This summer, after an absence of almost 4 years, my family is going to be returning to our beach-side haunt of old. It's this little hamlet of golden sand tucked behind a cliff-face up the coast, with just a little convenience store, a fish and chip shop and, somewhat incongruously, a nail salon. I loved it there - I used to get to sleep downstairs in the basement flat all by myself, and I would scribble in my diaries and stay up till midnight reading Jane Austen of Little Women and wishing myself into a family of sisters. So, so much happened there. Too much, really, all things considered. I'll tell you about some of it some day. But suffice to say I had a lot of fun there. My brothers and me used to run from the house to the store, singeing our feet on the burning sand as we went, and sit with the soles of our feet touching eating scores of mangoes while we watched the Australian Open. I wonder if it's going to be the same place 15 year old me really loved? You know what, I think it will be. It has always reminded me of that line from Karen Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales. In Deluge of Nordeney, which tells the tale of a rising, rising flood, the protagonist is told "I know a cure for everything. Salt water... In one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea." Karen Blixen really is the most incredible writer - Out of Africa is probably my favourite book, although I do say that about a lot of books. But oh! It's so beautiful. Set in the early 1900s through world war 1 and the 20s, it is the autobiographical tale of Karen's life in Africa, of her farm at the foot of the ngong hills, her love affair with the enigmatic Denys Finch-Hatton, her attachment to the rough, raw, rolling beauty of Africa. The movie with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford is pretty amazing too, but the book is a million times better. Anyway, I have always agreed that salt water is the cure for everything. A good cry is often the best way to alleviate melancholy.
Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.
X
ps. Oh and I just remembered my second favourite moment in Out Of Africa (my first is a little weird haha)! Karen arrives in Mombasa and heads to the club, while there she wanders into an open room and starts poking around at the books there (not know that it is denys' room). His friend Berkeley Cole discovers her snooping and at first she is awkward about it but soon realises that he doesn't care. He can't stop staring at her, and remarks that when he was at Oxford he used to take a girl to the dances and she wore the same perfume as Karen is wearing now. Without even blinking she proffers her wrist, slowly, towards him. He leans in and then pulls back. "No. It's very nice, but not the same", he says. There is a lot of perfectly realised tension in the scene, it's sexual, but it's something else too... It's a really wonderful moment. God I love that movie!
pps. don't forget to enter my Maille giveaway! Closing on Friday :)
Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.
X
ps. Oh and I just remembered my second favourite moment in Out Of Africa (my first is a little weird haha)! Karen arrives in Mombasa and heads to the club, while there she wanders into an open room and starts poking around at the books there (not know that it is denys' room). His friend Berkeley Cole discovers her snooping and at first she is awkward about it but soon realises that he doesn't care. He can't stop staring at her, and remarks that when he was at Oxford he used to take a girl to the dances and she wore the same perfume as Karen is wearing now. Without even blinking she proffers her wrist, slowly, towards him. He leans in and then pulls back. "No. It's very nice, but not the same", he says. There is a lot of perfectly realised tension in the scene, it's sexual, but it's something else too... It's a really wonderful moment. God I love that movie!
pps. don't forget to enter my Maille giveaway! Closing on Friday :)
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