No tags yet.
Oceans
I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing. And nothing happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves... --Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
Juan Ramon Jimenez
I found this poem in October, and now send it in my "departing" note to VSC writing residents. It's such a gift to face ourselves and the work, in time, space and silence. It is hard enough to fathom the changes wrought in a few weeks time, in our own heads, and almost impossible to articulate to those outside the bubble. Like an epic visit to another land, how do you tell the tale of the journey in a way that makes sense? We can barely grasp our own coherence, or incoherance. How our ribs moved apart to let in light. How it hurt. What is costs to be brave, how that is a cycle that just seems to continue, deeper and deeper.
The writers who come hold hands and jump, every day, into the sea. VSC is a boat. Sometimes I am not sure how long people can hold their breaths. It is almost always scary, to be the one jumping, to be the one watching. And exhilerating. And free. So much easier doing it together. What happens after is up for grabs, the new life.
Yesterday I walked to Dog's Head, to sit by the risen river and watch it hurl through rocks. Not quite the ocean, not waves crashing before the inevitable lap. But this water, it was once part of the sea, then the air, then rode over the land, and now tumbles through this 15 ft wide mouth in Vermont. All the ways we fill ourselves.
o·cean
/ˈōSHən/
noun
a very large expanse of sea, in particular, each of the main areas into which the sea is divided geographically.
synonyms: sea; informal blue, drink, brine, briny, chuck, salt chuck; literary deep, waves, main
the whole body of salt water that covers 3/4 of the earth
any of the large bodies of water into which the great ocean is divided
a very large expanse or quantity. "she had oceans of energy"
synonyms: a lot, a great/good deal, plenty, an abundance, a great/large amount; informal lots, tons, loads, buttloads, heaps, scads, oodles, gobs; vulgar slang shitload
Origin
Middle English: from Old French occean, via Latin from Greek ōkeanos "great stream encircling the earth's disk." “The ocean” originally denoted the whole body of water regarded as encompassing the earth's single land mass.
