Mindlessness

Monday, July 11, 2011



Sometimes you have to run away to the beach. Even if you can't afford it and you shouldn't. You just do.




Then you should get sunburnt, and ignore it because really, what did you expect?  It is the beach and there is sun. You can slather a billion spf on your body and the sun ignores it and burns you anyway. 


But the pleasure of falling to sleep, exhausted, at night with the sound of the ocean ceaselessly outside your window outweighs the pain of the burn and the knowledge that there will be hell to pay when you return.



When you look at your pictures, you notice you don't smile. Just look back at the lens. Not sad and not depressed, but somehow weary. Used up.  You tell your therapist that you wonder if you got all used up in the years leading up to now. That this is all that is left. The watching. The observing. 


You feel like an intruder into the spaces that were yours before. Or maybe they weren't yours but you moved with a different ease and certainty. Now, you feel jumbled and awkward. Not dreamy, not ethereal, but a solid, earth bound presence who can't seem to move with any grace or fluidity.




It doesn't help that you have fallen into the world of China Mieville, where you understand with dreadful clarity the terrible beauty of his made up space.  You can't remember the last time an author poked and prodded at your brain with such precise and delicious vocabulary.  You fall in love a little bit with the words.  The beautiful, beautiful words.  


And the sea whispers.

4 Baleful Regards:

Jaelithe said...

Life came out of the ocean, and we land-stranded creatures carry a little of the ocean around in ourselves -- the composition of salts in the blood is similar to that in the ocean. Some anthropologists think modern humans evolved on the coasts of seas and large lakes, spearing fish and cracking open shells with stone tools. Sometimes I think that's why people almost universally find the beach transformative. It's like the waves are calling us home.

KL Crab said...

used up, I understand that concept- I never quite thought of it that way- but it resonates deeply with me.Yes ma'am there are many days when I am used up. The good news: not so many as their were..

Dawn said...

Jae- Yes, the ocean makes me happy. The bitter cold of the Atlantic, where you suck in your breath as you work up your courage to just go IN and be done with it. I like the salt on my skin and the sand in my scalp. The way the ocean makes you feel both clean and grimy, simultaneously.

It would be easy to see the appeal of the coast to early humans - the evidence of food which washes in with the tides. We are, after all, magnificent scavengers.

KL - Used up. There are times when I do truly think that all my laughter, all my joy, all humor in life has been used up. This is an in-between time for me. Not grieving,or rage. No sadness or depression. Just a very quiet stillness that makes me feel like I am hibernating. With no predicted schedule of when I will wake up.

I pondered today, while walking in the museum, how long I could sustain this liminal space.

KL Crab said...

I know, everyone has their own limits. I hit a wall hard, crashed for a number of years and then slowly found my way past it. Keep going, one foot in front of the other. I wish you peace.

 
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