Dear Readers,
Thank you so much for subscribing to between two seas. When I started this newsletter a few weeks ago, I had no idea that my words would resonate with so many hundreds of you – thank you so much for your support, it really means the world to me.
I will continue posting an essay every sunday morning, but I am also thinking about sharing shorter, more informal posts on wednesdays – a short poem or piece of prose inspired by island life. I would call it the wednesday wonderings series.
What I’d love to know is whether you would enjoy receiving two emails from me per week (on sunday and wednesday), or if you’d rather just have sunday’s essay. The last thing I want is to overload inboxes! So, consider this a ‘beta’ wednesday wonderings post, and feel free to let me know by email or comment if you’d like to see wednesday wonderings landing in your inbox midweek, or if you’d rather just have sunday’s essay.
Rebecca x
simmer dim
The simmer dim is a time of magic, of skyglow, of edgeless summer. You see, in the Orkney Islands’ summer months, the sky doesn’t know true darkness. There is always a haze, a suggestion of light. Just like when the haar rolls in from the ocean and wraps its thick body around the soil, the simmer dim creates an otherworldliness, an unanchoring of self and space and place. Time begins to unpeel itself until it feels both fleeting and endless.
The simmer dim is, of course, over now. Autumn is coming, and with it the long dark. But in this swansong of summer, I wanted to share a poem I wrote when the night was still dressed in light.
I wrote this at midnight on a beautiful beach in North Ronaldsay – the most northern of the Orkney Islands – after watching two seals frolicking in the shallows. I’d never seen seals play but they were – they were chasing one another and twisting and writhing and diving. It was a gorgeous sight. As I turned away to head back to my van, I noticed a dead seal pup half-buried in seaweed on the strandline. Beauty and brutality ever-present. We cannot notice one without noticing the other. Or perhaps we can but we should not, not if we really want to see the world, to know it deeply.
Thank you for reading. I hope you are having a wonderful wednesday x
With writing this beautiful, I would read it every day 💚🌊
Two posts a week from me would be too much. From you, on the other hand, it’s a joy to behold. Bring it on! Wonderful poetry and, once again, that mixture of the joy of living and the awareness of death that shepherds know so well. Thank you.