The consolation of the sea

Since I began planning a trip to Ireland a year ago, my life seems to have been revolving around things Irish. We traveled to Santa Fe in March to hear the great Irish trad group, Lunasa, and saw another Irish group at the Musical Instrument Museum in August. I watched “The Job of Songs” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.” I now know what uilleann pipes and bodhrans are. I’ve read almost nothing but novels by Irish authors: Donan Ryan, three Pauls —- Lynch, Murray, and Harding —- William Trevor, Claire Keegan, and Edna O’Brien. Right now I’m in the middle of a beautifully-written novel by Niall Williams, “This Is Happiness.” In it, the narrator, now an old man, recalls returning from Dublin at 17 to his childhood home, Faha, County Kerry, after his mother takes ill. His grandfather meets him at the train station and heads not toward home but to the coast because he understood “the ageless remedy for a boy whose mother was ill was to bring him to see the ocean.” (p. 29)

I’m no longer a boy and my mother’s long in the ground, but I realize that one of the reasons I so looked forward to Ireland was the prospect of gazing out upon the wild Atlantic on the west coast of the island. It didn’t disappoint, and as I think back on my experiences at the shore, whether it’s the Atlantic, Pacific, the Irish Sea or the North Sea, my experiences of capturing the serenity, peace, and power of the sea has never disappointed.

I love the desert, its harsh and subtle beauty, its ability to surprise you with a storm or a carpet of golden poppies, but it’s the sea that always inspires me. The sea is where we come from and where all things flow; it’s in our very blood; as the moon is its master, so is it ours. There’s always a sense of anticipation: of the next wave, of the mysterious thing washed ashore, of the shifting light. It’s that very light that called me on the shore of the Atlantic in County Kerry near Dingle.

The sea takes as it gives, it is terror and consolation, motion and stillness.