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

#009: roiling

Today's word selected to suit the image more than anything else. Yesterdays image was from San Diego, tarted up a little in Photoshop, and it got me looking through the other pictures I took at that time. Here, a simple crop, no trickery with Photoshop, a slice of the Pacific.

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.

gone surfing

Abandoned surfboard

Saltburn-by-the-Sea

May 2011

drowned forest

These trees have spent a long time in the water, I know how that feels, but the sun presses on them. Do they dream of budding once more? Reaching down to their murky toes for a spark of life, trying to draw it up inside them, though the capillaries are long since hardened? Oh, hope is not such a straight path.

sang the starting maelstrom II

She rested her elbows and breasts on the dull grey railings of the road bridge and cars swished their tyres through the damp tarmac, raising droplets as they passed. The river in spate below her, rushing swirling and tumbling over itself within its familiar boundaries, and clawing at the wet land it had covered away from its banks. Her hair hung down, narrowing the boundaries of her face as she concentrated on the dizzy water with her grey eyes.

She tried to concentrate her thoughts, but it was like the flood had swept up her mind in its mindless rising, I should not let this break me, was whisked downstream, and all the thought that was left was eddying, whirling. Now he is beyond my reach, sang the starting maelstrom. She let the bag fall from her shoulder, heard the buttons of her coat scrape against the metal separating her from the unslaked water, and discarded that too, stepping out.

sang the starting maelstrom

circle splish swirl

whirl splash

circle swish

bubbles pop up

cycle swirl

circle

begins again

Still somewhat (I know, this enthusiasm will be the death of me) inspired by the flood pictures I took last weekend, this picture took me a while to get "right" but the flash fiction it prompted seemed to flow and now it's submitted so I can tick off the sub part of Write1Sub1 too for the week - anything more will be a bonus!

ducks and rabbits

it is nice

weather for ducks

but the rabbits

are flooded out of their

bijou riviera homes

and pile their pellets

now

above the high water mark

more pictures here

Proof!  I did get off my arse this morning and go for a walk with a camera, to see the broken river.  Expanses of shiny beige water with silhouetted trees and a splotched sky made for some beautiful "mood" pictures, some good material for photoshop, for later.  Nearly home again, there is a small canal? river? stream?  I don't know quite what to call it, it is a couple of metres across and fast flowing through the town, but mostly banked in concrete, except for the small muddy island near the millwheel.  The water flows fast around one side of the island, but the ducks like to hang out on the quieter side, where they create the ripples, pushing their oiled breasts through the water.

subtle changes

It is Friday night and I am looking forward, at least, I am thinking about what I have to do tomorrow, I can't say that I am looking forward in the sense that I really, really want to go to the hairdresser.  

I want to get up and the sun to be glimpsed behind dramatic clouds, and walk in the other direction to the river and see what it looks like in the daylight.  I want to feel that I have done something different to the normal routine. At the hairdresser I will be required to make decisions, and I am not in the mood for that, so I will end up with something similar to last time.  Variations on a theme.  Subtle changes.

Superfluidity

Non stop, sometimes fine rain, heavier than drizzle, sometimes hurtling down like sweets bursting from a bag; but always dark, grey and sapping.  The river, which had receded, settled down back into the confines of its banks, is unrecognisable now, as the fields have disappeared underneath it.  It makes me feel lifeless, despite having had a mostly stimulating day at work, when I step out to come home, the energy dissipates.
Luckily, I made some notes on getting to my desk about the drive in this morning, and isn't it stupid how it is the only time I feel I have wholly to myself in which to think, and yet I live alone.  The computer doesn't demand I browse blogs, play games.  My cat is just as happy curled up whether I am there or not, I am (almost) superfluous at times to him.  And thinking of this word cycles me back to the superfluidity (ob dass ein Wort ist, hab' ich keine Ahnung) of the wet world outside.  So, without any further meandering, here is today's stone...

Silver birches, trunks like wet newspaper rise out of the gloom at the roadside.
They guide, they delineate the morning commute.

stepping in to the river

Bruce Springsteen sings "We go down to the river, and into the river we dive" on my drive home from work. When I get home I step into the river of stones and feel my toes get warm here, or cold there, and my other senses are tweaked as I read the words of strangers and I sit on the teak bench and feel its pressure against my capacious flesh and my shoulders drop as I stare at the screen and my lower back starts to ache.  The river tugs at me, but I just wrote a poem about abjectivity that has been buzzing in my head for a couple of days instead.
I want to dive into the river but today I forgot my swimming costume and my mind is still sloshing abjectness around and I cannot skinny dip today.  But I will keep standing here on the bank and maybe tomorrow I will have a perfectly observed stone.

on observance.

The river finally burst it's banks today.  It has been threatening for a couple of weeks, the black water (it is almost always night time when I cross the bridge) flirting with the snow, but with the last two days of rain, it finally happened when the ground had lost it's pale shroud.  Palely glimmering puddles had spilled onto the adjoining fields, their shade missed matching that of the metallic navy car in front of me by the thickness of a page.


I checked all these things because of my inability to observe & regurgitate in today's corporate workshop.  Perhaps because I had to digest information aurally, or whether the consultant/trainer's Texas drawl and lack of cultural awareness set me off, I was scratchy and irritated most of the afternoon.  Hey, at least I wasn't nodding off!  I picked fault with the statements she made and whispered under my breath to colleagues when she was talking, so I guess she was equally as resentful of my presence as I was, and it was no surprise that she picked me for the final role play of the day.  I dazzled the room with my consummate performance of a concerned manager.


Hoping to avoid yet more beautiful visual descriptions for today's small stone, all I can come up with is:-


Arrogant,
chrysalis skin splits
not a mocking butterfly
but a consummate
actress emerges.

Hoek

Here at the edge, waiting for the ship, looking out across the baleful night.  The lights of the industrial complex on the other side are white and orange, but only the orange ones are picked up by the overcast sky, glowering intensely.  And the water, half river, half sea, the water performs a strange trick with the light, it steals and swallows all the bright yellow tones of the sky, and reflects back a blood orange red.

The water moves constantly, rolling and roiling, a twitching throat, and the red painted barriers in front of me are contrasted sharply against the white snow covered quay, it is not an auspicious start to a journey.  The wind whips up the petrochemical flare and the whole sky flickers.  I shiver, and hope that the homecoming will be warmer than this.

Little Red Riding Hood

In this forest, even the wolves have webbed feet, the pools are covered in water weeds and look like the freshest greenest earth.  Tricky and insubstantial.  Sometimes firm underfoot but mostly shifting, sliding sucking mud.
Red would stand out, so I wear combats like any sensible guerilla girl.  The trees poke up roots above the wetness so they can breathe.  Our pack leader could learn a thing from them.  He is too busy trying to keep an eye on us, too busy trying to worry us into submission to make grand plans, grandma plans. 
We could have won this already, been kings of our own turf if he had listened to my plan, but he thought disguises were childish and ignoble. 
Sodden pelt, I shiver.  The cottage was dry, prime territory.  I could start a litter there.  One old woman to scare away, or disappear if she won't scare... it's not too much of a problem.  I can do it if my water wolf agrees.  Romulus tells me things can be better than this.


next --->

The country is another past...

I went on a Tokyo tour today.  I wanted to not have wasted my time here, to have seen some of the sights and so-ons of the city, to have picked up a flavour of the place, an alien bustling buzzing place where I did not naturally belong.  However, Typhoon Chaba was paying a visit, although it was not really noticeable from my hotel room - I saw that people were scurrying about with umbrellas down below, but I had no idea of the size, the impact of the rain from watching up here.  The brake lights and indicators of the cars in traffic glow, not too brightly in deference to the presumed daylight, although if you tilt your head back, the sky doesn't look all that dark.
But after several stops, trudging through shrines and gardens on wet sliding gravel, my feet are too cold for me to ignore.  I could have spent the day idling, doing less, doing nothing which is what any sane person would do after taking a look out of the window.

I guess I am still battling my inner mouse, much as I would wish to be indomitable and independent.

don't stop

I know I will fall
apart one day, maybe soon
as the typhoon comes

Three Billy Goats Gruff

I want to cross the bridge
to your meadow
I dress neatly and smooth
my hair down and my
hemline low

You turn and say I am too young
come back later
and I do when I am sparkling
with ripeness at
my centre

You turn and say I am too naive
you would hurt me
so I spend my bloom on
wastrels and wait
for turn three

This time you have unlocked the gate
beckon me to cross
We kiss at the bridge's apex and
I pull you past the rails make
you feel my loss


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Rapunzel

I wanted so much
to live there
you would see the sun
glinting off my hair
I would stand at the
outermost of
the three arches and
you my love
would visit me by water
sail to my wet door
I would smile and forgive
all that came before

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