So Many Seas I've Visited Once
On Being Flogged and Shriveled
Dear Katie -
I don’t know why I struggle with returning to a place, with trips that repeat, holidays in general. I am happiest living in firsts. Mostly I feel there is so much to experience in this world. Other times I am afraid to undo the magic of the first time. I am the same with art — always starting something new. I’ve been to so many seas once, and I look forward to plucking a poem or two from the old adventures when I get home.
Until then, I may be turning a corner as I feel a little ready for repeat. I was even looking forward to our return to the Dominican Republic after seven years and dreamed of horseback riding on the beach again, yoga again, and revisiting the shack where we rejoiced in fresh-cut coconuts. I wondered if we’d enjoy our time with the family we met their the first time — who invited us back.
We did! We chattered non-stop, ate so-so food, and enjoyed the glorious wind and rain and sunshine. Our last morning I went to a not-a-yoga class (whilst our friends who were there on a work exchange took photographs) in the thatched-roofed ‘temple’ during a downpour. When it was over, I ran to the people-less sea, stripped down to my wool gutchies and jumped in. In the sea beneath the rain I was consumed by water and returned in my mind to Sicily, the Galapagos Islands, Turkey, Greece, the North Sea, the Dead Sea, and so many seas I’ve visited once. The flogging, the shriveling, the floating, the drifting, drifting, drifting…
I am thrilled to be alive today! and look forward to winter’s end and dread the ice and snow we are returning to. Even if it is so quiet. Even if it is so beautiful.
With love,
Margaux
ps: I’ve left out the illnesses
ABOUT THE BOOKS:
Old Journals and things relating to the sea. There are a lot of seas in these journals that I’ve left out of memory and photographs, but a thing is never finished, is it?
Not a Poem
Trembling at the Turkish
bath the heat takes
breath away and causes
tips of fingers to tingle.
Bound by tension intention
was calm when quieted
clean will have been
worth the torment as will
have been the experience.
Strangers sweating atop a
marble slab in a hot domed
room. Delirium. Sound
travels slowly, sentences
overlap. Need speak slowly
7 September 2006
Loving all of this. The starter entry (leaving out the illnesses) the follow up sea entries. I enter a whole part of you I didn’t know, such treasures.
Particular favourites: the self-portraits, sea washing-ups, quotes - ‘nor do I tell the whole truth of myself, only what it pleases me to relate, only what is true ‘
“Not a Poem” is especially entertaining Margaux! The wordplay is simply magical!! BRAVO!!!