Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A Sea Change

Last night I had my conversation with Donald. Near the end of our session, he said to me,
"I see a sea change has come over you."
I was so enchanted with the sound of that phrase ringing in my ears, I hardly heard him ask me if I was familiar with that phrase. I told him I was not. He went on to quote it (Shakespeare, no less!):
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made; 
Those are pearls that were his eyes: 
Nothing of him that doth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.


Oddly enough, I recognised the phrase "rich and strange" (there was an early Hitchcock film by that name), but didn't know the rest of it. Of course, the lines are extraordinarily beautiful. After Donald read them to me he said that this is the phrase he always thinks of when he thinks of me: sea change. That I have had a transformation here in Scotland.

1 comment: