Other people’s words about the sea

Sometimes the whole sea looks like a mirror of beaten silver, though it’s too turbulent to hold many reflections; it’s the bay that carries a reflected sky on its surface. On the most beautiful days, there are no words for the colours of San Francisco Bay and the sky above it. Sometimes the water reflects a heaven that is both grey and gold, and the water is blue, is green, is silver, is a mirror of that grey and gold, catching the warmth and cold of colours in its ripples, is all and none of them, is something more subtle than the language we have. Sometimes a bird dives into the mirror of the water, vanishing into its own reflection, and the reflective surface makes it impossible to see what lies beneath.

From ‘Recollections of My Non-Existence’
by Rebecca Solnit

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post for this blog, for which I apologise. Sometimes, life has a way of getting in the way. Sometimes, there just isn’t much to say.

Still, Rebecca Solnit’s words about the sea make me think of walking and running by my own sea, so far from hers, on the other side of the world. In the weeks since I last wrote a blog post, summer has faded away and autumn has arrived, and the sea has transformed itself from deep blue …

… to a wondrous, pearly, rippled blue …

… to spun silver.

Time passes, and the world turns, and that is how it should be. May the world keep turning for you, too.

Lately I’ve been reading …

• I was so used to getting the door slammed in my face, it seemed absurd that I might decline to walk through this one that was finally open to me: Lilly Dancyger on having the courage to seek the right publisher for her book.
• Readers are likely to find other ways to get their news: Diana Bossio, on the power of Facebook to control the news. This is an out-of-date article now, since Facebook is no longer blocking Australians’ access to the news, but it’s worth thinking about, all the same. Is Australia the only nation fighting Facebook’s control of the way that news is relaid? And if so, why? I am not in favour of Facebook having a monopoly over the way Australians (or others) access the news, but I am also deeply suspicious of our Prime Minister’s support of Rupert Murdoch. The matter is more complicated than it seems …