now that erosion is eroded

It took the sea a thousand years, a thousand years to trace
The granite features of this cliff in crag and scarp and base

It took the sea an hour one night, an hour of storm to place
The sculpture of these granite seams upon a widow's face

("Erosion", E.J. Pratt, 1931)

when we were small choristers we learned this poem and we spoke it in unison at the old united church in my hometown.  we were taught what it meant - that both the cliffs and the woman were worn down by the wind and the waves and wildness of the sea, but that for the mountains many thousands of years were required.  the woman transformed into a widow in mere hours of her husband being at sea during a storm.  we diligently spoke the words as 8, 9, 10, 11 year-olds, moving the people in the audience as we spoke in these angel-like tones - high-pitched, sweet, innocent, naive - completely unaware of why these words were special.  it's hard to understand that sort of darkness without a tangible holding point.

i was 12 before that poem had any concrete meaning for me, and i could not believe it.  i decided it was a part of my sleeping world.  the words of the ocean swallowing up a man, father, husband, friend, son washed over my ears as i was in some dazed out state on the couch after a big dinner on a stormy thanksgiving.  when i woke up i wouldn't accept it was true - not because i knew the man personally and so it brought me agony, but because my father did, because his daughter was in my school.  eventually the difference set in and the next time i saw his daughter the second verse of "erosion" was solidified for me.  i could never be that chorister again, as we had spoken those words to give hope to people, to reassure people that innocence and beauty still exists somewhere outside of their world.  but it no longer existed now for us.  so we could only be liars and posers and fakers saying those words in our sing-song voices.

perhaps this is our plight of being born on the water; of having the opportunity to grow up unencumbered by the rush of a city so big you can't run into a friend in a strange, unexpected place; of being able to jump off of wharves and grow up just adoring the ocean, desiring so much to exploit the ocean and all he had to offer forever.  perhaps this is just our plight.  i can't believe that though.  i can't abide by a world where our only opportunities yield the untimely, tragic, unjustifiable loss of breath.

on tuesday night this week, the search for five missing fisherman from clam point, nova scotia, was called off.  hearts broke at the first mention they were missing, then more when the search was called off, and then finally mine shattered into a million pieces when i read what the uncle of one of the crewmembers had to say about it all: Those boys never should have been out there to start with. ...It's because of the quotas (see: 'Those boys never should have been out there', The Chronicle Herald: February 20, 2013, online: http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/732304-those-boys-never-should-have-been-out-there).

at present, the dollar value of halibut is excellent on the east coast.  for all the quote left over, you lose that same amount of fish on it.  i've spent my life around men and women who live off the ocean, live off their own resources - this glowing dollar value represents a lot: eating better meals, the kids' college fund, your daughter having pretty sunday school dress.  the sky's the limits on what a dollar can buy you when you don't have a lot of them.  why is a system that forces us to leave the comfort of the shore for the terrors of a stormy sea in place?  why can't the end of a quota roll-over to next season or be sold back by the fishermen if it's not filled?  has nobody noticed that the only fishermen who die at sea are those who ought not to be out there?

people can die every day in a myriad of ways - not looking both ways before crossing the road, not checking your blindspot before changing lanes, living to the ripe old age of 99 and falling off into a dreamy sleep for forever - so i do understand that death can find us in all manner of places.  however, the fact that such a system exists where young, beautiful, hard-working people go out onto the cold (i mean furiously, unforgivingly, heartbreakingly cold) atlantic ocean chasing a dollar that they otherwise lose...well, i think there's something menacing about that.  that's poor policy.  policy developed from a level so far removed from any breadth of understanding that it ought never have become regulations in the first place.

i was recently chatting with a friend about this writing project of mine and he told me he didn't believe it was actually me writing because of the entry "in respect of the ocean" - it had a dark undertone that simply wasn't me, he said.  and i suppose it's true, the rest of this stuff is all meant to be light, playful, cheerful, verbose, and both prosaic and poetic all at the same time.  but that ocean, he forces this part of myself to rise and be the dominant half.  he is a giver and he is a taker.  i believe i am perpetually enraged that we further empower him with fishing rules and regulations that force mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, lovers, people you meant to tell you were sorry, or that you loved them, or that you forgave them, or...anything, anyone...all of these people fall to his mercy with a push from us on the shore.  we've given the sea the power he doesn't need.  i wonder how hard he laughs at us.  as if he couldn't do it all on his own, we hang our own out to dry, watch them ladle themselves into boats that might as well be made of paper and go out into his greedy hands.

rest easy boys.  Just tell me old shipmates, I'm taking a trip mates, I'll see you someday in Fiddler's Green.

green, green grass

all kids have particular tendencies that cause parents to have to repeat and repeat and repeat the same set of principles, commands, lectures.  when i was the baby-version of myself, i was typically told "keep it on the level" and "stop overreacting".  no matter what i was doing or experiencing, the right side of my brain was typically in overdrive perceiving it all in some grand hyperbolic motion picture of the actual events.  i was so excited, so angry, so in love...whatever it was, it was all-consuming.  one of the main ways this over-excited element of my personality has come into play has been in regards to where i am at any given time.  it always just seems...amazing.  wherever i am, i am amazed.

it seems to me that one of the most over-worked phrases on the planet is that 'the grass is always greener'.  but no matter where i am i am always just struck by the fact that the grass is way greener where i am.  i'm looking at the grass other people are standing on or that has been promised to me in some future time, and even though i'm way curious about that grass, i'm typically convinced that where i'm at is where the grass is greenest.  

i understand that this must seem like it is just fabulous.  how happy must i be seeing as the grass is so supremely green wherever i find myself?  the trouble is, life keeps encouraging us to move about.  you need to go to school, to work, to play.  and, being that i am a creature of over-excitement and impulse, whenever i got the chance to go somewhere for just about anything if there was an option to go somewhere i'd never lived before i took it.  then the next thing i know, i'm 26 (eww) and i have this list of places where i've lived and...i love them all.  i want to be in them all all the time.  and this is precisely when the grass being so green starts to make things complicated for me.

now don't get me wrong - this is all just great.  in fact, i like to think i'm beyond lucky that every time I look around I’m like WOAH THIS GRASS RIGHT HERE IS THE GREENEST GRASS EVER! and, as i've noted, this happens all the time (well…except with boys.  In that case, I’m always like WOAH ALL THE GRASS IS EXTREMELY GREEN, ALL OF IT, IT’S WAY TOO GREEN.  (…well that grass over there isn’t QUITE so green…)), so i know wherever i go i’m bound to end up feeling very happy no matter what.  the problem arises because I end up having a great deal of inner turmoil right around the point in time when I have to start packing up my suitcase and hit the ol’ dusty trail once again.

when i was 22 i went to quebec for the summer.  i was originally way too psyched to go – in fact, in typical emily fashion i’m quite sure i screamed with giddy madness when I opened the letter telling me i got the bursary, as if i had won the lottery or the elixir of love or something else – and then when it was finally time to go, i had no interest in leaving my little seaside city for the summer.  i arrived in la belle province and had no desire to be there.  and then suddenly, out of the blue, i looked around me and saw that the grass under my feet was emerald city green, shiny, magical.  i was in this little city with 150 people i didn’t know, trying my best not to insult anybody in my broken, constantly-being-botched-up french, and i just suddenly felt on top of the world. 

of course, the experience wasn’t perfect and i made a few boo boos and bruised a couple elbows along the way.  but I can recall this day – this moment, really – of walking by myself down along the lake and heading downtown to see harry potter vi (in english – get real!) with “so many miles” by sarah slean playing on my iPod  (probably way too loudly – everyone turn down your headphones!!!!!  you’re probably ruining your eardrums and hearing and you don’t even know it!) and i was at my best.  everything foreign, sun shining, harry potter awaiting me: nothing would ever probably instill this sense of strength, ability, capacity in me again.

then, as all things do, my little french escape was over.  everybody made passionate promises about cuba new year and reunions - me more than anybody.  but slowly, surely, i returned to a different mix and noticed that right here, right underneath my feet in these old familiar corridors, practice rooms, recital halls the grass was shimmery and again all i could see was that the other side of the fence was good, too, but not better than this.  

so what then does this all mean?  i can typically now go forth assuming that wherever i wind up i'll be pleased as punch no matter what.  but there must be more than just complacent acceptance of my default state of happiness!  

placing my finger on this "the-grass-is always-extremely-green" syndrome from which i suffer has made me consider relationships differently.  when i leave, i need to be able to look back and know that all my moments were as replete with jade luminosity as they ever could have been.  it's encouraged me to stay up late and have a heart-to-heart when i'm exhausted and to take photos and to be over-exited and not keep it on the level so that my moments just scream with honesty.  if everything can be wonderful anyway, i want to push the boundaries of our happiness in these interconnected little segments of time - of these present moments - so that when i look back, even though the grass where i am is extraordinarily soft, fragrant, perfect, i know those little pockets of space when i was elsewhere were as green as they could have been.  

i know soon i have to say ta ta to this little london life of mine.  the conflict is roaring inside where i just long to not have to leave -  but look how happy we are, can't we just stay here forever?  but when my feet finally make it back to that little island in the atlantic, i know it will set in - the full view of a shining field of green, green grass.  until that moment, i want to admire the lushness of this little nook of time - glass of wine, best of friends and overexcitement in tow.