On The Way Home
Season 3.5: We drove south along Sandymount Strand as the sun screamed low and loud across the cityscape.
On the way home, we drove south along Sandymount Strand as the sun screamed low and loud across the cityscape; blasting between buildings, exploding through bus windows and splattering the shadows of sun-shocked commuters out across the cold January sands. The blinding coda of a star in its shortest cycle as it crests the soft undulations of the Dublin Mountains.
The tide was out, far out. And dabs of walkers and their children and dogs were dotted about the endless beach that stretched towards Howth and on out into Dublin Bay.
At its lowest, to those on the sand, the sea appears to sit waiting on the rippling horizon. Frozen like a petrified blue spectre with tankers and passenger ferries and pleasure boats perched on top like scale models wedged slowly along the blue seam into which this vast sheet of vacant sand is stitched. The strand, shook out like a sodden, glistening sieve reveals a bounty of shell and urchin and lugworm track amongst the plastic bits and smooth stones.
And there is no structure in that boundless temporary space; a canvas drawn and redrawn with every breath of the tide. People wander about it with no guideline, no path, no frame of reference save for the abrupt suburban coastline that rises with granite wall and grass verge and two and three story victorian home in every hue of sun soaked pastel; repeated like jagged teeth rising from gum and jaw. Standing in defiance of the inevitable that heaves against it day after night after day in a perpetual siege.
The retreating sea sucks the walkers and pleasure seekers out into the expanse; an irresistible void that must be explored with abandon. And neither is there narrative to their wandering nor story to be told by their passing. They step enthusiastically into the emptiness with their dogs and their children spinning off in tangential designs; elliptical orbits that arc towards this and that before returning with shell or rock or debris in hand and mouth. Or they surf and fizz between one another on the wind while others reach further and further out, to see if they can reach the edge and touch its hemline.
Afterall, when one can go anywhere, where should one go if not everywhere all at once?
The wild unfiltered elements surround and excite the senses. Without limit or boundary the wind blasts and the sun beats recklessly upon them all, grinding everything in its path with a coarse attrition until it is as though they too could relent and lay down to be as flat and decomposed and diffuse as the sand itself. Bathed in friction, swallowed up in the most torrential weather, there is a punishing sensual immersion that leaves no space for contemplation or reflection, just an immediate and critical urgency to consume or evacuate the environment in that very moment. One may dip, hooded and shielded from the onslaught and head for home. Another may throw away all cover and protection and face the thrilling torrents; exhilaration filling their mouths in gusts, eyes watering, nostrils streaming, hair whipping violently like a flag stripped and fraying on a pole. Alive. Suburban wilderness. All the better for it.
On a still day, the silence on the sand is a spell that sucks out every throb and beat from within. Amplifying the haranguing hum of gut and bone such that it heats the skin of the ear and pulses on the face. And the soft suffocating dullness of the sand soaks all voice and thought until a perverse privacy grows in the exposure, with word and imagination bouncing off nothing but the stillness and escaping into infinity.
One can stop and listen to it: to infinity.
Searching the sonic horizon for a bump or a blip or a point to focus on. Eyes closed to it all, hearing the Earth itself turning against the swelling atmosphere that sits upon it and churns its colossal current.
And yet, despite the vast illimited wilderness and the emptiness and the density of exposure, there is an ominous sense of being surrounded, of being caught between two walls; that of the city and the sea. Both blasting their machinations across the flats. Caught like a bracketed parentheses spanning the pause in hostilities. Each dot upon the sand is just a lonely moment passing in time before the tide returns. And they will find themselves watching their sodden footsteps fill in amongst the rivulets that suck and surge like wrinkles on the palm of the sea’s outstretched hand. Its volume soaked deep into the beach below, where the tide does not so much turn as rise up, as if squeezed slowly from a sponge. Squelched imperceptibly out and around the toes and ankles and frayed rope and scattered kelp. Filling in between the soft undulations, joining puddles into pools and rivulets into rivers like mercury sucking at the touch.
And squeezed and squeezed and squeezed ever still. Until the apron heaves and creaks to contain this monstrous swelling mass. Roaring ferociously from out of the blue, a dark energy, engorged and throbbing for the fullness of a moon; be it blue or blood or strawberry. Raging violence and passion beyond its basin to thrash and retreat in waves upon the landscape. A berserker let loose upon its cage; petulant lust.
And there are times when it’s all just over there. A scene on a stage.
When you are sat on Windsurfers Pier at Salthill, or on the concrete husk of the Blackrock Baths, or on the marsh wall at Booterstown. When the city can be seen quietly bubbling away behind the Poolbeg Towers and the flocks of terns or geese or greenshank grazing in the rock pools and shallow dunes. When the day is done and the sepia is descending and the sand turns to a voluminous black. When the air is clear and fresh and the sea is neither in nor out. When every ripple on the sand is half filled and speckled with reflection. When the bay is glistening in all directions like a shattered mirror on the sky and sparkles out and across in a glowing distortion. When it all just suddenly comes together for a moment and comes apart just as fast.
When the curtain descends to the quiet clapping of the lapping waves on the granite walls and the grass verges and the two and three story victorian homes; aglow in the grand stretch.
When you take it all in on a breath and a glance.
On the way home.
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Further Reading…
Back in January, when I began writing this piece, I put together a newsletter that collected a lot of the creative work I have made over the years around the subject of Dublin Bay and the sea in general. This newsletter will give a bit more context and a lot more illustration/imagery to the life and world of Dublin Bay on which this piece of prose was based.
Read more from Season 3…
This is the third season of Notes and Noises. If you liked this (or didn’t) why not take a quick look at some of the other posts in the series:
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So much in this David, so many beautiful lines. I'm so impressed. The audio is a brilliant accompaniment.
Thanks for this walk home. (I've it earmarked to listen again later!)
I grew up by the sea in Kerry so am feeling a bit teary and homesick after listening. This is so so rich, an amazing piece. Really appreciate the audio, I struggle with all the reading on Substack.