Lost and found
A water-tale in fragments
"Over the last millenium, millions of tons of the Yorkshire coast have crumbled into the sea. Along a seabord stretching from the chalky redoubt of Flamborough Head to Spurn Point, thousands of acres of farmland have been pulverised by the constant attention of the tides and, despite valiant attempts at coastal protection, dozens of villages have disappeared, the entire coastline having moved several miles to the west since Roman times."
Bill Foggitt & Len Markham, The Yorkshire Weather Book
"Finland is the most beloved child of the Baltic sea; still today it empties the treasures of its waters into the womb of her mother, and the mighty sea boasts not thereof, it withdraws with tender love, like a compliant mother, so the daughter might grow and every summer fill up newly uncovered shores with grass and flowers."
Zacharias Topelius, Fältskärns berättelser
Once
We are not from earth and dust.
We come from sea.
Shores rise and fall.
Lakes overflow, lakes dry up, die out, vanish.
Rivers seek new outlets, then silt up.
Lake Lop Noor in the Gobi desert wanders, it ´ s here, then there.
Sinking away, resurging, diving down again into the desert sand.
Sven Hedin chased it on his expeditions, gave up exhausted by thirst. Today
they do nuclear testing by Lop Noor.
Rain falls on Bangladesh, on Vietnam and China.
Rain falls on Cornwall, Haiti, Ostrobothnia.
Rivers flood:
Oder Neisse, Mekong, Danube, Vanda and Ouze.
Dams break in Andalusia and Xian Jing.
The Greenland ice is melting. Ten centimetres each year.
Deluge is here.
Under the surface
Once I floated - another floated there with me. Sometimes our hands brushed each other. Sounds from the outer world touched lightly our nascent ear-drums.
Then we were thrown ashore and out into life. It was winter, snow and bitterly cold. There was a war. You didn ´ t survive the change and I am still looking for your face in the crowd, lost twin-brother. Guilt remained, grief no-one knew was grief.
I learned to swim under water, feeling at ease in that limegreen shimmering world. Soaring body. All sounds so distant, nothing could hurt me. I was happy, I could swim. But hard hands wanted to keep me under when I surfaced for air. A late revenge? Afterwards I always made sure my feet found footholds. I never swam further out.
*
Holding on to the dream of the beginning. Is that the same as never growing up? Believing you ´ re still drifting in a womb waiting for form.
Is that what being a writer is, always longing for the perfect form?
Sometimes I want rid of the feeling of changing, flowing out and away, mixing, blending. I don´t want to be like water, transparent, reflecting everything around me. But do I want to freeze to ice then,
or dry out?
THE FULL TEXT OF CARITA'S PIECE IS AVAILABLE IN THE INTERLAND ANTHOLOGY 'SIX STEPS UNDER WATER' PLEASE CLICK ON THE BOOK TO BUY
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