Sea Musings and Mind-Scapes

'I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;' - John Wasefield 'Sea Fever' 

No sooner had I published my post about rain than we have two solid days of sunshine.  Typical! Talk about schizophrenic weather! (But now it's raining again in blustery skifts, in what seems to be some sort of summer storm...) So before 'summer' is over I think I'll write a little bit on the quintessential muse of the season: the sea.

I live beside the sea and indulge in the odd beach walk or two now and again.  The sea offers up a plethora of metaphors to the imagination. It's maybe the ultimate muse for a writer and that's why I'm always cautious writing about it, for fear I step on that dreaded danger all writers recoil from: cliché. 

I especially like summer evening walks. When there's still light in the sky; when the sun is dipping on the horizon like a huge mirrorball; the warm soft feel of sand beneath my feet and the slight sting of the salted air:  'The soft lap of sea on land, a gentle kiss. Blue sky and water like a landing strip of silver light. Dotted with gulls swooping in sharp arcs. Curly debris sand from spontaneous stick etchings and the bric-a-brac of daytime revellers. Water like polished glass, glistening aluminium grey. Drumlin grass dunes decorated with daisies and purple spiky heather like small microphones trying to catch the breeze.  But all quiet with the lullaby of evening. Stilled. Soothed. Volume of the day turned down, so significance can whisper in. And the sun hanging over the scene like a luminous guest, offering some kind of promise. To-and-fro thoughts swimming in my head, high-tide, low-tide washing ashore flotsam and jetsam revelatons.'

Why does the sea hold such a fascination for us? Writers have explored it at  great lengths throughout the ages. One of my favourite sea-faring books has to be the American classic, 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville.  In chapter one, the narrator Ishmael muses on this:  "Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."  

In the novel also, life at sea seems to be a metaphor for a way of life that is not sequestered by routine and settling down. It is the very opposite: random and wild and dangerous and forever drifting, for flighty free-spirits and lost souls like Ishmael, who goes off on the whale expedition in the first place to 'find his bearings', stating that the sea is the only place to do this: "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul.... then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." It's like the sea can fix him, or at least, stave off the boredom and stifling security that land offers. I myself would rather be swept out at sea than stuck on land (metaphorically speaking) i.e. drifting rather than being docked to something that I don't want. (And there's a summing up of my whole philosophy right there! Call me Ishmael!)

The sea is also used as a metaphor for fluidity and movement. As Shakespeare famously wrote: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." Hmm...are these the thoughts that we're thinking of while watching the to-and-froing of waves? Or maybe it's more along the lines of Shakespeare's sonnet: "like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore/so do our minutes hasten to their end." Gloomy a tad. But maybe the sea does put us more in touch with our mortality. And brings into focus our solitude. How big and vast and majestic it is can certainly help put things into perspective now and again.

Let's not forget that water is also the element of the emotions. Water signs in astrology have the main trait of being emotional, Pisces the most notable for depth of feeling.  Also, to dream about water is to signify a state of emotional flux. Drowning means that you can't cope with some emotion. Dreaming of a tsunami means a total overwhelming. All my life I've been dreaming about tsunamis, before I even knew their technical name, before they swept into popular consciousness with a dire legacy.  Freud would probably see it at as an emotional fear of some kind...me, more as the malevolent power of the ocean, coupled with my slight fear of water. Whether this is due to the fact that I'm a Fire sign, or more to do with the memory of being made hop waves at the beach when I was a teeny-tottering child who hated bath-time, never mind sea-time, it's stuck with me ever since.

Just imagining the unfathomable depths of the ocean makes me shudder. Is it because the ocean is so mysterious that we're so drawn to it? That we know so  little about it? 20,000 leagues under the sea, there lies..... what exactly? Stories of sea-monsters kept sea exploration to a minimum before the days of Columbus. And then mermaids and sirens. Now rogue waves and tsunamis and ship-sinking squalls.  That it's so dangerous and powerful could explain why it's so compelling to us.

Or maybe it's more to do with this: 'The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea' - Isak Dinesin. Because we are composed of mostly water, maybe we need the sea to keep us in harmony, to calm our  inner seas of turmoil. Its syllables soothe our souls. Maybe it allows us to see horizons we don't see on land. Reminds us of who we are, how everything is in a state of constant movement, constant flux, nothing is static, nothing is permanent.  

Hmm, from a simple beach-walk to all this ocean musing. Maybe the ocean is just a great big metaphysical metaphor for our minds, a physical manifestation of the unfathomable depths of our subconsciousness. Whatever it is, there's no doubting that it certainly is one of the greatest muses for writers and all kind of artists.

ahoy shipmates,

~ Siobhán.

(Apologies for the blooper I made earlier of prematurely posting this blog while  only on the first paragraph - email recipients- I hope you ignored it, sorry!)

And some poems. The first by Pablo Neruda, which talks about the poet's relationship with the sea, and the sea as a metaphor for poetry. When I think of Pablo Neruda, I think of turquoise waters, he has written so many poems about the sea and with  such beautiful imagery and sound, it seems as if the sea itself is echoing in the lines. Infact his collection 'On the Blue Shore of Silence' is a collection of all his sea poems, a veritable love-letter to the sea.  The second, is by EE Cummings, once again. The last two lines say it all, but I also love 'as small as a world and as large as alone.' Simply complex, as always. Enjoy.

'Poet's Obligation' - Pablo Neruda 

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying 'How can I reach the sea?'
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

'maggie and milly and molly and may' - ee cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may 
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing 
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone 
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Indifference, the Icarus Syndrome & Gold Stars

 'Icarus' - Henri Matisse

There are many volatile destructive emotions at play in our world - cruelty, hatred, jealousy, suspicion, betrayal, rage... The list is endless. But if there's one I hate above all others, it's indifference. 

Or is indifference even an emotion? Seems more like an absence of any to me. Apathy. Non-entity. Blankness.  

I'm always reminded of the WH Auden poem 'Museé des Beaux Arts' when I think of indifference.  Auden uses Breughel's painting 'The Fall of Icarus' as subject-matter in the poem: the eager, enthusiastic young man who was so ambitious he flew to the sun with man-made wings, falling into the Aegean sea and drowning, in this poem going unnoticed by anyone around: "and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen /something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,/had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."  I know the poem is mainly to do with tragedy and how the world does not stop for it, but it reminds me of indifference too. Nobody noticed the spectacle of Icarus in the sky, or falling, or nobody cared. In my opinion, the Icarus story itself is more to do with battling indifference than high-flying ambition.

We all come up against indifference at some stage or other in our lives, but I'm wondering how much does the average writer endure? I've had a lot of experience with indifference. And in my opinion, it is to a writer what a stun-gun is to a running man. 

It's not a known fact to most people who know me that I dabble in words. It's not a known fact to them that I want to be a writer, that it's my utmost  and undying ambition. It's not a known fact that every spare minute I have I spend typing frantically, or scribbling notes long into the wee hours, my whole mind and soul consumed by fire. It's not known. Or if it is, it's not noticed. 

I try not to tell people anymore that I write. I prefer to keep it a secret, like Clark Kent. The people who know that I write regard it as a mere footnote. An interest, a whim.  At best. Most of them disregard it.  But to writers, writing is more akin to breathing than anything else. and not light entertainment. ('Come to it any way but lightly. I repeat - you must not come lightly to the blank page' - wise words of caution from Stephen King confirm this.) Writing is not a light-hearted pursuit to be picked up as a pastime when there's nothing better to do. Writing is an all-consuming passion. For serious writers, it is their whole lives. The page is not their dalliance, but their deity.

And so when I'm met with indifference, it stunts me, it really does. It is said that hate is not the opposite to love, that indifference is. To not feel anything, to not give a damn, to not have any interest. To feel like your words don't matter, don't make an impression...this must be the greatest insult a writer could ever be wounded by.

Countless times I've given people material to read and never got a reply, never got any comment, any reaction. Did that hurt? Hell yeah. Far more than any scathing criticism  would, because at least criticism shows some sort of reaction, some sort of impression made. To say nothing nullifies a piece to nothing. An existential Nada. And I just don't get it. How can someone read something, that has been written from scratch by another person, heart and soul and blood and sweat poured into it, and not utter a single word of response? How does it not matter? They could at least say it was boring, it rambled on, it's too vague....anything would be better than blankness!

 

The usual reaction I get when I tell people I want to be a writer is not 'Oh sure isn't that a pastime not a career?' or 'wise up!' or any of the obvious negative comments,  or even, a pleasant 'oh you mean you want to be a journalist?' It's more of a raising of the eyebrows, a shrug or hunch of the shoulders, a slight grimace of silence and then a quick change of subject. And that's it!!! What ...and why.... and huh??? Are writers unmentionables now? Or are they unheard of in certain circles?  It was like I hadn't said anything. It was so off the radar that it wasn't on any level of reception. It didn't matter. Is it because people think it's a nigh-impossible career choice? Or think it's a phase or fantasy? Or maybe it's just another twisted form of begrudgery, something this country excels at? Tear everyone who dreams of flying to the sun and stars down. I'm dumbfounded, I really am. 

But I suppose a challenge of the job is to make it head and shoulders above the silence of anonymity. But writing is not like any other career, (with the exception of Art of course.) It it so entwined with one's own personality as to be inseparable. EE Cummings once remarked: 'The question  'who am I?' is answered by what I write. I become my writing.' First and foremost, writing is an expression of the Self. So it's going to hurt when people ignore anything you produce as it's really a knock-on swing on your personality too. If you put your whole soul into writing and it doesn't even muster up as much as a two-word reply, then I just don't know!

Or maybe this is just my experience, coming up blank on the majority of all public exhibiting. There have been exceptions of course, but not that many as to debunk my theory. Maybe I'm just hankering back to the days of copybooks and gold star rewards...Writing is a lonely occupation, I get that. But a silent one? I thought writing was a war on silence? I thought words were supposed to incite reaction, rage even, at the right temperature, and someday, golden stars of admiration and appreciation? Any writing that has come by me has certainly never been sent back again blank. I've always made comments, even on the pieces I didn't like. Give me a signed and solid rejection slip any day rather than a mute-mouth!

Apologies if I've entered rant territory, but this is something I feel I need to get off my chest. Set it out there so my load of writing insecurities is lightened, if only slightly. I won't stop writing because of it, hell no. But sometimes it does feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall -  or cemented path, or dark void... But like Icarus, I want to fly amongst the stars! Regardless of who sees me, notices, cares, or not.

If there's anyone out there in the ether reading and feels the same way, I'd love to hear from  you on the subject. Have you experienced indifference as part of your writing life? Or can you dissuade me otherwise? Drop me a line! Your comments would be as treasured as those gold stars. 

Thanks for reading, 

~ Siobhán.

PS. (And if I can't declare my writer status, here's a wonderful declaration from  a poet who certainly can: Pablo Neruda on his initiation into the world of poetry. Enjoy.)

'Poetry' - Pablo Neruda    

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face                                 
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something kicked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations, 
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.

And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose with the wind.