Smell the sea and feel the sky
As the world spins out of control, as insane idiots strike illegal destruction at innocent individuals and unleash unknown costs on domestic expenses the world over, I feel fortunate that I can walk along the shore near my current home.
Around the coast of Norfolk, from the Wash to the North Sea, the tides come and go at the behest of the sun and the moon, exposing miles of sandy beaches, often almost empty of human feet, despite traces of past interventions:
Or accidents:
When the tide is very high, the old coal barn at Thornham Staithe is cut off....
And the remains of the grain store are awash:
Sometimes it's grey and wet:
Sometimes it's windy and rough:
Sometimes it's quiet and calm:
In winter it can be bitter and cold:
And sometimes (forgive me) you might come across a natural death:
But that is life.... Unlike the war crime of, for example, a Tomahawk missile attack on the Sharjarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, in February, that killed 175 people, the majority of them children....
Yes, forgive me, death is all around us, but it should be part of the natural turning of the world:
Don't be horrified, don't shut your eyes and turn away, but spare a thought for those murdered children, and for the thousands of displaced and terrified people, all innocent victims of the war crimes of the deranged, tyrannical POTUS.
Be grateful for the peace that still exists, in our privileged part of the world.....
Yes, we are privileged to live in peace, and it is something to treasure:
Where the birds of the air can still flock and spiral across the sky:
Where innumerable families of waders fill the air:
And migrating geese may freely come and go:
The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
If only we would listen more carefully to nature. If only we would respect life, in all its forms:
And as life began in the sea, so each of us begins his identical life in a miniature ocean within his mother's womb.
The Sea Around Us
Rachel Carson
Our paths may be uncertain, swathed in mists and of unknown length:
But if we let the the clouds gather and pass, if we let the rain fall and be thankful:
Then we may be blessed with beautiful tranquillity:
And our homes, whether modest:
Economical and functional:
Perhaps more spacious and elaborate:
Or maybe as yet incomplete:
Our homes, if we are fortunate, may survive and we may live out our lives in peace. ....
We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
Into the Mystic
Van Morrison
And so we walk on our quiet coastline, through wind and rain, winter and summer, enjoying the space and the fresh air, watching the weather change, letting the world turn from day to night, from night to day, spinning as we grow older, living in hope, hope that as the sun begins to fall, that it will return in the morning:
Hope that, as it does every individual evening,
Sometimes golden, like the wealth of oligarchs:
Sometimes like the spilled blood of children:
Or smudged like a bruised wound withdrawn from a broken building.....
I hope that there will be new days, and that with new days hope will again rise....
I watch, scanning for that green flash that is said to scar the sky at the moment the sun goes out.
I love this place, I love being here, but know I am a lucky one, surviving where others have not.... For me, the apocalypse is not now.... it is to come.....
A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
Yes, despite the grapes of wrath, I know we are fortunate that we can walk along the shore in peace. It is wonderful here, the light inspiring, the sound of the sea, the various sounds of the oystercatchers, knot, dunlin, plovers, lapwings, curlews, gulls, terns, godwits, avocets, ducks, geese, sanderlings and turnstones - all living together in whirling harmony, touched by the sea and the coming and going of the tides, the billowing of the winds, and the waxing and the waning of the light.
And, like my ancestors, I worship the sun in all its glory, giver of life:
We are so privileged that we can smell the sea and feel the sky:
Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside!
I do like to be beside the sea!
For the sun's always shining as I make my way,
And the brass bands play, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay"
I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside
John H Glover-Kind
1907
Dedicated to the souls of the dead children of Minab
deprived of life and hope by agents of greed