Figure 1 – Looking out at Marblehead Harbor at Sunset, Marblehead, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.
Last evening I was up at Marblehead on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. It was a perfect night with an insistent but warm wind. I took the image of Figure 1 of the mounting sunset with my cell phone camera. It seems there is nothing more visually and auditorily relaxing than to watch the ever changing light in the sky and water and listen to the relentless sounds of wave, wind, surf, and gull.
I believe that the sea represents, and has always represented to humans, the sense of the infinite, both spatial and temporal. There is the horizon and the magic of what lies beyond. In Tennyson’s words from his poem “Ulysses:”
“Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
There appear to be an infinity of waves, equally infinite in their variety. The waves come relentlessly, beating against the rocks and sand. Like the changing sky and seasons, they fill us with the sense of the eternal. As a result the sea mesmerizes and soothes. It is a balm to the hurt and stressed-out mind.
So all of this emotion I project into the image in my mind. The colors remind me of the paintrings of Francesco Guardi (1712-1793). Images that take me back to youthful visits to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. And a sadness grows within me. The sea appears to be infinite, immune to pain and change. But we are, by changing our planet, destroying it and threatening the great ocean currents that maintain the ocean’s very soul. We foolishly invoke Poseidon’s rage.