Sea-Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

~John Masefield, “Sea-Fever”

I must go down to the Sar again, to the vagrant pilgrim life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a funny tale from a happy traveling friend,

And quiet sleep and sweet dreams when the journey’s met its end.

She was confused, no, not confused, just a little tired. It had been a busy day and she had been thinking about… something. When she awoke after dozing probably only five minutes, the poem had come into her head already written. It wasn’t exactly her poem, as Masefield surely would have pointed out had he still been alive. Still, there it was, kind of like the book Gertrude Stein was referencing when she wrote book was there in that great cubist book Tender Buttons. The thing with words was just writing and the writing had not stayed on its page quietly. It had traversed continents and bridges built of languages and seas, to emerge yet again.

So the poem was there, she told herself, because it meant something. It meant she wouldn’t, in fact, be able to get the lines out of her head until she went back to the Sar. When words fly at you from the shadows, you must pay attention. If not, you are apt to miss things that are necessary for survival.

She was beginning to wonder if what was going on with the Sar and the Colexiata that sat beside it  was like the sanctuary of Santo André de Teixido, the one you have to visit seven times while you’re alive or you’ll have to visit it when you’re dead. Meaning that she wasn’t sure she’d be returning several more times if she wanted to avoid going there after she was dead. She’d have to wait and see.

Trying to get from one place to another when you’re hearing voices that are muddled and soft makes it a lot harder to get anywhere fast. Distraction confuses direction and progress is uncertain.

Distractions aside, she made up her mind to go the next day it wasn’t raining, and the very next day the sun was shining in its best late April manner. She had lost her old connections to the Sar and the spurious poem might have been a reminder to renew them. Why this was occurring now was a mystery, but she had learned that she had to listen. In this part of the world it was always necessary to listen, or be condemned to walk on the perimeter of all that really mattered. She was not willing to remain an outsider and would consider what returning to the Sar meant.

She checked the route to get there and was shocked to find how confused her geographical memory was. She had thought the Colexiata could only be reached by car, that it was too far to walk. Old impressions die slowly, and even walking slowly only was a matter of fifteen minutes. How had she always thought it was so far away? It must depend on the starting point, and years ago she had been lost. Now, it appeared that she knew better where to step.

It had not come easy. It had taken it a long time.

It was not hard to find her way along the stones that led to the other stones, the ones in danger of collapsing. That wasn’t the fault of Munio Afonso, that famous relative of a more famous Diego Xelmírez, who had the church or colexiata built. Those people never cause the sinking lands beside a lovely river with a view. Who knew, in the first half of the twelfth century, that a place of worship built there would begin to falter? After all, the goal was to erect a building, call it holy, and trust that faith would help it prosper.

This colexiata or collegiate church (whatever that is) did not have that fortune. It began to stagger and five hundred years later it was fitted with buttresses to resist the leaning that threatened to terminate the sacred precinct. Nowadays most visitors have scant knowledge of what has occurred since the first years, but the sight of the church is unforgettable. Eyes see angles and curves, rimmed with the silence of centuries that threatens to unhinge everything and topple the carefully-constructed walls.

Nobody wants this to happen.

She did not think the church would collapse any time soon, but the hovering columns, the tilt of everything in the collection of stones known as Santa María do Sar, would not leave her alone. She had to return, had to stop pretending it couldn’t disintegrate in a few seconds. Perhaps someone would lean on a buttress or a wall and everything would fall. 

What would she be able to do to stop that? Nothing. She thought. Yet she had to go. Something was insisting, and she had to know. She left. There was a clear call, a strange call, coming from some place unidentifiable. It had words, but no language. No need for translation. No reason for concern.

But there was something. A pre-Roman substrate nobody cared much about, Celtic or beyond, older. One wondered what anybody or anything that old mattered. Sar was three letters, traceable to sounds - maybe sar, maybe ser - that meant “to flow”, perhaps a river. Which brought her full circle. A river called Sar was then a river whose name was River? The idea that such a primitive word might have survived intact was almost frightening. Centuries ago, the Sar was just a river with no name but its own, and nothing, no one, had come along to deprive it of its essence.

Water flowing, moving an entire thirty kilometers before splashing into the Ulla River with a name of ancient origin meaning a wheel. The Ulla was long enough to be winding: 132 kilometers. The Sar, much more modest, was still a ‘river’ if its name is true. But the Ulla finds the Ría de Arousa, meaning it finds the sea. The Sar never did, although it points in that direction.

She could only do as she was told, although she didn’t know what that was. She knew she was not going to discover why she had to return on this visit and perhaps not on any others. All she knew was her need to go and that the river named River was waiting.

A map would not have helped much, but she used one to see where the Sar was headed. Perhaps the water was more important than the stack of stones built for prayers. She wondered if the flow went toward Muros, but in fact it was moving further south, to Arousa. Her feet were tugging at her calves and knees, and she had to leave. It was becoming more and more difficult to resist her limbs and she stopped trying.

She stumbled over streets whose sixteenth-century stones had been torn up and were being resettled in new slopes and curbs. She ran into three seasons, two types of precipitation and four skies. The route was never on any map, that was clear. That was how it should be. 

She didn’t stop until she was once again looking at the strong buttresses that announced their supporting role and seemed to laugh at any concerns that they might collapse. She felt as if they had always been trying to falter, then decided falling walls were not what she was supposed to understand. She was supposed to continue. The poem mentioned pilgrims and she was in Santiago. Was that significant?

She thought about how some people think about water and where it leads. She knew she was the result of waves and wood that had crossed far more than nineteen or a hundred and thirty two kilometers or miles, that it was all tied together and diluted and answers would have to be invented. Answers moulded and injected into poems that belonged to her and Masefield and to the ones who had left home to find home. Like she had, only home had not yet been located.

There was one hope, she thought as she stood and contemplated the arched space that had only sky for protection. The colexiata felt like an enormous, heavy bark that wanted her to go with it, to find out where the Sar was going, to know why she and the river needed each other.

The words were not yet on any map but her own, but she heard them:

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied

I had to go down to the Sar again, for the rush of the running tide

Was that wild call and that clear call and it could not be denied.

The voyage had begun.