salt in the wetness on your lips. Waiting for the peace you feel being on the edge of things, liminal, neither of the land or of the sea, no expectations other than to be there. The air growls.