You know it surrounds you in the day, but it finds you in the night

[sovay]

spatch took me to Gloucester for my birthday. It did not rain. It was as hot as the end of summer, but the sky was the clear paling blue of autumn and the sea mirrored over to match; depending on which way you stood as the sun tipped westward, the waves were gold or lavender where they came combing in. We walked the esplanade around the harbor where the bronze fisherman holds his wheel against the centuries and his bronze wife stands with her children staring down the sea; we climbed the boulders of Stage Fort Park and looked out past Ten Pound Island Light. The tide was out and the air smelled of deep salt and seaweed, the rocks uncovered with their shawls and shags of glistening dark wrack. I don't know the name for the black-and-white ducks bobbing out on the water, but cormorants kept going by in flight, long-necked as pterosaurs. I found a sculpture of a triton with a conch, chalky green with verdigris everywhere except his sun-struck shoulders. Someone had left a painted stone like an offering on his upturned flukes. We walked past salt marsh and a small independent cinema to get to dinner at the Causeway, which served me more clam chowder and fried oysters than I could actually eat in one sitting. We missed our train and spent the next hour and a half roaming Gloucester after dark, which at first felt uncanny with the wind blowing between the streetlights and so many storefronts closed until next summer, but then we stumbled onto the main drag and a second movie house and a record store that was giving vinyl away on the honor system after hours and it felt more like a place people lived in as opposed to visited and maybe not so much like John L. Russell did the cinematography after all. My wristwatch committed suicide into the street but was recovered; it just needs a band that is not literally shredding. I finished Susan Cooper's The Boggart Fights Back (2018) on the commuter train back to Boston and made notes to myself about a movie. We got home and handful_ofdust had tagged me a bunch of Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Rob took pictures of me and I post them because that's one of the ways I remember to live in my body. It was a low-key and a good birthday.

Comments

[nineweaving]

Happy birthday!

That's a lovely seaside day. You look happy and at ease in the first picture, and mythic in the winedark seascape.

Nine

[sovay]

That's a lovely seaside day. You look happy and at ease in the first picture, and mythic in the winedark seascape.

Thank you! As much sea as I can get right now is a good present for me.

[ladymondegreen]

Happy birthday. May you continue to carry the peace of the sea with you through this uncanny world.

[sovay]

Happy birthday. May you continue to carry the peace of the sea with you through this uncanny world.

Thank you.

*hugs*

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, good! And those are lovely pics!

[sovay]

Aw, good! And those are lovely pics!

Thank you!

[thawrecka]

That sounds like a really nice birthday.

[sovay]

That sounds like a really nice birthday.

It really was.

[cmcmck]

For the first time in my life I'm living as far as it's possible to get from the sea.

Admittedly, in the UK that's only a matter of fifty miles or so! :o)

[sovay]

Admittedly, in the UK that's only a matter of fifty miles or so!

So you can still get there in a pinch!

I can't imagine living without access to the sea. I grew up knowing that if I had the kind of professional life I wanted, I would move where the jobs were and I might get landlocked, but it was still weird to think about.

[just_ann_now]

I grew up in Gloucester! You make my hometown sound lovely. I miss the scent of the sea.

[sovay]

I grew up in Gloucester! You make my hometown sound lovely. I miss the scent of the sea.

Your hometown has wonderful sea. I am sorry you no longer live near the smell of it.

[just_ann_now]

*breathes*

[moon_custafer]

I don't know the name for the black-and-white ducks bobbing out on the water
Were they perhaps buffleheads? They look black-and-white from a distance.

We get them here in Toronto in the wintertime. I always think they look like something Coco Chanel would have designed, if she’d made ducks instead of clothes. Such chic waterfowl.

[sovay]

Were they perhaps buffleheads? They look black-and-white from a distance.

They looked honest to God like a bunch of Holstein ducks. I tried to take pictures, but due to the non-zoom nature of the camera, you'll have to open the images full size. They still look black-and-white to me:





I always think they look like something Coco Chanel would have designed, if she’d made ducks instead of clothes. Such chic waterfowl.

I like this idea.

[selkie]

You should retain the services of that photographer a long, long time. He really gets how best to capture you.

Also, that grin is cute.

[sovay]

You should retain the services of that photographer a long, long time. He really gets how best to capture you.

I plan to keep him around. I like him.

Also, that grin is cute.

Remember you said that when I say as much of certain personages of the fictional persuasion!

[selkie]

I mean, I'm fine casting aspersions of adorability, too. *shrugs* Artistic integrity and all.

[asakiyume]

Marvelous to see you happy! And is that Bass Rocks you're climbing on?

The adventures you have when something happens like missing a train can be *the best*

[sovay]

Marvelous to see you happy! And is that Bass Rocks you're climbing on?

Thank you! It is not, alas; I pitched the idea to spatch, but the timing did not work out. We'll go back.

The adventures you have when something happens like missing a train can be *the best*

We got records out of it!

[davidgillon]

That sounds like a pretty ideal birthday to me.

Well, maybe not your watch hurling itself to the floor, but the rest of it.

[sovay]

That sounds like a pretty ideal birthday to me.

It was really nice.

Well, maybe not your watch hurling itself to the floor, but the rest of it.

We were walking in Gloucester! Fortunately we both heard it hit the asphalt and found it immediately. spatch has promised me a new watch band as an after-birthday present. The old one was leather and disintegrated.

[kore]

Time flew on your birthday? :D

[sovay]

Time flew on your birthday?

Right off my wrist!

To be fair, we had both missed our train and were wandering around a seaside town in the off season, so it was thematic.

[a_reasonable_man]

Whenever I read your poetic passages about these excursions, I keep thinking they should be collected in a book, with some sort of title like Walking Along Shore: A Local Travelogue. Thoreau once said that he had "traveled a good deal in Concord." You travel far near home.

Happy birthday again!

[sovay]

Thoreau once said that he had "traveled a good deal in Concord." You travel far near home.

I had a lot of automatically self-deprecating reactions to this comment, like well, I can't afford to travel very far away from it, which I feel should be squashed, so: thank you. I spent too much time not living in the places where I lived. I like the other way better.

Happy birthday again!

Thank you! It was!