Thinking of the 'Middle Passage'

It was our wedding anniversary this week. 'Our' includes me, husband and son. We had one of those modern, all inclusive weddings, 3 years ago where our son was our best man. Very risque as he was 5 at the time, but it worked well. Any way, for this year's anniversary we went to Whitley Bay, late Wednesday evening, the light just failing. We have found this lovely, Venetian and Tapas restaurant just next to the ex Spanish city and we were going to stuff our faces. And we did. I was thinking about the sea and every time I'm by the sea I think I want to live nearer to the sea. If I did would I be a different person? Would I change? I love the sea and should make more time to go see the sea and just be in the presence of the sea. I know its been said before but, I feel a sense of calm and soothing when near the sea. I feel replenished.

We ate, too much, even got a doggy bag for home. Walking back to the car, the sky was a petrol blue, electric even and it had merged with the sea. And I was thinking about all the things I had read this week about other waters , the Atlantic Ocean, in fact. This ocean used for trade, taking the human cargo from Africa to the Caribbean,where they were sold or, in some cases, traded for goods such as molasses, which was used in the making of rum. 'The Middle Passage', this journey was called. The Middle Passage was the longest, hardest, most dangerous, and also most horrific part of the journey of the slave ships. With extremely tightly packed loads of human cargo that stank and carried both infectious disease and death, the ships would travel east to west across the Atlantic on a miserable voyage lasting at least five weeks, and sometimes as long as three months. In some sense, these thoughts dampened my mood, but in another they didn't. I felt inspired to keep on delving into the old dusty books in the Lit and Phil. Keep on reading and bringing first hand history to light. Finding the hidden voices from the sea of books because they will get the chance to live again. And we can learn from them.