Dylan Thomas, drinking his muse.
I also found out today that DYLAN comes from the Mabinogion, a collection of 11 mediaeval Welsh tales. The word means "sea". In the tale Math, the son of Mathonwy challenges Aranrhod, his niece who claims to be a virgin, to step over his magic wand.
"Aranrhod stepped over the wand, and with that step she dropped a sturdy boy with thick yellow hair; the boy gave a loud cry, and with that cry she made her way for the door.....
"Well," said Math, "I will arrange for the baptism of this one......and I will call him Dylan."
The boy was baptized, whereupon he immediately made for the sea and when he came to the sea, he took on its nature and swam as well as the best fish. He was called Dylan (sea) son of Ton (wave), for no wave ever broke beneath him."
So there. Fascinating.Since I just did copy-paste for the above story, kindly ignore the grammatical errors and triviality of the whole thing. Spare yourself the trouble, tee hee!
It probably makes sense, too, that I love the sea so much and with the exception of actually dipping into it, I recall with fondness the many times I've sat on the beaches in many places - from La Union to Bantayan Island to the Davao Gulf - and experiencing that rare moment of solitude poets like Dylan Thomas were known to indulge in.
I guess it helps people of our kind keep our sanity.
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