May 06, 1999
The REAL Selkie's Tale
Every once in a while, I stumble across something on the Internet, the web in particular, that gives me hope that maybe it isn't just a bunch of dreck. In case you missed it, from my last entry, I've been very much on a T.S. Eliot kick lately. Brand got me started reading his poetry, and it's just phenomenal. I've started throwing quotes of his around a lot lately, or I've had snatches of it going through my mind. On one of the Eliot webpages I was looking at, I found a page of links to other modern works that use allusions to Eliot's poetry.
And it was there I found it. A short story entitled Sea Change by Susan Stern.
It gave me chills. Honestly. Part of it, I know, is because of the subject matter. Ms. Stern is writing about selkies, an obvious favorite topic of mine. But she manages to capture so well the dualism of mind that I've tried to portray, first with Joanna, and now with Maire. I don't even know what to say about it, except "Go read this." It's beautiful. I wanted to find a good quote, this was the one I finally decided on:
"Perfect, he said. And she grows more perfectly beautiful every day, in her human body. But I have swum along the margin of the shore and listened to him walking and talking, and seen into the child's mind, and her mind is as empty of thoughts as a seal's. She rocks in the fireplace with her hands over her face, and she cries to be let outside into the rain. She yearns for the water. He won't let her near the sea. Because he's convinced himself that I drowned. I watch him walking up and down the beach, grieving, looking out over the water--for what, he does not know. Yet he knows. Deep down, outside what he's willing to remember, he knows."
Reading this was like reading one of those things that at first you think, 'Hmm... have I been writing under a psuedonym and not been aware of it?' because it just touches so close to something you've thought or felt. Then you realize that it's only wishful thinking, and you've actually found something that you wish you had written, because it expresses something inside you in a way that you could never match.
I think I've just discovered the entire point of literature: Written works that manage to say what you would, if only you could. One more quote, which sums up the selkie myths entirely:
"I almost loved you, I told him. I would have stayed, if only you'd have let me leave."
Happy reading.
