photo credit: Reel Opinions
can you imagine what it is to cross an ocean?
for weeks, you see nothing but the horizon. perfect and empty.
you live in a grip of fear. fear of storms, fear of sickness on board, fear of the immensity.
so you must drive that fear down deep into your belly.
study your chance, watch your compass. pray for a fair wind and hope.
pure, naked, fragile. hope.
the first was no more than a hast on the horizon.
so you watch. you watch.
and there's a smudge. a shadow in far water.
for a day, for another day. the stain slowly spread along the horizon, taking form.
until on the third day, you let yourself believe. you dare to whisper the word.
Land.
land. life. resurrection. the true adventure...
--quoted from Sir Walter Raleigh portrayed in Elizabeth: Golden Age
The imagery of life, the formation of life, when the sperm meets and perforates the ovum, in the meantime it insinuates a male desire of attaining the trust and attention of a female.
In most literary tradition, we usually compare the land, the soil and the earth to a female, like the expression of "mother earth." These words, however, come out of a male conquerer, the adventurer and the explorer. (Alas, but typical.) As Queen Elizabeth covets her wish to get on board and see the world, Raleigh chuckles, informing her the long-time sailors' superstition: women brings bad luck on board. (And of course the explanation sounds "scientific" enough: a jam-packed dim damp space with a crew of hunky and sweaty sailors and a female body as the target of craving and lust. humm. Imagine that. a room full of hungry bull dogs surrounding and drooling over one piece of meat. That's what Raleigh is suggesting.)
Aside from that layer of animal aspiration of mating and intuition of finding the mates, there is a genuine truth in the vivid and beautiful description of men's anticipation, yearning and anxiety over a new world, a new land. The wish to stretch out of the stability (or staleness?) and the wish to reach out for harbor (steadiness?) stand on each side of a scale. Despite the fact that I hate to have gender roles stereotyped, we may all agree that in this case, Raleigh expresses the desire to anchor in the harbor and Elizabeth longs to experience that freedom and get off shore as an explorer like a man. Once she falls vulnerable and keeps Raleigh at hand, he begins to secretly resent and keeps his distance from her. Ironic (somehow typical).
Aren't we like that when it comes to our situation of staying put in a twilight zone for too long?