ocean – hannah ananas

Duh——-nun!

I have found myself thoroughly enjoying my latest hard copy book, Jaws, much to my surprise (although also kind of not to my surprise – it is actually highly acclaimed by reliable sources, and it made one of my favorite films [we can get into the irony of that another time]).

I started reading it two nights before going sailing… and I strongly considered picking another book, due to the timing, but I really wanted to start reading Jaws, and I was determined that reading it would be no different from having seen the title and thought about it already…

And I was right… with both the concern and the thoughts.

It would have been very good for me not to think about sharks right before going out sailing, during which time I, at some point, would want to get into our cloudy, sand-filled water, and I would have had the idea of sharks in my mind just from having seen the book – whether I read it or not was of little consequence, because the damage was already done when I crossed it on my bookshelf.

And so, I struggled to get into the water while out sailing…, but I asked for company and we made it work… I didn’t stay in for long, but I still enjoyed being in the water for a brief bit, and it ended up starting a whole chain of people jumping in and enjoying the water, which was actually quite fun.

Anyway…, I’m liking the book a lot so far.

I love that 1) Peter Benchley has found a way to pursue and share his passion (sharks) with the world through his fiction and non-fiction books, and 2) he has a good humor in the introduction regarding the changes he made for the book to become a film.

And I am thoroughly enjoying the humor and style with which he writes (well, wrote, technically)… I’m actually laughing at terrible situations, because he addresses them so well as to bring out a sense of comic relief… and I, somehow, find it to be quite lovely, in its way.

(And I mean that… I actually laughed aloud at a scene where a body is found, it was so comically written, but incredibly tastefully so.)

I’m hardly more than a couple chapters into it (of around 15), but I highly recommended at least those first two and a half chapters. 🙂

We’ll see how the rest pans out, now, shall we?

P.S. We did have a good time on the boat, at least.

Post-a-day 2019

Christmas Music and Photos at the Beach

This afternoon, I headed down to Galveston to visit my cousin. We had discussed meeting at Dickens on the Strand, but I didn’t have a costume, and I was too far behind schedule for that really to work. However, we could still hang out when she finished at the little festival. Plus, I felt that I could really use some time in Galveston, and preferably some time on the beach.

I arrived about two hours before sunset, and as much time before my cousin would be finishing, so I headed straight for the beach. We made these advent calendars for one another, with a tea for each day, as well as a quote/bible verse and a sort of task for the day. My tea yesterday was spectacular, but today’s flavor was not to my liking. However, the task for today was fabulous. It read, “Learn a Christmas song on a string instrument”. And so, seeing as I had a phone for the research and a ukulele in my trunk, instead of reading my book, I headed down to the sunny sand to play some ukulele.

While playing, people passed by, going about their business. Some just walking in light jackets, others exercising with the dog, and one family had three little boys sprinting into the edge of the water, playing. After a while, it started getting quite cool, thanks to the wind and the setting sun. My fingers began to struggle against stiffness. As I paused to warm them (I think that’s what it was, anyway), I glanced out to my left. The rising moon was spectacular. I had noticed it big and sneaky a while before, hiding behind the haze so close to Earth’s surface, but now it was beginning to glow.

And what was just under the now-glowing moon, but the three frolicking boys, looking quite adorable. The scene was set, and I had to take a photo.

Unfortunately, they were just far enough away that I needed to zoom, if I wanted to have the photo focus on what I was naturally focusing…, and the zoom is not so great on a phone.

So, I made another essay, and went for a different perspective. To get it to be perfectly straight, I would have had to get down on my belly and align it, and that just felt a little too conspicuous.

Nonetheless, after I took the photos, I really enjoyed them. I knew that I would have loved for someone to take an awesome shot of me and then actually give it to me. So, I checked out the parents to see if they seemed at all of similar minds to mine.

And they did. They looked young and open to things. They even were taking photos of the kids and of themselves on their own phones, so they were likely to understand the value of a good photo. Or, a neat one, anyway.

I figured I might as well go for it, so I set my stuff carefully to the side, and stood on up. I approached them comfortably and confidently and in my best ‘I am a sane person, please don’t freak out,’ manner. They gave me odd looks when I mentioned how this might be a bit odd, – wouldn’t you, if a stranger walked up and started saying something like that? – but their brows cleared and they were all about it, when I showed them the photos I’d taken. The mom asked me if I could send them to her, if she gave me her number.* Of course, of course… And so, I sent them to her, and she was incredibly grateful. They had been seeing about doing a Christmas card, using their beach photos they were taking then, so they completely understood fun and neat photos, and they were not at all weirded out. phew

And so, I went back to my ukulele for a little bit longer, until the sun was almost hidden, and the wind was too chilly, and I headed back to the car and over to my cousin’s house to wait for her there.

As I ast on the beach, and then again after I was back in my car, I contemplated the experience of being on a beach. I hadn’t gone into the water, and I hadn’t even touched the sand, really – just to wipe off the bottom of my bag afterward. What was beautiful and almost magical about it, though, was the wind and the air and salt, the feeling of it all on my skin, and the view. I love the feeling of my hair after time at the beach (not to touch, but the feeling from within), that salty, windblown feeling. I had that today, and it was truly refreshing. And it had me wonder, if I didn’t want to give a brief time living there. I at least need to go down there, just to hang around the wind and the ocean more often than I have done lately. At least once a month, if not once a week or every two weeks… that would be brilliant…

Anyway, that’s what I’ve got to share for now. Sweet dreams, world (and good afternoon and evening to the other side of it)!

*I chuckled inside at this when she asked. Let’s be real, why else would I have been showing her the photos? ‘No, you can’t have them. I just wanted to show you these awesome photos I took of your children, and then leave you to wonder if there’s something wrong with me.’

Post-a-day 2017

Salty Hair

I love the feeling of my hair after a good day at the beach. Running my fingers through it, slightly course and thick yet smooth, feels almost like running my hands trough tall grass, grabbing hold of a chunk with a bit of dirt, and then swirling it around, feeling its sharp-edged softness. Kind of weird idea, I suppose, but it’s what seems to suit best as an analogy right now.

The salty, sandy thickness, supplemented by the warm (or hot) sun exposure, sings of satisfaction in the day’s accomplishments. Today was a good day, I can feel it saying. Today was a very good day. And it always has been when my hair is like that.

My skin is slightly sticky, sand keeps appearing in little patches anywhere on my body, and my hair is sunbathed and thick. Today was a beach day, and it was a wonderful one. Today was a wonderful day.

Post-a-day 2017

Movies, oh, movies

When I was little, I saw the films “JAWS”, “Deep Blue Sea”, and “Lake Placid”. They all sport a main character/predator who is an oversized water creature, the first two having a shark main character and the third an alligator. (Though I now realize that it could have been a crocodile, I still believe that it was an alligator, because I do not remember its having a really long and narrow snout.)

Suffice to say that these movies succeeded in terrifying me of the ocean, of lakes, and of swimming in general. Now, seeing as swimming was a large part of my family’s life, as was the beach, I learned to manage these fears (i.e. realize that, I just had to let it go if I wanted to swim, or at least accept the fear alongside the joys of swimming). This mostly meant that I was typically initially hesitant to enter the water at the beach, and always preferred being with others in the water – not to be grimm, but the probability of being the one nabbed decreased, the more people who were out there with me in the water. No, I didn’t want anyone to be nabbed, but I had a high sense of self-preservation.

Whenever I was on my own in the water, I occasionally would recall the possibility of sharks as I was walking toward the shore, and suddenly would find myself jumpily sprinting out of the water (jumpily, because it is easier to run through water, when you pick your legs all the way up out of it, doing a sort of hopping dance forward, which becomes more and more like normal running as you get closer to shore, and the water level goes lower and lower).

The interesting thing – to me, anyway – about this fear, is how it transferred to pools for me. With others, I never had concerns (as I recall, anyway). However, put me on my own in the backyard pool at my brothers’ dad’s house, and I’d occasionally start to freak. It was a weird sort of freak-out, because I logically knew that I was totally fine and safe, but surface-level panicked and rushed out of the water suddenly anyway.

It would happen like this: I would be in the water, usually swimming casually toward one side or end of the pool, and suddenly have this thought that someone could have opened up a secret panel behind me on the pool wall, and released a shark. At the point of this thought’s occurrence, I would put all my effort in swim sprinting to my aimed-for wall, and climb manically from the pool, panting. I think I even scratched up my stomach and/or legs in my haste a handful of times.

It was illogical, and yet I completely understood why I had the bizarre fear, and I accepted it as a weird and unrealistic fear, even as a little kid.

Fast forward a good many years, and where do I stand? The last time I was alone in a pool, about a year ago now, I still had to turn my head, just to check to make sure no panel had slid open behind me. No, I wasn’t sent rushing to the walk and out of the pool, but I still had to respond to the thought and the sense of panic that was rising within me. Essentially, the panic and fear is significantly lessened, but totally still there. If I don’t think about it, I’m totally fine. The moment I think about it, I’m slightly paranoid, and sinultaneously annoyed at my nonsensical paranoia.

Such is my life around pools (and also the earlier bits regarding my life with beaches). I think this is why I just don’t want horror films. Ever. The few scary films I saw as a kid were enough for me*, and each had enough impact on me to cause me never to want to watch scary movies again. So I think, anyway.
*”Scream”, “Scream 2”, and “Anaconda” still stick with me today, as well as the shark and gator movies.

Post-a-day 2017