Each day in the Sea Library, a line drifts ashore. I pick it up and read. A sentence from a book, a thought about the sea, a fragment of language that feels like a tide mark left behind.

I call them #tidelines – daily quotes from the Sea Library’s collection that I share on BlueSky, small windows into the books that live here. Are you on BlueSky? I joined it after leaving X.

Once a month, I’ll gather these quotes all together in one place, here, letting these lines form their own current. It’s both a record and an invitation: to read, to linger, to discover the voices that move quietly through the Sea Library. Perhaps one of the books will tempt you to read it – let me know if it does!

Here is the second tide.

• “I can’t even begin to describe my feelings – what do you feel when a dream suddenly comes true?”

  from this book

• “How does an ordinary chap with no family fortune behind him set about sailing around the world singlehanded?”

  from this book

• “Well, I suppose it did all seem a bit crazy”

  from this book

• “Seafarm, to be sure, with its arms reaching deep into the land, will always remain part wilderness, untamed, where man must learn to live with nature, within nature, a part of nature, not over and against nature”

  from this book

• “A canoe traveling silently through fog, darkness, or storm needs no radar or attention to navigational equipment to perceive and avoid danger, but only the alert human senses”

  from this book

• “My family was never far from the ocean”

  from this book

• “The climate is a prism through which to view the human world – just as language can be”

  from this book

• “Towards late afternoon, a sea haze casts a dreamy spell over the water. In the still air is the memory of summers gone”

  from this book

• “We are used to drawing a distinction between practical and entertainment literature. But in the case of the maritime book, the very same literature that served a practical function for professionals also entertained general audiences. This overlap gave a technical and practical cast to the culture’s romance with the mariner’s heroism”

  from this book

• “I’m not swimming to go anywhere, I’m not trying to meet any physical goal and I’m certainly not competing with anyone. I love the Channel, love living by the Channel and love being in the Channel, and that’s it”

  from this book

• “Getting used to it is impossible”

  from this book

• “In this book we will travel to some of the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth”

  from this book

• “To bring the object outside into clearer view, we had to start within, scraping a hole in the frost with our fingernails. This book begins much the same way”

  from this book

• “Down among the anemones, I am also reminded of the vulnerability of the ocean”

  from this book

• “The things we notice in puddles and streams can be just as profound and helpful to understanding what is happening, as those that might be spotted from a vessel in mid-Atlantic”

  from this book

Katru dienu Jūras bibliotēkas krastā izskalojas kāda rinda. Es to paceļu un izlasu. Teikums no grāmatas, doma par jūru, valodas drumsla, kas atgādina paisuma nospiedumu.

Es saucu tās par plūdlīnijām (#tidelines) – ikdienas citātiem no Jūras bibliotēkas krājuma, ar kuriem dalos BlueSky platformā. Vai arī tu esi BlueSky? Es pievienojos pēc aiziešanas no X.

Reizi mēnesī es apkopoju šos citātus vienkopus – šeit –, ļaujot tiem veidot savu straumi. Tas ir gan apkopojums, gan uzaicinājums: lasīt, pakavēties, atklāt balsis, kas klusi un neatlaidīgi caurvij Jūras bibliotēku. Varbūt kādu grāmatu būs pamudinājums izlasīt? Dod ziņu!

Šeit (augstāk) jau otrais citātu paisums.

PS The image, yes, it’s AI generated. I played with the program for this particular series.