Reader, since the days of low-rise jeans and bejeweled mustaches, it has been fashionable among devotees of the Percy Jackson series to claim oneself as a would-be child of Poseidon, no matter how unlikely the match. I, poorly immunized against the ecstasy that is the taste of a heroic life, am no exception. Even today, when pressed to admit I might share more with the goddess of wisdom and war than the king of the sea – as has happened on peculiarly numerous occasions – I find myself as offended as I would have been at eleven years old, defending myself against innocuous accusations with a list of carefully-compiled evidence that has only grown in the last decade.
Yet I will spare you the details of my determination to be seen as a child of the ocean, and instead will request that you accept my invitation to reflect on the sea as an entirely separate entity from a series which has no bearing on our present lives beyond the simple joy of nostalgia.
(As an aside, Reader, I do feel that when discussing sandy shores, one should be dressed in white ruffles, or some sort of frock sporting deep blue embroidery. A large sunhat, too, would be preferable, as would enormous shrimp-like golden hoop earrings. But, as I am without any of these particular accoutrements, I will content myself with the knowledge that I write this while sprawled upon my sofa as I imagine would be a bedridden English rose whose sole purpose in the novel into which she is written is to languish at the seaside and in doing so, reaffirm the ambitions of her more energetic companion. The romance of the sea inspires such pictures in my head.)
The ocean is, of course, hardly a romantic being when considered in a scientific sense, which is to say, when inspected rather than experienced, studied rather than observed. I believe the deep to be one of the many articles which, when removed from the connotations which have been thrust upon them by creative minds seeking a meaning that acknowledges no numerical expressions or latin categorizations as satisfactory, assumes an identity so structured and devoid of embellishment it emanates a power more sinister and attractive than the most imaginative mind would have been able to conceive. This is the irony of artistic expression.
At any rate, I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo on the loveseat in the sitting room long after the members of my family had retired to their beds. We have already spoken, Reader, of the irresistible pull of this novel, and it is the magic of the story I have to thank not only for treating me to a delicious journey every time I turn its pages, but also for keeping me up late in the night so that I bore witness to the sort of wild performance nature sometimes like to boast, as if reminding the earth-bound beings who are lucky enough to view its recurring impermanence how feeble is their mortality.
Reader, as I closed my book and prepared to resign myself to my dreams, I was stopped by the moon – full and bright – shining over the black water below. It was, to speak without whimsical language – captivating. You might have thought I had seen Hamlet’s ghost, Reader, had you seen the way I stopped before the great glass doors, book clenched in my fist, face likely as white as the pale strip rocking along the waves, reflecting back in a display of force as powerful as the hanging celestial body to which it played mirror.
Oh, Reader, I knew in that moment I would find myself writing about that moon over the water, although to say exactly what, I remain unsure. How epic, how fearsome, how great is the image of two opposing bodies, pulling and pushing one another, taking light from the sun and pulling it down to the depths which no human has ever before seen with living eyes. How fantastic, to sit at the altar of the agrestal, to be reminded of the futility of the little castled adventures we will never take and so we build them out of sand. How very much like a storybook, a fairytale with a beautiful, horrible ending, appeared to me the moon over the sea, the lights of tankers on the outskirts of my vision, empty room at my back, a sight more beautiful than anything I could have dreamt before me.
There are some phenomena that escape words, Reader, though we can not help but attempt to inscribe into pixelated screens their significance. I could not have seen such a lovely thing and kept you ignorant of my moment of heavenly worship, though I admit I am not unhappy to have first experienced it alone.
I hope, most lovely Reader, you are treated to all the moonlit evenings life has to offer, and that you rejoice in them as fully as if they were the summer sun.
Love,
Lettie Anne