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A Day in the Brine

~ Unkempt Mind dribbling in the seethe

A Day in the Brine

Tag Archives: Sea

To While Away the Winter

12 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Introspection, Photography, Stories, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Drear, Experimental, Fractured Self, Introspection, Micro Play, Nature, Prose, Sea, Water, Winter

“Why are you here, talking to me now, after—so many years?”

“I guess all the frolicking wore me down.”

“Unlikely. I used to see you coming down the street. I’d dissolve out of sight so you wouldn’t—You were always alone.”

“I never did stay longer than a night.”

“Did you ever see me?”

“I did.”

“Did it—did you feel anything?”

“I did.”

“But you kept cantering on. A beautifully proud and stoic Gran Cavallo.”

“A nag out to pasture.”

“I used to wish I could become you. I still do.”

“Grow a beard and thick wrists?”

“Do you know what I think?”

“Probably.”

“I think one day, perhaps, part of my skull shall be found beneath a vending machine.”

“That won’t happen. You’re never around anyone brutal enough.”

“You’re not brutal enough?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s a brightly coloured vending machine, surrounded by snow-laden trees. And everything’s glazed in a thick pelt of ice. And it just sits there, soundless and devoid of use—offering cold drinks in a place where there are no summers. And underneath will be a little piece of my parietal bone—and a pale little springtail, no bigger than a centimeter—will find it. He’ll squiggle in delight, and use it as a lean-to to ease his eyes against the drone of the lights overhead—and there he’ll remain—to while away the winter.”

“A winter that never ends.”

“Maybe it will…I can feel sympathy for strange things.”

“It’s been so long since we’ve done this…”

“Yes. Rather sudden but natural—like the Rorschach of a deer misting across the morning commute.”

“Did you think I’d come back?”

“I didn’t think I’d…be here to find out.”

“Thought I’d forget you?”

“Ha. Like remembering a robin’s egg, found crushed in the grass on a cold spring day. Just a flash of amnion in the mud.”

“You said grass before.”

“Another non-sequitur. So many, so many. Could list them to the equator and back. But why come back…”

“I did miss you.”

“And I you.”

“You could never become me, you know—I’m not, I’m not whole.”

“I know. I know.”

“Did you ever—find that face?”

“Do you see one now?”

(No reply)

“Flakelets are scattering. Can you hear them?”

“Yes.”

“Like tiny white beetles ricocheting against a black tarp. I must bed down immediately. That clicking noise will put me right to sleep.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

“Did you go already?”

(Silence)

“Will you come back?”

(Silence)

“I guess you’ve gone. I can ease back now, let these arms bond to the earth, and analyze the entropy of this zigzag roof—see how long it takes for those holes to turn into denticled tears…”

I Have but One Life to GIF

11 Monday Apr 2022

Posted by smilingtoad in Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Cinema, Drear, GIF, Literary Quotations, Nature, Photography, Quotations, Sand, Sea, Stone, Water

“I have always shook with fright before human beings.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.”
― Joyce Cary, The Horse’s Mouth

“The . . . sun was shining in at the smoky small-paned windows; sometimes an outside shutter swung to with a creak, and eclipsed the glare. The narrow door stood wide open . . . and an old spotted dog lay asleep on the step, and looked wise and old enough to have gone to school with several generations of children.”
― Sarah Orne Jewett, A Native of Winby

“It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be.”
― Selma Lagerlöf

“You know, David, if I could send a message to mankind, I would send them a New Year’s greeting. I would like them to dwell on a single New Year’s prayer: ‘Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.'”
― The Phantom Carriage (1921), directed by Victor Sjöström; based on Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! by Selma Lagerlöf

Music– Edit’s Chamber – Matti Bye

“An Atom in the Universe…”

23 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by smilingtoad in Photography, Quotations, Sea

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Fishing, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Pondering, Quotation, Science, Sea

“…I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves, mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business, trillions apart, yet forming white surf in unison. Age on ages, before any eyes could see, Year after year, thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet, with no life to entertain. Never at rest, tortured by energy. Wasted prodigiously by the sun, poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity, living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein. Dancing a pattern ever more intricate. Out of the cradle onto the dry land, Here it is standing, atoms with consciousness, matter with curiosity stands at the sea, wonders at wondering…I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.”
– Richard P. Feynman

Craggy Fool

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by smilingtoad in Photography, Poetry

≈ 32 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Gloom, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Storm


A hairnet of pink lightning
Flames across glum skies
Shadows saunter, charcoaling
The Sea’s velvet skin


October wind coos
Across ruffled iron peaks
The Brine percolates
Each heaving sigh beckoning

Where the Seashells Go Galloping
Violently out of place
Craggy Fool remains
Askew at the tide-line
Like a lazy sketch

Sea Wheeze
His bulged back still aches
From last night’s dune-pillowed sleep
Nascent rain oozing
Down the minefield of his face

Tender Little Sea-Monster
A lifetime of anomie
Stings in his shoulders
His nails chew through leather palms
His eyes cloud with Storm


He envies the clams
Where dungeons feel like Home
And little mole crabs
Soothed by every ruthless blow

Hairy Waves and Feathered Thoughts
Silent moments
Rarely come
Through the ocean thrum


From cinder plumes
Scavengers plunge
Ranting, brash and loud

Where the Ocean Embalms
Tearing out his thoughts, like guts
Twirling filipendulous

How I Wish There Were No End to Rain

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by smilingtoad in Introspection, Photography, Quotations, Stories

≈ 57 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Death, Florida, Grief, Introspection, Music, Nature, Ocean, Pain, Photography, Prose, Quotation, Rain, Sea, Writing

Ocean-bw-8404-BIII loomed beneath a dark feathering of sea-oats, pointed tips glazed with recent rain. I listened to the subdued murmur of little waves. The fetid and russet beds of sea-wrack had been washed away, leaving the sand barren and strange. A forlorn gull loitered at the swash line, analyzing the crinkling water as it fizzed in and out.

Beach- bw-8456-BDistant lightning lazily branched from the moody-blue squall-lines and spidered across a sullen sea of herbal green. Coy ghost crabs emerged, removing dark masses of dripping sand from drowned burrows. They built little, lumpy mounds around the entrances to their small, black holes.

The storm was leaving me. How I longed for it to stay.

Beach- bw-8441-BI was tortured the other night, seized with the memory of my little Siamese cat squeezing her eyes tightly shut for the last time. How swiftly she was gone, her soft, cinnamon cheek resting upon a colorful, flowing blanket that masked the metal slab beneath. I had never seen an animal euthanized, before. I understood, logically, that it ended the physical misery of her little, bony body.

Yet, how troubled I am by that last image of peace…of life tenderly released.

Beach- bw-8742-BMy mum died of a similar ravenous kind of disease. I remember that final image. Her face waxen and unreal, her mouth a small, black hole. She did not tightly close her eyes. She was not escorted quietly, through a warm wash of sleep, into the darkness beyond. Yet, I was not so disturbed by her image in death. And how vividly there lacked any look of peace…

Beach- bw-8752-BI do not know what that reveals about me.

But I wish the storm would never leave. I want, forever, to hear its screams over this cold and fleeting sea of herbal green. How I wish there were no end to rain. Just as there seems to be no end to Grief.

Ocean-bw-8411-B“Darkness settles on the ground
Leaves the day stumbling blind,
Coming to a quiet close
And maybe just in time”
– From the song God Only Knows by Joe Henry

Ocean Static Fills My Ears…

07 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Photography, Poetry, Sea

≈ 86 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Beach, Black and White, Florida, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Water

ShellBW-8394-BIISibilant words
Lumber off the sea

Water-BW-9609-BOcean static
Fills my ears

Beach-BW-8116-BThe dunes shrug
Cicadas throbbing

Water-BW-9904-BThe scent of distant rain
Hanging in a hammock
Of gauzy wind

Shell-BW-9846-BFingers probe
Like crab claws
In cold-packed sand

Water-BW-9565-BAs I listen
To the conversation
Of the waves beyond

Upon a Bed of Sugared Sands

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Photography, Sea, Video

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Death, Florida, Nature, Ocean, Pelican, Photography, Poetry, Sad, Sea, Seashells, Video

Infinity's HalfRamble on the shore
Trundling through icy sea-lace
Churlish waves hissing

Breath of BrineGrey ocean mutters
Skimmers rise in a black plume
Through a scrape of rain

Porcellous ThoughtsA severed wing rests
On a bed of sugared sands-
Moon mounts the dunes

“The Sun the Color of Pressed Grapes…”

20 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by smilingtoad in Photography, Quotations, Sea

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Beach, Black and White, Blur, Drear, Experimental Photography, Nature, Ocean, Pensive, Photography, Quotes, Sand, Sea, Twilight

Prelude to the Monody“He opens his eyes and stares directly into the morning sun which wallows up from the misty sea like some bloated, dying fish. The sky is gray and immobile, a dome of lead. A cloud hangs mute and dark over the western horizon. High up, barely visible, a seagull floats on motionless wings. Its cry is weird and restless.”
– Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal

Chewing Sand“I had forgotten that time wasn’t fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end. ”
– Joyce Carol Oates, I Am No One You Know

Liquid Binding“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
– Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“If You Don’t Become the Ocean…”

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by smilingtoad in Photography, Quotations, Sea

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

Beach, Bird, Black and White, Brine, Dawn, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Quotes, Sea, Waves

With Lumpy Feet“I was a man who thrived on solitude… I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.”
– Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Quelling“If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.”
– Leonard Cohen
Lungs of Salt“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
– Søren Kierkegaard

When the Surf Fisherman Decides Not to Wade In

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by smilingtoad in Photography, Sea, Stories, Video

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

Beach, Black and White, Dawn, Fishing, Florida, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Sea, Seabirds, Sharks, Sunrise, Surf, Video, Waves

(Some feeble footage above of some hunting bull-shark chums of mine as they spilled up into the shallow swash as the tide began to recede. Is there anything better than having a shark swim up into one’s lap? I think not!)

Where the Sharks Rake the SwashI had a meeting with the Sharks that Sunrise, and they kept their promise. I arrived to the bruised sight of a brooding squall that aged the sky, scudding in and consuming the Dawn.

DSC_378022Pale rosy lightning sniveled across the slate blue of cloud as a lone dolphin breached cold in the distance.

Dawn's ConversationAnd there in the swash the pastel waves frilled and shivered as a cool wind lumbered forth, and a surge of fish spat out from the sea as the Sharks surfed right up to my feet.

Dawn's PostulationThe Surf Fisherman decided not to wade in. I know not why. The water was glorious.

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