Wishing I was there.

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Coral Beach Isle of Skye

Its only a few weeks ago, but I want to be there again. It is raining here, as in invariably does on an English Bank Holiday in May, so the only way to journey into sunlit scapes is through the power of thought and imagination. But it’s good to look at the photo’s too, just to jog the brain into submission. The cows were very relaxed, enjoying the kiss of the sun as thoroughly as we were, and bringing a touch of surrealism to the scene. It isn’t a hard walk to Coral Beach, just a gentle meander across the sands, pausing to collect the fossilised remains of the coral which names the beach. I have them here, with aspirations to turn the patterns of calcified seaweed into silver jewellery, earrings, and pendants. All I need is the silversmithing skills and I’m away.

Then to find the jewels of the rock pools, undulating gently in the ebb and flow of the tide. Fascinating forms of mystery and beauty, it becomes a moving slideshow of colour, texure and movement impossible to capture with the camera. The connection of life and art seamless in these prehistoric creatures, mindless and oblivious to the world of man. Amazing.

I miss the sea.

The Aegean

This music has lasted since the world began.
A rock was born among the waters
while tiny waves chatted in a soft universal tongue.
The shell of a se-turtle
would not have foretold the guitar.
Your music has always risen to the sky,
green taproot, Mother Sea,
first of all firsts. You enfold us,
nurturing us with music – threat,
fable, hypnosis, lullaby, roar,
omen, myth,
little agonies
of grit, of wreckages, of joys –

Maria Luisa Spaziani (b. 1924) translated by Beverly Allen