The Sea

Lately I have been thinking of the sea, and I'm not sure why. I live 1,000 miles from any nearby ocean and instead there are thousands of lakes nearby. I love a good lake.  But there is something about the sea.  Lots of people are drawn to water.  I think it is the space and expanse and water and sky all blended together that brings both settled and stormy feelings.

Jenna and I have been floating on floaties from Target, and we have both decided that this has been the best $7.70 we've spent all summer. We bought them on the 4th of July, super excited to use them at a beach nearby, and got there only to hear that they weren't allowed. Happy news though...since then we've discovered another lake that does allow this, and we've spent a lot of hours talking, reading, and drifting. Maybe this is where all of the sea dreaming comes from.

All week certain themes and thoughts about the ocean and sea have been fluttering by, and I'm finally compiling them here. This is how things got together. There was one big file in my mind and it said 'The Sea'. And this is what fell into it.   Be prepared for just whatever the heck, because that is what this post will be.   I numbered the thoughts because they really don't naturally blend.   Here goes.

1.  One of my good friends described a recent vacation to Oregon, and the highlight was of course the Pacific Ocean. She told me about this trip in the chaos of the spring season at school, and I found myself really happy that she had some time to get away from it all. I've told her before that she is very elegant and classy, and while she doesn't always believe what I say, the only picture I had in my mind of her on this vacation being very classy and elegant. I imagined her wearing a large hat and walking in a sarong at her own pace by the beach. And having fires on the shore and reading all afternoon in front of a perfect horizon. This was confirmed. Her vacation really was that wonderful. But I'm glad that she's back.

2.  There is a difference between the word ocean and sea. Oceans are obviously the huge bodies of water. But what defines a sea? It's a body of salt water that hugs a coastline or is part of one of the oceans. I like knowing the difference.

3.  I remembered the story of a fisherman named Sulbin from BBC's Human Planet. We watched this in class last year during a week when I focused on geography and how humans interact with it. This guy Sulbin interacts with the sea about as completely as you can.

4.  Tonight I talked with one of my best friends and listened to her explain that life feels like all waters are calm, and the boat is not moving. She and her husband are in a time of transition and they are being required to wait for a large gust to sail them in a new direction.  We talked then about the year when I too felt adrift and out to sea. All year I applied for jobs and gamely subbed in classrooms that were foreign to me and learned teaching. It was a pivotal year and a platform for a career.

But I always felt adrift too. Like I was the only one hanging on to a lonely piece of driftwood, and every one else at least had a boat. I began to realize that a lot of people feel that they have their own piece of driftwood to hold onto when the giant waves come to carry them to another place. A lot of the 'me and the driftwood alone at sea' mentality is perception.  You imagine confidently marching into your future when you leave college. Entering the adult world did not feel that way to me at all though.  At least not largely.  I could see small traces of that in me, but again, the driftwood image was fairly constant for about a year. 

So, despite how ridiculous I felt in imagining myself out to sea, it did help me visualize the idea of coming back to a place. Say, a middle school for a day or an elementary classroom.  The schools began to feel like islands too.  And in that year of 'what-the-
heck?-where-is-my-teaching-life-going?' kinds of thoughts, I figured a few things out.

5.  Speaking of being adrift, remember 'Cast Away'? I saw that in another movie recently. Ariane and I went to see 'Bridesmaids', and there is a fleeting moment when the main character has holed up in her house and is at her very worst. She is on the couch crying because Tom Hanks is calling for and apologizing to his volleyball Wilson. It's drifting away! I cried too. Over a volleyball. The emotional tension has been built up though, and Tom Hanks is a great actor. You can't help but feel his pain.

6.  Quotes! They are always said simply to illuminate the bigger truths.  Sea quotes below.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."
- Isak Dinesen

"Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me."
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The quote that is set apart most for me concerning the sea though is about a tangible way to look at death.  It helped when I struggled to understand it in the last year.  This year lots of peoples’ deaths have felt very close and sudden and surreal.  People think that Victor Hugo wrote about this in ‘Toilers of the Sea’.

“I am standing upon that foreshore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white clouds just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!"
"Gone where?"
"Gone from my sight, that's all". She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" And that is dying.”

7.  More connections to the sea. One of my favorite stories of Jesus is the one in the Gospels where he calms the storm. I don't exactly know why except that it is a tangible recognition of the promise of perfect peace. He's in a boat and this giant storm comes along and everyone freaks out except for Jesus. Then he commands the waves and the wind to be still and the storm stops. I have been thinking of this story a lot in the last two weeks. My favorite telling of this part of Jesus' life is in Luke 4:35-41.

8.  Thinking of this story in the Gospels reminded me of the story of Jonah. I love the way that Mary Margaret tells the story of Jonah. Lots of people have already seen this, but I love her voice inflection. And character development.

9.  Then there came the songs. Where do these things come from? They just show up in my mind. One of them is mostly current and kind of tragic and always makes me think of friends who were RDs below me when I was a sophomore in college. Did they introduce me to Nickel Creek? They must have.  Disclaimer: their story is not 'The Lighthouse Tale'.  And this video is super corny, but you get the right idea.

Then there is the timeless one sung by Dean Martin. You can't beat that.

And another relentless song is from the band Looking Glass. I seem to remember hearing this song a lot on family road trips. This would make sense, because upon further investigation, I found that Looking Glass recorded this song "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" in the early 1970s. And radio stations on car trips chosen by my dad were usually centered around hits from the 1970s.

10.  Lyrics from Colin Hay's 'Beautiful World'.

My, my, my it's a beautiful world.
I like swimming in the sea.
I like to go on beyond the white breakers,
where a man can still be free.
Or a woman if you are one.
I like swimming in the sea.

11.  And last of all, something from L.M. Montgomery. This is an Anne quote, and a good one. It's from Anne's House of Dreams, which tells the story of her new life away from Avonlea and all things familiar. In this book, because she is Anne, everything is said in a singsong way. Book characters can be like that. When I meet real people named Anne, I always make a point to say 'Anne with an e?' and they know what I am talking about if they are like kindred spirits.  Otherwise I just sound like I'm one of those people that has to clarify a name. (This may be true regardless of the Anne discussion.  I think names are important.)   

I tend to think that most girls who read Anne books wanted to be her at some point in her life.  Informal polls confirm that this is true.  When I was younger I was no exception. I have since decided that there is a time for the dreaming, and then a time to be solid, clear, and unwavering. (Daily success at my job alone depends on it.) But there will always be a place for Anne quotes in this blog. Here is what she says about the sea and the feeling of adventure that comes with it.

"There [Avonelea], although she had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her constantly. From every window of her new home she saw some varying aspect of it. Its haunting murmur was ever in her ears. Vessels said up the harbour every day to the wharf at the Glen, or sailed out again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be half way around the globe. Fishing boats went white-winged down the channel in the mornings, and returned laden in the evenings. Sailors and fisher-folk travelled the red, winding harbour roads, light-hearted and content. There was always a certain sense of things going to happen - of adventures and farings-forth. The ways of Four Winds were less staid and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of change blew over them; the sea called ever to the dwellers on shore, and even those who might not answer its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery and possibilities of it.

'I understand now why some men must go to sea,' said Anne. 'That desire which comes to us all at times - 'to sail beyond the bourne and sunset' - must be very imperious when it is born to you. I never see a ship sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove 'to fly away and be at rest,' but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of a storm.'”