Sketched portrait of 23-year-old Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet and author. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am a slow learner in nearly every thing. I am a fan of multiple examples, slow demonstrations and repetitive gestures.  For most of my life, this caused me a great deal of frustration and shame.  Now I don’t really give a shit. I’m happy to be taking extra diving lessons while the rest of the crew heads out to sea next Sunday.

I used to explain my general ineptitude at sports,crafts, handiwork, cooking, to the fact that I spent more time reading about things than actually doing them.

As a moody teenager, I  stayed on the sand with a book, using Swinburne’s ocean to deepen and transform the cold, black  waves of Plum Island, Massachusetts into something primal, maternal:

Mother of loves that are swift to fade,