Picture taken on Doubtful Sound, South Island, New Zealand.
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Doubtful Monotones
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Category Archives: sea
Agents Orange
Picture of North Indian pilgrims taken on the Fort Cochin beach at sunset.
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Twilight’s Last Gleaming..
“..And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.”
From “Ships that Pass in the Night”
by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872 – 1906.
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Picture of the Fort Cochin promontory at sunset.
Autumn Leaves
Photograph taken in Fort Cochin, where autumn is not experienced.
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The Watchful Eye
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Picture taken on the beach at sunset, Fort Cochin.
Launching Out Alone
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“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
Henry David Thoreau
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And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O, my soul.
Walt Whitman
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Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food ..and change of clothes,
D.H. Lawrence
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Launch For Two
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Launch One
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Launch Two
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“Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored…”
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Countdown To Launch
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When the fishermen are ready to launch a boat
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They gather at its stern
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Before pushing it down to the water’s edge.
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They must then wait
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For a suitably large wave
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Before
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Launch
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Can be achieved.
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An Assembly Of Fishermen: Preparing Your Boat
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Before the fishermen set out, the boats and nets are prepared:
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All must be sea-worthy.
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They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
Psalm 107. 23 – 25
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Sea Fever
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I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
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I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
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I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
“Sea Fever” by John Masefield.
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A Winter Sunset
The beach is just a five-minute walk from my home.
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Being able to stroll there, as the sun sets over the Arabian sea, is both pleasure and privilege.
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..Had we some mystic boat with pearly oar
And wizard pilot,
To guide us safely by the siren shore
And cloudy islet,
We might embark and reach that shining portal
Beyond which linger dreams and joys immortal..
From “Sea Sunset” by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Christmas Morning
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A walk along Fort Cochin sea front on Christmas morning.
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Happy Christmas!
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As Large As Alone
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With the monsoon finally spent, walks to the beach resume.
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maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
e e cummings
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Pictures all taken from the footpath beside Fort Cochin seafront.
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Nunc Dimittis
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“An age is called “dark,” not because the light fails to shine but because people refuse to see it. ” James Michener
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“Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the Light.. it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?” Albert Schweitzer
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Photographs taken on Calicut beach at sunset. November 2010.
Remains Of The Day
The Calicut boat jetty at sunset.
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I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Published 1818.
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“I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity..” Ecclesiastes 1, 14.
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Sunsets And Siblings
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Following the road to Calicut our driver, Babu, reached the hotel in good time. After showering, taking tea and a rest, we drove to the beach for the sunset.
Indian families frequently assemble on the shore at dusk: the sun is less fierce; the sea breeze refreshing.
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There, a mother and her two children were enjoying the spectacle. As she stood bathed in golden light at the water’s edge, the sea lapping the hem of her sari, her young son and daughter paddled with unrestrained glee. Though the waves were gentle and the children in shallow water, the mother chanted an almost constant litany: “Be careful. Not too deep!”.
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The brother and sister’s innocent pleasure, alongside their mother’s anxious happiness, triggered memories of my childhood.
Our mother was not a swimmer and would stand nervously beside the breaking waves as my sister and I tried to jump them.
My sister, a couple of years older than me, was by far the braver of us both. Although shy with strangers, in the security of our family she was a fearless tom-boy.
Given an audience, I could not stop talking – but when it came to action I was much less adventurous. Little has changed.
Water redeemed me. It was the one area where I had greater physical prowess and confidence than my sister. I gloried in its overwhelming power and my seeming weightlessness.
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It is from such memories – the shared moments of joy and grief, our childhood bonds – that unwavering love and solidarity are forged.
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Fifty years later I can no longer jump the waves, alone or with my sister. More than five thousand miles and different continents now separate us.
But the love, friendship and support have never tarnished.
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Away Daze
Bhaji On The Beach
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As the sun begins to set on the main feast-day of Onam, friends and families meet up on the Fort Cochin shores to talk, sit, stroll and fly kites.
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“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” Anais Nin
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Sea Food
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The Morning After, The Night Before.
It is official. The monsoon has set.
On first hearing this phrase, I thought I might be experiencing an Al Gore moment, and that the monsoon must have finished early – extremely early.
But by setting, the monsoon has in fact arrived.
When I retired to my bedroom last night, the comfort of sleep was unaccustomedly difficult to find.
Instead, I was entertained by a mighty son et lumière performance.
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For over an hour my room became the stage on which searingly bright lights, cruelly sharp shadows, deafening sound and powerful tremors fiercely interplayed.
As dawn broke I questioned if an early morning walk would be possible.
But, other than a few puddles, life had returned to normal.
The beach was beginning to bustle:
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Footballers were back in position;
The cheerleaders their customary, sanguine selves.
A boy was opening my local tea-stand,
His first customer already waiting.
For young and old it was business as usual.
The sky was brightening,
The storm blown out.
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