POEM: THE INNOCENT SEA

The Innocent Sea

“It’s the end of the worl’,” he says

in a whiskey-ed, Irish brogue.

A transplanted mick washed up

on an early Sixties’ California coast.

Drunk, bitter, his failed life

set off to one side of a bar stool.

But he sets us right to the place of things,

and to the times: Vietnam’s barely

more than a gleam in the eye;

skeptics are just beginning to loosen

their ties; atoms are still small,

and cars chug along like happy behemoths.

(Blank cheques and ink are everywhere!)

It is the end of the world, though, 

his world, his time—

even before he announces it.

But he can’t know it. Not really.

And we can’t know it, either.

(The decade is too young;

the air, clear and of itself.

The sea sparkles like frothing champagne;

the sky is a Hollywood blue,

and the sun shines so bright!

As bright as an old man’s pocket watch.)

And the story is told 

of a man and a woman,

and their break with the past.

With eyes glazed in Now,

their wry smiles 

betray their time to come.

For History lauds them on 

to the world’s new day!

They’ve earned the right to challenge;

youth is their gauntlet.

And this is as it should be.

And then not quite.

Something else will greet them instead.

...

And we see in the end, 

the beginning:

The tiny, cloth-topped car

with four frail beings inside,

beings whose skulls 

are as thin and indefensible

as eggshells.

We watch them drive away, wary, 
perhaps for the first time,

across a landscape grown

decidedly more dangerous.

And it’s then we recall the hope of return,

that, in-between lovebirds and war-birds,

generations and time; 

between the grit and pale 
of continents and oceans,

there lies, there must lie!

the innocent sea.

—on Hitchcock’s The Birds

Of course, one of my favourite movies is Hitchcock’s The Birds, and I wrote this after having watched it on TV some years ago. For those who aren’t familiar with the movie (who are you, anyway?), the story concerns a small town on the California coast that is invaded by birds that for some unknown reason attack the inhabitants. The story centres around one family and their harrowing struggle for survival over a very long weekend. Made in 1963, it seems prescient in its concerns over the upending of the natural world. The movie suggests a world that has somehow irrevocably changed, even at the end, after the attacks have subsided. It suggests a new ‘restlessness’ and impatience in the natural world—impatience with us, presumably.

     Hitchcock also explores the complexities of family dynamics and interpersonal relationships within the Brenner family and the community of Bodega Bay (a real town north of San Francisco). There are the themes of family unity, discord and alienation that play out nicely juxtaposed with the image of various bird species atypically uniting together in common purpose against the town and its people. It’s a fantastic film and a treat to watch. (And for the record, I do have a man-crush on Rod Taylor. Please don’t judge me!)

     I guess in my poem I was focused on the environmental aspects of the movie—the 'unnaturalness' of nature, with the strange attacks by the birds. Also, I thought of the early 1960s as a time when there is a loss of innocence in the Western world, in particular with the growing Cold War between the USSR and America, as well as the beginnings of the Vietnam War and the insanity of the nuclear arms race. It is interesting that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962, a year before Hitchcock's movie debuts. Her book, on the effects of DDT on the environment was seminal in stirring public awareness to the dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides in our modern agricultural practices, and is credited with launching the modern environmental movement. One fact she uncovered is the effect DDT has on bird’s eggshells—it causes them to weaken and thin, thus making the embryo less viable. This image was in my mind as I watched the Brenner family drive away from the threatening flocks of birds that roosted about their home. Their tiny human skulls seemed so very vulnerable in their small, cloth-topped car. Like eggshells.

     Unless we start viewing ourselves as part of the natural world and not its lords and masters, we will become increasingly vulnerable to it because we will lose our understanding of our place in it. We distance ourselves from nature at our peril. To return to a time of innocence, as the poem suggests, is not to be naïve; rather, it means that we accept our place in the scheme of things, with humility and grace. 

 I thought I would add this link to an interesting post I just read, "Notes on Heartache and Chaos", from James Howard Kunstler's ever-thoughtful blog, Clusterfuck Nation. In it, he writes about nature and our place in it, and how we go about our technologically-enhanced lives ignoring it at our peril. I especially like his concluding lines: "It’s not so hard to meet heartache and chaos in this world, and yet love and beauty still abide. Treasure them when you find them. They explain everything."

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/notes-heartache-chaos/

HITCHCOCK BASED HIS MOVIE ON THE short story of the same name by Daphne DuMaurier, written in 1953. Originally set on the Cornish coastline in England, this compact and stylish horror story focuses on Nat Hocken, a rural farmworker, as he struggles to protect his family against invading flocks of birds that have inundated his small community. Nat is a keen observer of the landscape, and he notes, early in the story, how the weather has quickly turned colder, and that birds of many species seem restless as they gather in larger and larger numbers around his coastal village. One evening, Nat is awoken by birds as they swoop down at his window and seem to deliberately attack him as he fends them off. After the birds try to get into his children’s bedroom window, Nat takes precautions and boards up all the windows in his cottage. His actions are justified, as the next day the bird attacks begin in earnest.

     We see Nat doing everything he can to prepare. He observes that the birds (of all kinds, but especially the gulls) have some sort of schedule in their attacks that seems to be regulated by the tides. Nat takes an opportunity in the lull to gather supplies and to further fortify his home. He learns that many in his village have been killed, and that the attacks are much more widespread.

     Throughout England, according to the BBC's “wireless” broadcasts, birds are attacking towns and cities. Citizens are urged to stay inside. Nat’s neighbour earlier had speculated it was the “Russians” who had “poisoned” the birds. Nat thought it might be the unnatural cold that had come at the end of autumn, driving birds from other regions to seek food en masse in the south.

But the reason for the attacks remains unclear.

Ominously, Nat begins to think that the birds have developed intelligence based on “millions of years of memory…stored in those little brains”, and that humanity was now at risk. When the BBC fails to come back on the air at the regular hour, the story ends with Nat and his family barricaded in their kitchen, listening to the sounds of the birds scratching and pecking and smashing against the walls of their home.

Cheers