By the sea...

When a whale dies, it falls through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly. I focused my attention on the eye; I tried to reach down inside of it, toward the real whale, the dying whale, and I whispered, It’s not your fault...

Miranda July
 
Best thread today and now I can't read the fucker.:mad:
 
Let me build it for you: the sand with its forgotten patterns,
the tidal pools holy as the empty recital hall is holy, the ocean

and its deep and caustic search for a coast that won’t erode.
How good to feel so small, to lean my back against the rotten

transom of your boat and hope that it might give way
beneath my weight, plunge me into the sea to float among

the contraband of crab shells and Styrofoam. I could pretend
I was your only one, even as your hesitance unspelled me, even

as I became nothing more than a gunmetal sheen, a tick
in the wheat field of water. That’s the great luxury of enough:

thinking salt water will suffice against thirst. But I have
the rest of my life to be fucked in the dark. Whether you

loved me or not—if you even knew how—the tide didn’t
frighten me. You were the waves I couldn’t turn my back on.

Keetje Kuipers
 
Love this woman

I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat,
smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I’d go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I’d open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me – the ship’s
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull’s silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.

Dorianne Laux
 
My SCUBA-diving days are over. But there is another world there.

And it's really amazing to have fish come up to you and swim around you in a circle... just because they're curious about you. They can't figure out what this black thing is that blows bubbles. Then more come. And before you know it you're at the center of a fish-cyclone.
 
I did see a shark once.

And it bolted from me like I was the devil.

Isn't that interesting?
 
My SCUBA-diving days are over. But there is another world there.

And it's really amazing to have fish come up to you and swim around you in a circle... just because they're curious about you. They can't figure out what this black thing is that blows bubbles. Then more come. And before you know it you're at the center of a fish-cyclone.
sounds incredible. what a visual!

I did see a shark once.

And it bolted from me like I was the devil.

Isn't that interesting?
interesting that teh shark got religion...

you, the Devil? nah, you're just a very naughty byron :D
 
In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem: She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by. Just imagine that massive mammal, floating alone and singing—too big to connect with any of the beings it passes, feeling paradoxically small in the vast stretches of empty, open ocean.
 
The straightforward mermaid starts every sentence with “Look … ” This comes from being raised in a sea full of hooks. She wants to get points 1, 2, and 3 across, doesn’t want to disappear like a river into the ocean. When she’s feeling despairing, she goes to eddies at the mouth of the river and tries to comb the water apart with her fingers. The straightforward mermaid has already said to five sailors, “Look, I don’t think this is going to work,” before sinking like a sullen stone. She’s supposed to teach Rock Impersonation to the younger mermaids, but every beach field trip devolves into them trying to find shells to match their tail scales. They really love braiding. “Look,” says the straightforward mermaid. “Your high ponytails make you look like fountains, not rocks.” Sometimes she feels like a third gender—preferring primary colors to pastels, the radio to singing. At least she’s all mermaid: never gets tired of swimming, hates the thought of socks.

Matthea Harvey
 
In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem: She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by. Just imagine that massive mammal, floating alone and singing—too big to connect with any of the beings it passes, feeling paradoxically small in the vast stretches of empty, open ocean.

will she slip into madness?

that's a lot of crazy, should it happen. poor whale :(
 
She arches her body like a cat on a stretch. She nuzzles her cunt into my face like a filly at the gate. She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with fresh tides of longing.

Jeannette Winterson
 
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