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I will see again those clippers reeling o'er the ocean's rim
I am no longer on Cape Cod. I caught a bus back earlier this evening and am now being crooned at by a small cat who was grievously neglected this weekend with only one human to answer his imperious calls for attention and food. The other small cat has taken up a Bast-pose near the couch and it suits her very well. The one thing I mind about traveling is the absence of cats.
I couldn't swim this afternoon, but I walked out as far as I could into the deep-bending glass-green water until I could feel the swell rocking and lifting me, the sand shifting from under my feet. Earlier I had seen tiny fish in the shallows, arrowing away from a trio of small children whose pursuit was enthusiastically splashy but no danger to the fry; when I stood still, the same tiny, silvery fish shoaled around me, as if I were a safe shadow. The tide was just starting to turn. I saw dead man's fingers washed up at the top of the tide-line, lime-green and branching like a rune. I saw a crab's carapace upturned like a coracle in a pile of soft brown algae and bladderwrack and another hunkered like a shield in a pale run of sand, algae-slicked at the edges as if with verdigris. The waves at the western end of the beach were thick with churned-up weed, but the water cleared the farther east I walked, until I was spending as much time looking down into the bulges and ripples of light on sand and sea-pebbles as out at the horizon where there were sailboats moving, motorboats, the ferry, three adolescents poling a raft. (Two of them were standing, the third kneeling at the prow. They looked like an Egyptian frieze minus the hunting cat and the reeds.) The sky was that late cloud-twisted blue that has more light in it than it looks; the sand was heavily golden by the time I walked back through the thicket of folding chairs and beach towels and umbrellas to find that someone had built a cairn of grey and tawny stones that remarkably resembled, at its top, the figure of a seagull or a duck. Some gulls were standing around looking smug. I walked with my feet in the water and kept thinking of Triton wrestled by Herakles—did the hero have to keep him above the high-water mark, off the sea's ground, before he would yield? I write that out and wonder if Mollie Hunter thought of it when she staged a wrestling match between a mortal guiser and an ancient selkie in A Stranger Came Ashore (1975). I know that I do better when I'm near the sea, not just to see and smell but touch it. I will return this week if I can.
I couldn't swim this afternoon, but I walked out as far as I could into the deep-bending glass-green water until I could feel the swell rocking and lifting me, the sand shifting from under my feet. Earlier I had seen tiny fish in the shallows, arrowing away from a trio of small children whose pursuit was enthusiastically splashy but no danger to the fry; when I stood still, the same tiny, silvery fish shoaled around me, as if I were a safe shadow. The tide was just starting to turn. I saw dead man's fingers washed up at the top of the tide-line, lime-green and branching like a rune. I saw a crab's carapace upturned like a coracle in a pile of soft brown algae and bladderwrack and another hunkered like a shield in a pale run of sand, algae-slicked at the edges as if with verdigris. The waves at the western end of the beach were thick with churned-up weed, but the water cleared the farther east I walked, until I was spending as much time looking down into the bulges and ripples of light on sand and sea-pebbles as out at the horizon where there were sailboats moving, motorboats, the ferry, three adolescents poling a raft. (Two of them were standing, the third kneeling at the prow. They looked like an Egyptian frieze minus the hunting cat and the reeds.) The sky was that late cloud-twisted blue that has more light in it than it looks; the sand was heavily golden by the time I walked back through the thicket of folding chairs and beach towels and umbrellas to find that someone had built a cairn of grey and tawny stones that remarkably resembled, at its top, the figure of a seagull or a duck. Some gulls were standing around looking smug. I walked with my feet in the water and kept thinking of Triton wrestled by Herakles—did the hero have to keep him above the high-water mark, off the sea's ground, before he would yield? I write that out and wonder if Mollie Hunter thought of it when she staged a wrestling match between a mortal guiser and an ancient selkie in A Stranger Came Ashore (1975). I know that I do better when I'm near the sea, not just to see and smell but touch it. I will return this week if I can.
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They built it.
I am glad you had good sea.
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This has to be it.
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Dead man's fingers are also a fungus--what are they in this context? (In searching for an image of the fungus, I found that they are the lungs of a crab but also a type of coral (probably not what you're referring to in these northern waters) and a type of seaweed, Codium fragile)
The teens looking like an Egyptian frieze is great too--these are a good collection of sea memories for a day.
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*digs up A Stranger Came Ashore for Child Suitability Muster*
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I wonder if they will be a rival empire to the seagull kings of Fort Point.
I am glad you had good sea.
Thank you. It really was.
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Thank you!
(Your icon is perfect.)
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I love this sentence, both the sentiment and the phrasing.
Dead man's fingers are also a fungus--what are they in this context? (In searching for an image of the fungus, I found that they are the lungs of a crab but also a type of coral (probably not what you're referring to in these northern waters) and a type of seaweed, Codium fragile)
I forgot they were also an upsetting-looking fungus! This is the seaweed: thin, green, branching, tubular; it has other less morbid and less confusing names, but this is the one I grew up on and my first association with the words. I believe it's edible, but I can't remember if I've ever eaten it.
The teens looking like an Egyptian frieze is great too--these are a good collection of sea memories for a day.
I did nothing with my weekend except sleep and read and walk in the sea. It went so fast and it was so good. It did not quite register on me until the last couple of days just how hard a hit my summer took in terms of being able to do much that was not preexisting commitments and survival.
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You're welcome!
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He is a good cat and would know.
*digs up A Stranger Came Ashore for Child Suitability Muster*
Points docked for negative portrayal of selkies, points awarded for earth and sea magic on all remaining fronts. I read it for the first time in fifth grade, I think.
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You're welcome! (I like lakes, but even the salt ones aren't the size of the sea.)
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I'm glad you saw them all the same.
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Neither, so far as I know.
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That sounds awful. I will post as many sea-pictures as I can for you. I hope the water clears enough to let you in.