The Beach

Exhibition text collage by Persephone Roe and Farrah "Effie" Ray

“Your presence is foreign, as strange as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.
My life before anyone, my harsh life.
The shout facing the sea, among the rocks,
running free, mad, in the sea-spray.
The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea.
Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.”

- from “XVII: Thinking, Tangling Shadows”, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Pablo Neruda

“I have seen white beginnings,
A slow sea without glaze or speed,
Movement of land, a long lying-down dance.

This is fog-country. Milk. Country of time.

I see your tormented color, the steep front of your storm
Break dissipated among limitless profiles.

I see the shapes of waves in the cross-sea
Advance, a fog-surface over the fog-floor.
Seamounts, slow-flowing. Color. Plunge-point of air.”

- from “King’s Mountain”, Muriel Rukeyser

“Now the pace of the three unsaddled mares slows, their coats moistened by the sea glisten, the skin quivers over their muscles, there are no flies to stroke them only the wind and the insistent heat of the sun. …

You set off at a gallop towards the sea, you whinny with all your might, the wind blows at m/y ears, it upholds m/y hair behind, m/y breasts judder, when I turn round I see the island dwellings all small and distant, then I begin to whinny in m/y turn as loudly as I can, I slide along your length, I let m/yself fall to the ground, now I gallop even though it means forcing the pace to keep up with you, m/y feet happily trample the sand, the sun on the sea scorches m/y eyes, we enter the sea head-on, whoever retraces their steps it will not be you nor I m/y dearest, your body steams, your nostrils flare, m/y flank touches your flank, coolness comes from the water, a dazzle comes to m/e from the sun and the sea, sound reaches m/e from the waves, a warm breath touches m/y neck yours.”

- from The Lesbian Body, Monique Wittig

“I see the Deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,—
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.”

- from “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples”, Percy Shelley

"But the genitals, as after first severing them with the steel, he had cast them into the heaving sea from the continent, so kept drifting long time up and down the deep, and all around kept rising a white foam from the immortal flesh; and in it a maiden was nourished; first she drew near divine Kythera, and thence came next to wave-washed Cyprus. Then forth stepped an awesome, beauteous goddess; and beneath her delicate feet the grass throve around: gods and men name her Aphrodite, the foam-sprung goddess"

- from Theogeny, Hesiod (translated by J. Banks)

“She was diving straight into the waves, swimming a few strokes, getting up, and diving again.

I stopped, pulling on my cigarette. The wind was a little chilly, and I hesitated to join her. She turned, saw me, and shouted, “Come on!” waving to me. At that moment, the sun burst from between two clouds, lighting her from the front. Light gleamed on her breasts and her hips, made the foam in her hair and her pubic hair sparkle. I stood rooted to the spot for a second or two, conscious that this was an image that I would never forget, that it would become one of those images that apparently flash before you in the few seconds that precede death.

The cigarette butt burned my fingers. I threw it onto the sand, undressed, and walked toward the sea.”

- from Platform, Michel Houellebecq

“There seemed to be a city, beyond the curve of beach, but it was far away. He crouched on his haunches on the damp sand, his arms wrapped tight across his knees, and shook. He stayed that way for what seemed a very long time, even after the shaking stopped. The city, if it was a city, was low and gray. At times it was obscured by banks of mist that came rolling in over the lapping surf. At one point he decided that it wasn't a city at all, but some single building, perhaps a ruin; he had no way of judging its distance. The sand was the shade of tarnished silver that hadn't gone entirely black. The beach was made of sand, the beach was very long, the sand was damp, the bottoms of his jeans were wet from the sand... He held himself and rocked, singing a song without words or tune.”

- from Neuromancer, William Gibson

“‘...The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’

He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.”

- from Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

“As Rosemary came onto the beach a boy of twelve ran past her and dashed into the sea with exultant cries…

Rosemary laid her face on the water and swam a choppy little four-beat crawl out to the raft. The water reached up for her, pulled her down tenderly out of the heat, seeped in her hair and ran into the corners of her body. She turned round and round in it, embracing it, wallowing in it.”

- from Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He rode on steadily for three days, and at sunset on the fourth day he found himself on the seashore. On the sand before him lay twelve white dresses, dazzling as the snow, yet as far as his eyes could reach there was no one in sight to whom they could belong. Curious to see what would happen, he took up one of the garments, and leaving his horse loose, to wander about the adjoining fields, he hid himself among some willows and waited. In a few minutes a flock of geese which had been paddling about in the sea approached the shore, and put on the dresses, struck in the sand with their feet and were transformed in the twinkling of an eye into eleven beautiful young girls, who flew away as fast as they could.”

- from “The Unlooked-For Prince”, Contes Populaires Slaves, The Grey Fairy Book, translated by Louis Leger

"And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

- from The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

"I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying."

- from "Sea-Fever", John Masefield