Whitebait and cockleshell washed up like a gift

[sovay]

I can't remember what I dreamed last night, but then I only slept two hours. I spent most of the afternoon on a major shopping run with derspatchel and fried myself a steak for dinner after he left for work. I have spent most of the evening staring vaguely at things, some on the internet, some off. The news remains outrageous, both in the sense of inspiring outrage and in the sense of WTF.

I wish I had managed to write down the previous night's dreams. I slept ten or eleven hours and distinctly remember waking enough to think that they would make a great seed for a story, but it was nine in the morning and bitterly cold (having had April in February, I see we are proceeding to have February in March) and I was pinned in place by two cats and instead I fell back asleep, actually overslept my alarm, and had a late-starting but very nice day with rushthatspeaks, Fox, a recipe for vadouvan-spiced vegetable fritters where we ended up making the vadouvan from scratch, and eventually gaudior. What's left of the dream is themes and images more than plot: a seaside tourist town in New England, off-season when the summer people have gone and the clam-shack-and-lobster-roll restaurant on the boardwalk has fastened down its storm windows for the winter; their chowder is at its best at this time of year, but nobody knows because the food writers don't come when there's ice glazing the beach and the sunset goes out very fast, like a flare behind the dunes before the stars come up out of the sea. I remember docks and lobster buoys and nets drying, children running past me—a scrabbly thumping on the weather-greyed planks like the cats bursting across the living room in the middle of the night—with their shirts off and sand on the bottoms of their bare feet even though there had been snow in the parking lot a week ago. I have the memory of great affection for a character with some supernatural importance in the town, but I can remember almost nothing of them except a kind of generous, rakish cynicism and very old shame, something they had promised and failed to do, something they had done and regretted, I didn't ask. I thought they were older than they looked, but I was getting the same idea about the town. It wasn't pulling a Brigadoon or an Innsmouth; the calendar year was the year I went to sleep in; almost everyone I met had a newer and smarter phone than me. But something about time was strange in it and it doesn't help that I have so few coherent memories of the place left, sliding around the edges where I want to say there was a fight or a performance, a whale watch or the rising of the Deep Ones, something important happening out on the water and I was not invited to it, I just saw who came back afterward. There was a community out on the wharves where the old commercial buildings had been broken up into residential spaces and small businesses and studios alongside fish markets and floating bars and it should have felt like death by gentrification, but I came to believe it was the oldest and best-preserved part of the town. I remember a stall hung with shells like a bottle tree, some of them far too tropical to have come out of the bay even in these days of global warming. There were flags of dried fishskin which clattered in the wind. We were talking a long walk around the curve of the harbor and I am worried that the subject of our conversations, which I cannot remember, was the substance of the plot.

I should make some kind of effort toward sleep. I have to get up just as early tomorrow: I am attending the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition's Rise Up! With Trans and Queer Students and the current forecast is bright, sunny, and below freezing all day. I may not be able to wear my genderqueer mer-person T-shirt after all. At the very least it might have to be under a sweater.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

generous, rakish cynicism and very old shame, something they had promised and failed to do, something they had done and regretted

This reminds me a little of Charlee Loon from "The Silver Curlew," except he was not so much cynical as trying to remember something.....

[sovay]

This reminds me a little of Charlee Loon from "The Silver Curlew," except he was not so much cynical as trying to remember something.....

I don't know either the character or the story; talk to me about them?

[edit] I found the book at Project Gutenberg and a few chapters in I found Charlee:

Charlee Loon, who caught the flounders Mother Codling liked for her dinner, lived in a little shack on the sea-shore. It was black and smelt of tar and salt and seaweed, and when I say Charlee lived in it I only mean that it was his shack, but he himself was seldom inside it. He was oftener to be found in his boat, mooning on the sea when it was calm and tossing when it was stormy. Sometimes he caught things and sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he went out to fish without his nets, and sometimes he forgot where he had set his lobster-pots. But other times he came back with his nets full of slippery silvery herrings or flat white flounders. When he had beached his boat, he usually forgot that he had a shack to sleep in, and lay on his face on the shingle looking for amber, or on his back on the sand staring at the stars. If anybody came along for fish, they could help themselves. It was all one to Charlee. But as like as not, even if there was fish in the boat, they would find him sliding the herring one after another back into the sea, or laying out the flounders in rows on the wet sand, where the next incoming wave would curl over and foam them away. You never knew with Charlee, any more than you knew what his age was. Sometimes he looked one thing, sometimes another; and people were as likely to ask, "Seen old Charlee lately?" as to say, "Saw young Charlee this maarnin', pipin' to them puffins."

The strange thing is that I don't think I've read this book—the only Farjeon we had in the house was Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1921); I had to wait until I met nineweaving to read its sequel Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (1937)—but I think I know who he is. It feels like two fairytales crossed and reminds me a little of Elizabeth Goudge and a little of Greer's own Cloud.

The tide in the sea runs high, runs high,
The tide in the sea runs high,
And who will dry the poor little Pleiades' hands
When the sea falls over the sky?

[edit edit] I was right about him, but it was right there in his name.

That was an extremely strange reading experience. I can't tell if I read this book a long time ago or not. I can't judge by the ending—I knew one of the fairytales and I could see the turn of the nursery rhyme coming, just not the exact shape it was going to take, but that's normal for me within a given range of folklore—and ordinarily I remember books by language as well as plot and character and nothing in Farjeon's prose was familiar to me. I didn't recognize any of the songs. I really feel I would have remembered Charlee if I'd encountered him young. What did keep feeling familiar was the young king complaining about and hiding behind his excuse of a double nature until he's given a good reason to change it. The getting up on the wrong foot in the morning was especially familiar. So if that's in any other story, that explains it. Otherwise I must have read The Silver Curlew, but so long ago that nothing else about it went into memory. That is really not the usual way I interact with stories: I can forget I've read something, but once reminded I remember it. I recognize things when I find them again. But I have no other explanation at the moment. Thank you for pointing me toward it, anyway!

[moon_custafer]

Glad you liked it. I was a little disappointed the PDF didn't include the illustrations from my public library's copy.

[sovay]

Glad you liked it. I was a little disappointed the PDF didn't include the illustrations from my public library's copy.

I did. I'll have to find a library copy of my own so I can see the illustrations.

[alexxkay]

You remind me I recently dreamed of a space in downtown Chicago, where they were re-enacting the constitutional convention, in full costume, with speeches. I recall that their Hamilton was much dweeb-ier than Lin-Manuel Miranda.

[sovay]

You remind me I recently dreamed of a space in downtown Chicago, where they were re-enacting the constitutional convention, in full costume, with speeches. I recall that their Hamilton was much dweeb-ier than Lin-Manuel Miranda.

That's great. I am puzzled only that it was taking place in Chicago.

[alexxkay]

*shrug* It's a city I visit not infrequently, and I was born there (these two things are actually entirely unconnected). So its random appearance in adream of mine is not that strange.

[sovay]

It's a city I visit not infrequently, and I was born there (these two things are actually entirely unconnected). So its random appearance in adream of mine is not that strange.

That makes sense. My puzzlement had to do with its not being Philadelphia.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I'd read a story seeded by that dream! I love the setting, but also the obliqueness of it, something important happening out on the water and I was not invited to it, I just saw who came back afterward - oh, yes, please!

[sovay]

I'd read a story seeded by that dream! I love the setting, but also the obliqueness of it, something important happening out on the water and I was not invited to it, I just saw who came back afterward - oh, yes, please!

I'll try! Thank you.