Weather

When you’re far out in the ocean you experience the weather, the isolation
→ if I could get the opportunity to do such a trip, I would do it.

→ You have to take the weather into account continuously, for example.
→The Currents
→ There is something that inhibits you – you cannot act as you would on land. Every simple movement is more tiring.

One beautiful exception to this incomprehensibility was when one frozen word melted and “made a noise like a chestnut that had been thrown on the embers without being pricked”. For it was assumed that this was the noise of a cannon shot during the battle. Rabelais then gives a phonetic rendition of the noises as they thaw: "Hin, hin, hin, hin his, tick. Tock, crack, brededin, brededac, frr, frrr, frrr, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, tracc, tracc, trr, trr, trrr, trrrrr, trrrrrr, on, on, on, on, on, ouououououon, Gog, Magog and goodness knows what other barbarous sounds". This is in fact an onomatopoetic type sound poem based upon the blood curdling noises of a sea battle. Also, Rabelais has turned the sea and its extreme weather conditions into one giant recording device for transmitting sounds and voices across time itself.

Here in Europe, we don’t have a strong relation to the elements. In Martinique, there is the
- ocean that can get mad
- the volcano that can get mad
- the wind that can get mad

When at sea, you have to figure out how to stay alive. Never start a dispute with the sea – you’ll always lose. If the weather is bad – you’ll have no more money. You make a deal with the sea, → respect the sea be very “low”/calm – don’t try to challenge it. If there is no other way, you have to do it. Let the sea do the work.

I remember taking the mailboat from here to Dover with my mother. We used to take it every year. For shopping. The journey is about four hours each way. It was my mother’s idea of going to England. We would only go if sea was calm, of course. Before the trip, my father would look out of the window in the early morning to assess the weather.

Imagine that you’re lying on the beach with your back on the wet sand. It’s winter and there is a storm. The sand, carried by the wind, is traveling and brushing over your hands and feet.