OU blog

Personal Blogs

Jim McCrory

"The most enduring thing about being human, is our desire to connect"

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jim McCrory, Saturday, 31 Aug 2024, 12:29




Image courtesy of Josh Fuller at  https://unsplash.com/@joshuafuller

 

The most enduring thing about being human, is our desire to connect and no more is this self-evident than the message in the bottle.

In 2015, Luke from Germany, threw a bottle with a message into the sea whilst on holiday in the Dominican Republic.

The Aberdeen Press and journal reported that two years later, a man who had just finished his shift on the Island of Barra on Scotland’s west coast discovered the bottle whilst walking along the beach.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/1306651/message-in-a-bottle-travels-from-the-caribbean-to-barra/

The Irish Times reports one that was discovered by a German women 108 years after it was launched by a biologist in 1906,

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/offbeat/message-in-a-bottle-washed-up-after-108-years-is-world-s-oldest-1.2617371

 

But please don’t do this at home; the wildlife dearly need our help.

Edward Hirsch in his book How to Read a Poem compares a poem to a message in a bottle. When the poem is written and put out there, a circuitry connection takes place between the poet, the poem and you and the reader. Consider a poem as a personal letter to yourself; a figurative message in a bottle.

How to Read a Poem | Edward Hirsch | Big Think (youtube.com)

I think of William Carlos Williams poem when I consider the following poem,

The Red Wheelbarrow

 so much depends

upon

 

a red wheel

barrow

 

glazed with rain

water

 

beside the white

chickens

I see this poem as one of those captured images that had become eternally locked in his head. There's nothing deep or lost in the poem, he is simply telling us with a poetic language what he saw that day and he desires to tell the world. And you and I open it, like a message in a bottle and connect with someone who lived a half century ago.

I guess this blog is a figurative message in a bottle. I get up early in the day and start my writing process penning some basic thoughts into my e notebook. Thoughts that I plan to develop. You come along from who-knows-where and connects. I would love to know who you are and where you are and why you are here. You are the addressee to this private message  Drop me a line- JimAlba@proton.me

 

 





Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jim McCrory, Sunday, 1 Sept 2024, 07:58)
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 136425