It dreams in the deepest sleep, it remembers the storm
last month or it feels the far storm
Off Unalaska and the lash of the sea-rain.
–Robinson Jeffers, from his poem “Ocean”
For some time now I’ve been wondering what I’ll write next. I finished my novel Easthope in the winter and in the spring I worked on revisions of my memoir The Art of Looking Back: a painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze (due out next year) and then I sat at my desk and wondered. What next?
Last week I was in a shop in Sechelt, one that sells consignment household goods as well as some objects created by (mostly) local artisans. I saw a hanging on the wall, labelled “The Ocean is Sleeping”. It’s larger than it looks in the image here: 23 inches long by 21 inches wide.I guess it’s a piece of weaving, a kind of cloth, the warp of string and the weft a series of sticks wrapped in textiles. I looked at it for quite a while, thinking it had something to say to me. I didn’t know what. I didn’t know what until I woke in the night early this week and began to write something. An essay? A book? I don’t know yet. It’s a woven piece, though, using passages from this site and an outer framework, which I’m still devising. These colours are in it. And water. And loss. And maybe something like recovery.
Yesterday I went back to the shop to see if I still liked the hanging. And yes, I did. So Reader, I bought it. John just hung it for me in our dining area because I want to be able to see it all the time (and our dining area is part of our kitchen). Its colours are richer than they look in this photo. The textures are wonderful. Is it sleeping? I don’t know yet. I’m about to find out.
...Theresa Kishkan 