So here we are - and here I am, again. I will try for once to write things as they are, in prose - (although I must admit that all this is iambic…) O.K.
Yes, there is something of a comforting lull in the return, I hardly noticed it at first, with all the rush and grinning and unpacking and show, but as I lay outside lulled in Shelley I felt and smelt and heard the lulling return of the returning waves, and I think I am turned or lulled into the mind or heart of Swinburne, and his great sweet mother, the sea.
Truth or Dare - CJ chose dare and dared me go skinny-dipping the sea, now, in the rain, and wind, and mist, and fucking cold. I did a showy groan and trudged outside - but then bang when I was alone I grabbed a towel and ran, bouncing lithe and gawkward over the gravel road, bounded down to the shore, over the shingle, (slowed over the green hard slippery seaweed), tore off my clothes (except for my fetching red boxers) and charged dancing into the charging waves. It was cold, and piercingly real.
First swim - ‘mix with me’…’wrought without hand in a world without stain’ - although truth be told the water was murky with storm torn sand and sea-stuff. Then they fattened (?) and I had to rip off my boxers…fucking cold…fun.
These moments may not be elation, or rapture, but out here at the land’s edge, where the old elements clash in gay and yet quietly eternal and sombre opposition, melding, facing, an intersection of vasts to set the heart beating, and all that…here, such moments are fit to be remembered because fit to be felt, and because I got up and did something, shook off my groggy hangover and shocked out my malaise, and now bedded and warm I smile still with the fire of white water lightning light of mind and heart swelling and rushing in the undercurrent eddies of my blood and being. I’ll remember it.
Thank you.
Ireland
(early) afternoon (3pm?) - 24th June ‘08
