Esoteric Paragraph 01, The meaning of ‘brutishness’ and others

Esoteric Paragraph 01, The meaning of ‘brutishness’ and others

The passage below is from Fathoms: The World in the Whale Hardcover by Rebecca Giggs.

From the stickier corners of the internet, you read reports of the people who discover dead monsters. They’re up early, or out in the hours either side of midnight, with or without a dog. This is a person not given to conspiracy, but often — because they are found walking at a time when others don’t dare to —they’re immigrants or itinerants, shiftworkers, rough types, failed artists, insomniacs. The world has already become so strange to these people, it can easily get stranger. What we’re talking about is: the broken-hearted. A group to which conspiracy attaches against their design.

I have watched such souls from a distance, but I have also been one of their kind: a figure the size of your thumbnail, wide awake and restless. ?Wherever you are, let’s say that you saw me, or someone like me, at the edge of the ocean, tracing out brutishness. ?An otherwise empty beach. ?Scooped with shadow, and shifty. ?To be so impressionable: a quality to circle, to covet. ?Yet, at toe-point, nothing reveals itself as a personal talisman. ?The seaweed doesn’t scrawl like a sentence. ?A rock pool’s only a rock pool —at night it collects no reflections. ?Any octopus has long since turned into stone; its skin colour changed, as biologists say, ‘at will’. ?No gluey jellyfish halos, no limpets huddled beneath holdfasts either, no life capable of regrowing a limb or several. ?The shoreline pocks with bubbles on a wave’s retreat, but there’s nothing down there you can touch. ?It’s only pressure.

This paragraph is not easy since the author says something she imagines. It’s hard for me to catch up her idea. (I have to ask too many questions in these three serial threads. So please if you don’t want, don’t bother. But if you want, thank you, here’s my questions.) (Wait. If there’s a policy that prevent this kind of serial questions, tell me. Then I will delete them.) Sorry to bother you. But if you can bear with me, give me help.

Here I go.

In the 1st paragraph the author talks about people who tends to go outside at around midnight finding trouble.

? Now on the 2nd sentence the author talks about such people tracing out bruitshness. (‘tracing out’ seems to mean ‘searching out’, and ‘bruitshness’ seems to mean ‘a dead monster’. Am I right?)

?An otherwise empty beach.

Yes, There’s no one on the beach except ‘someone like me (and my dog if I have one)’. (Am I right?)

?Scooped with shadow, and shifty.

I know ‘water scooped with both hands’. Here I don’t see WHAT is scooped with shadow, and shifty.

Is it empty sand beach?

Then what does it mean that empty beach is scooped with shadow, and shifty? I cannot visualize this scene except a wild guessing. Here it is:

The empty sand beach is covered with shadow and something fishy(shifty) is going on here. (Am I right? But I know I don’t.)

?To be so impressionable: a quality to circle, to covet.

I don’t know WHO or WHAT is so impressionable. (Plus, ‘impressionable’ seems to mean ‘easily impressed’. Am I right?)

I also don’t know WHOSE quality it is to circle, to covet. (Plus, ‘circle’ seems to mean ‘to move around’, and ‘covet’ ‘to desire’. Am I right?)

?Yet, at toe-point, nothing reveals itself as a personal talisman.

At WHOSE toe-point, does nothing reveal itself as a personal mascot?

And what does it mean something shows itself as a personal charm?

?The seaweed doesn’t scrawl like a sentence.

The seaweed(=sea plant) doesn’t scrawl(=write hastily) like a sentence.

(Am I right about synonyms?)

Sentence has two meanings that I know of. First, a group of words. Second, a punishment. I think the former meaning fits better in this context because of the verb ‘scrawl’. (Am I right?)

But what does the whole sentence is trying say is still a mystery to me.

?A rock pool’s only a rock pool —at night it collects no reflections.

I think I know a rock pool. It means “a pool of water among rocks, typically along a shoreline”. Does “at night it collects no reflections” means that in daylight a rock pool has various reflections but at night it has none of them. (Am I right?)

?Any octopus has long since turned into stone; its skin colour changed, as biologists say, ‘at will’.

I find out that octopus changes its colour at will. OK. But I have no idea why octopus has turned into stone.

?No gluey jellyfish halos, no limpets huddled beneath holdfasts either, no life capable of regrowing a limb or several.

I think I know this part in literal sense. In “(There is) no gluey Jellyfish halos”, this sticky Jellyfish seems to have halos since it has halo-like or hat-like upper part. (Am I right?)

And no limpets gather together beneath holdfasts of some seaweed. (Am I right?)

And no life can regrow a limb or several limbs. (Am I right?)

But I don’t see what this is all about. Is it somehow explaining the scene around the rock pool? (Am I right?)

?The shoreline pocks with bubbles on a wave’s retreat, but there’s nothing down there you can touch.

The shoreline shows a lot of bubbles as a wave move back to the sea, but there’s nothing you can tap. (Am I right?)

?It’s only pressure.

This sentence continues the idea from the previous sentence.

(There’s nothing down there you can touch but) It’s only pressure.

The implicit meaning of ‘pressure’ seems to relate to the 1st sentence of the next paragraph as follows: Time. Time, and such weight.

Does this pressure seems to mean time. (Am I right?)

All this passage leads to one sentence, that is, there’s nothing on the seashore now, but still, as time goes by, seems like something terrible is going to happen anytime soon. (Am I right?)

Thanks in advance. (Again sorry to bother you.)