Tuesday, August 15, 2006

To start off, do I have to tell everyone how happy it makes me to see a small reproduction of Blackbeard's flag on the wall next to my computer? I really shouldn't have to, since I have made my love of pirates plain, but just in case you haven't picked up on it yet: Man, oh man, oh man, I have a small Blackbeard flag on my wall! I went to Beaufort to the Maritime Museum and saw the artifacts from the "Queen Ann's Revenge," Blackbeard's flagship that sunk just to the south off the coast. They were mostly the standard relics people pull up from places like that, black and twisted from the sea, the flat metal surfaces deformed, raised as if frozen in mid-boil, but these were from Blackbeard! Man. So you can understand why I went and bought a little copy of his flag. He was a murderous bastard, but God, does he make a good mythological figure!

I spent last weekend at the beach in my beloved Old North State, sequestered on a small island in the Outer Banks. If I were a liar, which I am, I would say I owned the place, but some lies are just ridiculous; I don't think I could believe myself if I said it. The family of a friend of mine has a little beach cottage down there on the Sound side, so a small group of college friends trucked the five hours down East to bask a bit before the Real World starts up again and ruins everything. What did I do there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, which is, of course, what you're supposed to do. It was glorious.

Before I went to Germany, I had always been a bit prejudiced against flat landscapes, but I have to admit that my time there has given me a greater appreciation for the vertically challenged regions of the globe. I don't think I could tell you what exactly it is I've come to like about it, but it's reassuring somehow. I like the wide flats of grass that bend and their lighter bellies when the wind blows and the tall sea birds that hunt there. I like smelling salt and the deep stink of mud at low tide, or how the fisher's nets reek as they lay on a warm dock to dry. I like walking in the heavy mists that blow in ahead of a storm at night, the low clouds that carry with them the scent of drying sea weed and the dead things that watch up before the rain comes, and how the birds run to the other horizon and hide in low lakes and channels. And I like for the sea to put me to sleep at night. Man, I miss Fehmarn sometimes.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home