The Sea in My Bones

My camera's batteries have run out. Grr...

Imagine for now:

New green tomatoes, bracketed by leaves and yellow flowers.

Feather and fan socks in purple-black-blue, looking a bit like a wrought iron trellis.

Two pairs of other socks, looking gorgeous. And they fit!

Currently I am lusting after fancy SLR digital cameras (why so expensive? sob!) and old used looms (hello, eBay). No immediate plans to acquire either -- I'm just coveting things I don't have.

Current book marathon is LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy-plus-one. I'd forgotten how good they are. I've also had to remember the trick to reading young adult literature is to read every sentence. Normally I skim over descriptive parts -- taking in enough to get a sense of things, but focused on the plot and characters. (Makes re-reading a year later possible.) And, again, I wonder if my ethnic heritage has a genetic component -- stories of coastal fisherfolk who raise sheep and spin and weave and practice herbal medicine have always appealed to me. I've never known why; it's a rather primal feeling of "this is good" that other descriptions of primitive societies don't offer. I've never really wanted to live on a tropical island, for example, or in a jungle, or out on the plains. (Other things that do appeal, though to a lesser degree, include an Alpine village (I adored Heidi as a child) or an exotic desert nomad community or Gypsy caravan). Certainly, a shared thread is the idea of semi-communal living coupled with life in a small house filled with handmade things, but that's more of an intellectual realization that came to me as an adult. The connection I describe is older and deeper than that. There must be something about cold grey seas and the smell of damp wool and firewood and the sound of waves rattling over stones and shells while birds cry thinly overhead that was inscribed deeper than memory, sharper than experience.

Comments

[wolfangel]

Unrelatedly, I too love the ocean.

[This was originally part of wolfangel's comment responding to the Typepad thread, the first part of which I've moved there.]

[Rana]

[Dang, I accidentally erased my original response to wolfangel. Grr...]

Second attempt:

I am particularly fond of "northern" (north of the equator northern) oceans. I am not a beach person. At all. I don't like the combination of sun, sand in one's shorts, and crowds of people. I am a coastal person!

One of the best experiences of my life was a visit to the Oregon Dunes. There was a thick summer fog, making sky and sea and shore blend into each other. I walked for about two hours along a very long stretch of deserted shoreline, listening to the waves and gulls and examining driftwood and shells and pieces of crab. I only encountered two other people, and that was toward the end of the walk. Wonderful.

I enjoy sailing, too, but am somewhat afraid of the open ocean. This may be colored by my experiences sailing with my family on the San Francisco Bay (choppy and chill) in a small 22-foot sailboat; the smell of moldy rainsuits and lifejackets and my dad barking "Tack! Tack!" at us as we drifted off course are a strong part of my sailing memories. Fun, but not exactly reassuring!

I'm also not the greatest swimmer. I'm not afraid of water, but I don't like getting my face wet, and I tire easily. (Another reason why I prefer strolling along a coast in a warm wooly sweater, instead of flailing about in the waves.)

[Michelle]

I was a Nancy Drew-head as a kid! And Laura Ingalls-Wilder! I was so uncool and not into the literature that other people seemed to read as a kid, although that could have been a reflection of my mother's tastes leading me initially. But I was very into fantasy and not the Tolkien fantasy stuff or C.S. Lewis but, well... the above.

The beaches of the Gulf of Mexico are so great. They are beautiful. There are places you can go where it is not crowded, not touristy because they have nothing to offer the traditional tourist who has to DO DO DO. I just want to fade into the sand. Man, I Luv the sand. I don't swim much either. I jump in to get cooled off. I'm a terrible swimmer. I hold my nose!

[dale]

I love those books. My Mom has a place at the Oregon coast, and we go there for vacation once a year. We keep a copy of Leguin's trilogy there, and I reread it pretty much every year. The second is my favorite.

I've always thought the "plus one" was a mistake, though. "First thought, best thought," as the Zen people say --

[Amanda]

I've discovered, after a few too many years of living in a very cloudy state, that I need sunlight in order to feel like myself. I like atmospheric foggy days and northern coastal regions, but I don't think I could live there full-time. But hey, I'd certainly come visit. :) Wintry coasts and wool sweaters are very good things.

I'm not that into the idea of living on the plains either. I like places with low rolling mountains and rivers, not too far from the ocean. When I went to Virginia for a few days last month, I was struck by how right the mountains looked, in terms of their scale and shape and greenness. It's probably the same genetic-legacy factor, because I come from a long line of people from the Virginia/West Virginia/Maryland region. (Though on my dad's side there's a long line of people from Scotland, so part of me likes highlands and fishing villages as well.)

[Mary]

I like your image descriptions. Lately I've been trying to convince my boyfriend (who doesn't really care for fiction) that reading the words might actually be better than seeing the image on a screen. You get to choose your own images.

[Andi]

I\'ve always considered the fourth book to be it\'s own beast, related to but not a \"continuation of\" the trilogy--it\'s so much more in touch with the darkness present, but unexploded, in the trilogy. As such, I appreciated the fourth book so much, and I\'m always glad LeGuin wrote it. The trilogy is wonderful, but its challenging elements are too easily subsumed beneath the expected things, especially in regard to gender. In the fourth book, though, power, gender, and an intimate darkness come to the fore.... Maybe I just keen toward the dark expose, but I love the fourth book for this.

[Rana]

I was a somewhat eclectic reader as a kid; it was a combination of books other people gave me, books I stumbled across in the library, and books that I borrowed off the shelves of family and friends. I always liked fantasy (I have fond memories of Mom reading _The Hobbit_ to me as a tot -- she does a _great_ Gollum!) and endured some pretty lame sci-fi (early Heinlein men-in-space-suits-with-guns stuff) and some good (L'Engle and all those Darkover, witch world books -- which I don't like much now) plus a bunch of kid-adventures, girls growing up, and books about kids surviving in strange primitive environments (Heidi, but also some book about a girl castaway on an island, a wolf girl book, etc.). Lots of fodder for nurturing a growing imagination. :)

(Give me until Monday to go into further discussion of Earthsea, please. It's literally been years since I've read them -- enough I've forgotten most of them -- and spoilers do not make me happy. After I'm done, go at it!)

I probably need bright sunlight too, at least until waking up. I am beginning to suspect that I do better in more northern climates, though; I loved life in the upper Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, the Bay Area was okay, but the day/light cycle here doesn't work well for me.

And I think a well-wrought description is a useful thing. I had one mentor who always insisted in his classes that people need to learn how to see and describe things accurately; it has rubbed off, at least as a philosophy even if the execution isn't always perfect.

[dale]

(okay, I'll spend this weekend rereading Tehanu. Then we'll talk)

[Amanda]

Hey, my mother read me The Hobbit when I was young too! And then, seeing how much I'd liked it, she proceeded to read me the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, a chapter or two a night, over the course of I forget how many months. It was great. Like traveling with the characters in real time.

I'll have to check out the LeGuin. The only thing I've read of hers is The Left Hand of Darkness, which I loved.

[Randolph Fritz]

Obviously you lived on Skye in a previous life. :-)

It is odd how attractive those images are to so many people. It was not an easy life--one worked all the time, and the seas took the lives of many. And yet...

[Rana]

And yet...

That is exactly right. I mean, I know in my head that life was difficult and short, and know also that I'd never really want to live that way. Yet there are things about the location, and the immediacy of life, and the feeling of being both in the hands of fate and the master of one's own daily life. That seems rare these days, when we are all so interdependent, yet make so much noise about being rugged individuals with more rights than responsibilities.

That, and the sand and sea birds.

There's something very soothing about the sea to me, when it's in its quiet moods -- the hush and schwa of the waves going in and out, the sound of rattling pebbles, the fascination of watching small creatures move along the sand while the flies rise off the kelp -- and something exhilarating when it is in a wild mood, with the waves crashing and the gulls surfing on the spume-filled air, and the ships tilting on the horizon, and the sound of the foghorns...

Perhaps it is because the sea is big enough, and varied enough, to encompass a range of emotions and dreams and hopes and fears?