earthbound

Hello and welcome to Another World is Possible! I’m Annette, mother, writer, and self-confessed selkie, living and swimming on the east coast of Ireland, and writing through the chaos to dare imagine a future more beautiful.

The February full moon catches my eye as I pull closed the heavy drapes of our hotel room in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. Snow Moon. Storm Moon. Atop Samson and Goliath, the yellow gantry cranes of what once was the largest shipyard in the world, flashing lights blink in the cold night sky.

Titanic sank on a moonless night.

Across the road from the hotel, in a gallery of the white star-shaped Titanic Belfast building, there is a solitary lifejacket – one of a dozen still in existence. A plain bib of linen canvas, with six pockets of cork padding, front and back, it floats in a glass case against a night blue backdrop inscribed with the names of all the passengers, saved (713) and lost (1,512).

Later, L says something about the fear of great depths; how it’s not so much about being able to swim or not, but about the incomprehensible vastness of the ocean – that a ship as immense as Titanic disappeared without a trace, swallowed whole by a cold ocean.

I am thinking of hubris, and about downfall, and about this quote by James Baldwin:

“There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as before an ancient friend.”

I once swam, alone and smiling, under a midwinter full moon.

I had hoped for a sunset dip in a pink sea beneath a softly glowing sky. But as the long winter night drew in, with no hint of a “red sky at night, sailor’s delight”, my determination wavered. Until B offered to drive me down to the beach. And what I got instead was icy wind and inky water, and a quick swim under the aptly named Cold Moon.

The moon rose large and low over the windswept sea. I quickly stripped down to my swimsuit in the bleak twilight. The wind nipped my bare skin and I laughed, nerves jangled in fear and excitement. Two passers-by, bundled up in hats and scarves, looked on from the footpath above as I walked in. I slid into the cold, blue blanket of the sea, entrusting myself to her mighty flows. Pulled in on the ebb, I swam out, out towards the moon, at the mercy of forces beyond my control, but also in their care.

The full moon hung blank in the distance, indifferent to my human body, warm and soft in a cold body of water – to all human bodies. How earthbound we are. How fragile too.

This is a short piece I wrote and shared in The Chain with Lindsay Johnstone. It was inspired by a recent family trip to Belfast.

Thank you for joining me here and reading my words – it truly means the world!

Much love,
Annette

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