Casting Adrift

 I was walking along a windy beach listening to Elvis Costello:

Life is dark
Cold as the sea
Embrace me in my anguish
Put seaweed in my hair 
and vow that you won't cry because
I've gone 


I have walked along there so many times and perhaps I will walk there forever. And while I was walking, I revisited a thought that I have had so many times recently. That is I think you know me now as well as you ever will.

On those hot summer days you will know that I still yearn for the cooling sea; to cast off my clothes and throw myself into the waves.

On these colder winter days you will know that I will be brewing my coffee over a driftwood-fired stove.

I am starting to repeat myself. I feel that I have nothing new to say. I think that this will be the last message that I will send from this shore.

Remember me fondly. I will still be here; a man of simple pleasures and modest expectations.

I will never ever forget you.

Cusp

I love the nomenclature of the beach. Cusps are the arcs of deposited material spaced regularly along a wave washed beach. I love them for their steadfast regularity; they are my waymarkers as I walk along the edge of the water.

I have also reached a metaphorical cusp and I stand here on the divide between the warm comfort of everything that I know and what might lay beyond. If I stay here I will be comfortable but unhappy. But could I find the contentment I seek anywhere else than here? I feel that I am shutting down, quietening and living more within my thoughts at the moment. I am a mechanical; I go through motions. I feel but do not want to feel.

Nevertheless, I am taking my small pleasures where I can find them. A pot of coffee steams on the stove and there is the aroma of fresh bread. Music plays and I polish a lovely smooth pebble between my fingers.

I am still very much alive.

Extending the Metaphor

This is a place of my making; the metaphor serves but no longer completely satisfies.

To be by the sea has always recharged me. It doesn't matter whether I am flinging myself into the waves on a burning summer day or wrapped up against the wind and walking along the water's edge, lost in my thoughts.

My cabin on the beach is my refuge. It is also my loneliness and disconnection; a place for one. In the past I have imagined a shared cottage, a large bed and the sound of the waves accompanying noisy, unrestrained (or restrained) and joyful lovemaking.

My small cabin can seem more of a prisoner's, or hermit's, cell than a refuge and I find myself there less than ever before; solitude is not an escape from loneliness. Of course, its not as if I am imprisoned there in any sense. I walk to the edge of the beach and seldom further but there is no barrier except that which I make for myself. I can and do leave this place and enjoy the pleasure of valued company but it is a peek through a door which has to be left ajar and then closed firmly behind me when I return. And I must always return.

Why this reflection now? It is partly seasonal; I am always wistful with the shorter, misty days. But I sense another autumn and it gnaws at me. This really does seem to be as good as it will get and the thought weighs heavily upon me and makes me out of sorts and even, sometimes, irrationally angry. I had higher hopes for my life.

I yearn to love and to be loved; to hold and be held. I yearn to be kissed and caressed and Fucked. I yearn to kiss and suck and taste a lover's cunt; to observe her pleasure and drive her on to even more intense waves and also to throw ourselves into the summer sea waves to refresh ourselves... together.

From My Garden

This place gives me the peace I need with the quiet day broken only by the sound of the waves across the beach. Sometimes people come and go but they are silent and distant figures who keep a wide birth from the hut and its reclusive occupant.

Last night I watched a young couple walk quietly before sitting and lighting a small candle.

This morning I am sitting in my sea-garden and thinking about that small soft light which flickered for a while and was then no more.

Quenching

Days of burning sunshine.
I worked hard in the heat and then
In the quiet of the afternoon
Walked down to the water's edge,
Peeled off my sweat soaked clothes
And launched myself into the cold waves.
Quenching the heat but not my desire.

Making

I know that I should have written sooner but I have been lost out here on the beach. I have trodden across the damp sand over and over again and laid awake at night listening to the wind and the waves. I have both dreams and daydreams of water and seaweed and skin. I catch and cook my food, read, listen to music and stare at the sea for hours. Then, just as the summer was showing itself, all this space became oppressive and I was troubled and thought of leaving here for good. Forgive my silence.

So I have made myself a garden.

Here in the shingle above the highest tide I have sea holly and sea pinks. There are spiky tufts of seagrass and low mats of tiny succulent sedums. Outside the hut door there are old cracked pots planted with herbs: rosemary, basil and oregano so that I may cook with them or just take a pinch to sniff while I walk along the beach.

I dragged a huge slab of driftwood for a seat and set up tall slim sticks tied with washed up bottles and strings of seaglass held together with twine. There are swathes of old fishing net and chandeliers of lost and discarded tackle.

But, as I sat on my seat and surveyed what I had made, I was wistful again and wondered whether I should have cut myself off from the possibilities that lay beyond this lonely beach, rather than stay here and count out my days?

So I went into the hut, picked up my club hammer and took sharp chisels from an oiled rag. I found a suitable piece of stone at the base of the cliffs and dragged it to the hut where I remembered my stonecutting days as I shaped and fashioned a mermaid from the rock and set her up in the garden where she sits, sleek tailed among the plants. I carved her with your hair.

But it was only as I sat here just now, looking at her, that I realised that she also has your breasts.

Swimming On and On

The sun is warm but the breeze is still chilly as I sit on the wooden steps and watch the sea. There are many trails of footprints leading down to the water's edge and back but they are all my own.

It is just warm enough to swim in the sea and I swim on and on, sometimes thinking, sometimes arranging and rearranging words and images in my mind and sometimes just emptying my mind and becoming the sound of the waves and the sensation of cold water moving over skin.

Sometimes, though, I cannot avoid looking up at the half moon in the blue sky and reflecting on my own incompleteness. I am wistful but also very mindful of the small pleasures that so often make me smile.

I realise that am starting to feel old; just small physical changes happening like the dry ticking of clock but adding, a little, to my sense of melancholia. As usual, I smile at myself and float above such thoughts. We are all dragged along by deep currents and, swim as powerfully as we like, we know that we have to make the best of what we have and, on the whole, I am content. Indeed, I live a life that would be the envy of so many so I must get up, ignore the stiffness in my ankle and set about making something of this glorious day.

I will put the kettle on the strove to make some coffee and remind myself of the words of a Chinese poet famed for drinking more intoxicating liquid:

"Before life's dregs are drained, there are still some glasses!"

Viewpoint

It has been an unseasonably warm weekend and, when sheltered from the wind, it was positively hot. So this morning found me in the lee of a dune, laying on firm sand, arms and legs spread and basking naked in the sun.

I was enjoying that most perfect of views; a completely cloudless blue sky above me. I cleared my mind of thoughts and, for a while, everything was simple and everything was good.

Happy Easter to you x

Travelling Days

Spring is here and I have been walking barefoot across the wet sand with the sun warming my back. I love those first days when I can enjoy fleeting evening sun and I feel as if I am waking up from a long winter slumber as I skim stones out into the waves and go back to brew coffee which I sit and drink out on my driftwood bench while I view the sea. I have cast aside my jacket and sit out in my t-shirt.

Last night was warm and I slept fitfully with vivid dreams about my traveling days. This was the time when I would paint during the day and, in the evening, sing for my supper - or a bed for the night. In my dream I remembered the long daytime walks, the friends I met and lips I kissed. My songs were the songs of leaving and so, when I stopped leaving, I also stopped writing. I can barely remember them but I sang a song in my dream and so this morning I pulled a small guitar from its blanket case and played and sang for the wind and the waves...

Strong Like a Shell

I love seashells.

They have a beauty that isn't always diminished by the erosive power of the waves. I love them for all their variety of shape and colour. I love the feel of them, hard and smooth and, sometimes, warm from my hand as I hold one in my pocket; a talisman caressed by my fingers.

There are shells on my windowsill and shells in my thoughts. There is a drawing of a shell on the tabletop in front of me; tiny and detailed. An accurate record of an object that represents a place and a moment and an emotion. Memories pinned down by graphite marks.


Sometimes, no matter how fragile we feel, we have to be strong - or, at least, to give the appearance of strength. To reassure someone else.

Tonight, I want to wrap a shield around myself, hard and resilient to protect me like a shellfish inside its shell.

Content & Discontent

The thoughts came to me so strongly and unexpectedly that I had to stop what I was doing, put the coffee pot on the stove and sit down in front of the fire and run through it all again.

It has been a strange start to the year with far more aches, pains and other irritations that I would normally expect and so I am not really surprised that I have felt more than a little discontented. However, it has only been in the last couple of days that I have asked myself the question so beloved of Russian authors "What is to be done?"

A few moments ago, I happened to look out away from the sea and saw a figure sitting by himself on top of the ridge and - just for a second - clearly recognised myself as a young man sitting atop another such ridge as I pondered a Buddhist text that explained that we suffer because we desire and that we should only rid ourselves of suffering by ridding ourselves of desire.

Many years on, I could apply this to my life today. Do I only suffer discontent because I desire something that I do not - perhaps can never - have? And, if this is the case, might I become more content by recognising and accepting my life as it is with all its limitations?

It is easy to argue that I torture myself by dangling dreams out of my reach; especially since I could choose to walk away from everything that I have but do not to do this, either because of a need for the comforts of my circumstances or, perhaps, simply through sheer cowardice. It is a strong signal that I realise that nothing will change and even that it is too late for me to change. I can either kick against this and suffer, or accept it and then hopefully find a contentment with my life that might occasionally be slightly sweetened by a few recollections.

My coffee is ready and I sit warming my hands around my mug.

I am not sure where these thoughts leave me? Is this now the time that I should approach those doors that have not been closed to me and shut them myself? Even if I did that, would I actually find the contentment that I feel is missing?

I finish my coffee and look out towards the grey, turbulent sea and, with that, the realisation that even a bleak outlook can have its own magnificent energy.

So I cast the thoughts of my younger self into the wind and waves and console myself with Murakami's observation on running:

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional"

I must never let myself forget that.

Swimming

The New Year has brought mild weather and I have rediscovered the simple pleasure of swimming. Three times over the last few days I have started my day by swimming. It loosens my limbs and jump starts my day but, best of all, I lose myself within the sensations of the water passing over my skin. My mind slows down, thought slips away and I become acutely aware of my body. I feel the better for it.

If only my evenings were to go as swimmingly. A dull emptiness seems normal these days but, all too often, this deteriorates into regret and even something approaching anger. I need to get a grip, count my blessings and remember the small pleasure of my morning swim.