If you'd go to Mother Carey

I really think there are few things I find as beautiful as the sea. The last two days were rain and heat and lots of late-night conversations, but I stuck around an extra night and so we spent a couple of hours this afternoon at Beavertail, lying on the dry rocks between their sun-warmth and the sea wind, watching cormorants through a field glass and being much less scientifically amused by the probably-college students in the next cove over, who alternated between swimming and diving in the high tide and engaging in subtle mating rituals like losing parts of their bathing suits and smashing slices of watermelon into one another's faces. It was the first time I have been to the sea all summer; I wasn't equipped for swimming, but I climbed down to where the waves were breaking in over the ledges, rolled up my corduroys and found a long strand of seagrass wound around my ankle for my pains. I can't remember the last time I folded my arms beneath my head and closed my eyes against the sun for so long, everything was drained to a drowned blue when I opened them. Small red ants kept trying to colonize my jacket, which had nothing more interesting in the pockets than some old cough drop wrappers. I took a couple of photographs of greygirlbeast and humglum which hopefully they will not hold against me. At one point I tried reading another chapter of Patrick O'Brian's The Surgeon's Mate (1980) with my hat sort of propped to the side for shade, but I hope it is no discourtesy to Stephen Maturin that I was too distracted by actual ocean. (I finished it on the drive back to Providence. I like this series. And the Harvard Book Store is remaindering their copies, so this is the edition with the intelligencer pin-up cover.) There were tall clouds billowing over the water and gulls with their slate-white wings poised on the thermals like sailors' carvings. My hair is still in wind-knots and I can't tell if I've sunburned. It was very, very lovely.

Today is also the centenary of Mervyn Peake. At this point it would be apropos to quote Prunesquallor saying something festive and absurd, but I'm actually on the commuter rail back from Providence; the Amtrak train we ran to make—and I got a ticket for—turned out to be late, then later, then indefinitely delayed in New Haven. We shall see how this works out. The screaming baby in the seat in front of me is definitely not a plus.

. . . I am now home, which is much appreciated. Oh, my God, the screaming baby. If it doesn't grow up to sing Wagner at the Sydney Opera House, it'll be a waste of lungs. I missed a call on my cellphone because I couldn't hear the ring over the baby. In any case, having access once more to my books:

And all the while the progress of the seasons, those great tides, enveloped and stained with their passing colours, chilled or warmed with their varying exhalations, the tracts of Gormenghast. And so, as Fuchsia wanders across her room in search of a lost book, the South Spinneys below her window are misty with a green hesitation, and a few days later the sharp green fires have broken out along the iron boughs.

Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast (1950). May we still be hunting that book in a hundred years.