photo by Martin Waugh
Once.
In the north lands,
Where in Winter the
day masquerades as night and in Summer the night masquerades as day,
The coy alluring sea
recedes in seasonal tides, unveiling her wide wet margins to the
land.
Inlets and
outcroppings
Groves of tangleweed
and pristine pools teeming with life
Fleshy anemones, sea
stars, rock-clinging mollusks, sand darters, jellies and crabs moving
in and out of the lucent green sea lettuce, sea grass, purple
dillisk, kelp and carageen.
When the tide is
slack, Dylan comes in his gumboots with his bucket and his shears in
his practiced hand, cutting the kelp stipe above the holdfast,
trimming the sea greens above the bud, so the shore is trimmed but
not stripped.
Dylan spent his
boyhood at sea, in the company of his father and boat men, coming and
going from the land in the darkness and marine mist, so that first
and last light were over the open ocean. His first legs were sea
legs. He knew the swells and the changing currents. More than once he
knew the terror of a deep trough when the water walled out the sky
and the sea wanted to swallow him. More than once he knew elation
when the wind whipped the wave crests into white mare’s manes
galloping on the surf.
Once he saw the Sámi
men in their low, sleek, hide-bound boats, darting swiftly in and out
the troughs. The ‘Fin Folk’ his father called them.
“Stay clear of
them, lad,” his father said, “they’ll ruin your catch.”
His father hated the
sea. Hated that he needed the sea. Hated that the sea was so moody
and that he had no choice but to take whatever mood she gave him.
Hated that he could not live without the sea but that the sea could
easily live without him.
“We cannot fathom
the darkness below us,” he said, “but the dark fathoms us. So
treat the water with respect, boy. But pray to Christopher to guide
you safe back to land.”
Dylan’s mother was
a fisherman’s wife. On good days she carried her 4 stone creel to
market for coin, a bit of bread, and sometimes apples. On a bad day
she sat staring out at sea in silence. One day, she was gone.
After that, Dylan
carried his mother’s creel, and took to the margin of the sea, in
sight of land, harvesting the sea groves.
His father’s dying
request was to be buried inland, far from sight of the sea, in some
farmer’s field, where the water had no salt, in the ‘dust from
which we were made.’ And so it was.
One midsummer, in
the long light, when the scandalous sea revealed her widest margin,
Dylan came down to harvest.
That day, out in the
wet sands, he saw a pair of slender footprints, coming from nowhere,
going nowhere. In a nearby pool, he found, among the honeymare,
strange weeds. But he knew them at once. ‘These are selkie weeds,’
he thought, ‘and these are her prints.’ He knew about the selkie
people. How they would peel off their sealskins and take to land at a
whim, to dance and play as though they were human. He knew, also,
that they could not return to sea, return to their seal forms,
without their skins.
So he took it where
he found it and hid it with the honeymare.
And when he hung the
seaweeds to dry, he tucked the selkie weeds into a barrel bottom,
beneath the dried dillisk.
Then he lit a fire
and lit his pipe and sat upon his 3-legged stool and waited.
‘Let’s she if
she comes calling,’ he said to himself.
And in the long
light of midsummer night, when the tide was at the flood, she came.
She stood at his
door, wrapped in seaweed stipe, fronds and fans.
“Look what the sea
cast up,” he said.
She dropped the wet
weeds before him and he saw her naked dripping form.
“And what am I to
call you?” He asked.
“Alaria,” she
said.
“That’ll do,”
said he. “And I’ll be Dylan.”
“You are welcome
here,” he said. “I have gifts for you.”
So she stepped into
the half-light of his hearth.
But he did not give
her back her skin. Instead, he gave her something else, something he
thought she wanted.
He clothed her and
fed her, and shared with her his bed.
He kept her skin
hidden in his harvest and kept her in his service,
gathering weed from
the shore, and caring for his half-dark hearth.
He thought he loved
her, but in truth, he loved having her.
In time, her womb
began to swell with a coming child.
On the stormy night
her babe was born, the midwife came.
When the midwife saw
her, she said “You’ve done this before. Where are your children?”
She moaned “In the
sea.”
“Ah,” said the
midwife, misunderstanding, “it’s too common, the tragedy of
drowning.”
So a boy was born to
Alaria and Dylan. In the way all men are born,
From broken waters
with a coil of flesh wrapped round him.
The midwife knotted
the cord to hold it fast, and with her sharp shears and practiced
hands she cut the cord above the knot and gave the boy to his
mother’s arms.
And they called him
Finn.
And in the long days
and nights that followed they raised their child.
In the gloaming
Alaria told Finn stories as Dylan sat by the hearth, mending nets and
sharpening shears.
She told of Dame
Ragnell who became ugly and uglier until she gained her sovereignty.
She told of
Narcissus, who did not know himself.
One night she told
of an ogre who kept a maid in thrall in a ruined castle by a stormy
sea, until…
A young prince,
the youngest son of seven, set out to seek his fortune.
He came to the
ruined castle by the craggy coast where he found the captive maiden.
Together they
learned the ogre’s secret: he had no heart in his body.
So it was that
the ogre could be strong and deathless.
The heart, they
learned, was hidden far away and deep.
So the prince set
out. For a year and a day
Until he came to
the great lake,
in the center of
the lake he came to an island,
on that island he
found a church
in that church a
well and in that well a duck and in that duck an egg and in that egg,
the hidden heart.
Returning with
the heart in hand, the prince confronted the ogre and challenged his
power.
The ogre pleaded
for his heart.
But the prince
crushed it and the ogre fell dead.
So it was that
maid could not be free until the ogre’s heart was broken.
So it is with
many women, said the selkie wife, kept by heartless men.
So it was with my
own mother and my mother before her and so it is, she said,
staring fixedly at Dylan, with me
too.
For the first time
Dylan saw her pain and anger.
“I am
not heartless,” he said.
He went to the
barrel of dillisk weed hiding her skin.
Returning
with it he said “Tell
me, if I had given you your skin that
night,
would you have stayed?”
She
answered, “we’ll never know.”
“I
have seen the mountain hare in winter change her coat to white to
hide in snow.
Is that
why you change your skin? Your hide? To hide?
Are you
here hiding or going to hide?
I have a
heart.
It is
filled with you and our child and does not want you gone but will no
longer make you stay.
Take
your changing skin.
Choose
what you will do with it.
But tell
me if you can,
How can
I change my skin?”
What
justice is it that you come and go freely from the sea while I am
bound to earth?
He followed her to
the water’s edge.
Turning, she said
“You do not know
who you are, or where you are from.
You tell yourself
you were fashioned of ash and dust,
Clay shaped by a
craftsman.
Your story binds you
to the land.
But change your
story and you may find your changing skin.”
She slipped into her
skin, into the sea, and was gone.
In the
years that followed, Dylan taught their son to love the sea.
And in
the long dark of Midwinter days, they sat beside the hearth telling
stories
of sea
and land
of woman
and man
and the
unfathomable depths of the heart.
Always
he left his door open, to listen to the sea.
––––
In early 2018, by using confocal laser endomicroscopy, a team of researchers identified a new human organ they call the interstitium. The interstitium is a watery fluid-filled contiguum, between the outer skin and the bodily organs, enveloping the body like a liquid second skin.A watery second skin,
An amniotic sea skin
A new knowing of ourselves
From new ways of seeing.
photo by Martin Waugh
Martin Waugh’s creative uses of high-speed photography make it possible to capture the smooth and
effortless curves of liquid. By varying the size, speed and position of drops, as well as the color,
viscosity, and surface tension, Martin creates a panorama of color, movement and intrigue. Martin
received his B.S. degree in Physics from Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. His work can be found in
museum, corporate, and private art collections. He lives in Portland. Visit www.liquidsculpture.com to
learn more.
