Dark, Salt, Clear Quotes

“There is always some trace, Roger tells me, of the history of things, the impressions humans have left on them. The term for the study of rock layers in geology is stratigraphy, but it is also used in archaeology to describe the technique of seeking out the contexts of rocks, discovering the events that have left detectable traces on their surfaces – in the same way we might scan one another’s bodies, looking for those distinctive lines and marks which tell us something unspoken about the stranger opposite us on the train, or the friend we grew up with but have not seen for years, or the person we are falling in love with. A geologist’s task is to see beyond the ways in which time tries to smooth out difference, examining layers in order to isolate each shift to our world, to feel every fault line. We discuss how hard this is to do this with people, to imagine our lives not as one continuous line, but comprised of hundreds of versions stacked up behind us, and hundreds more ahead of us too, like those pairs of facing mirrors that make your reflection curl up infinitely on either side of you.”
― Lamorna Ash, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town

“He recently found a black and white picture of his mother and father, taken long before he was born, grinning arm in arm while deep below ground exploring an old tin mine. They made each other adventurous, Roger tells me, a quality he not only admires, but believes is paramount if one is to truly live in the world.”
― Lamorna Ash, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town

“sea once more; where red deserts roll back across the landscape to reveal beneath them green fields and villages; and in which one day your wife is bounding through life, and the next can barely stand. In this way geology teaches us to see ourselves as we really are: finite landmarks within an infinitely shifting world. When we use the phrase ‘natural disaster’, geologists remember that these events are only coloured disasters for and by humans. When we talk about ice ages or huge storms at seas, they are not disasters themselves; the disasters are that humans become involved in them. They are just how the world goes.”
― Lamorna Ash, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town