Thoughts Triggered by Ocean Travel

Two weeks aboard first one (Queen Mary 2), then another (Queen Victoria) of the world’s luxury liners (technically, one ocean liner and one cruise ship) has generated thoughts and rhetorical questions:

• How uplifting to watch the sea change from black to glowing indigo with the infusion of sunlight
• What intrepid souls the Norsemen were as they sailed their drache across the North Atlantic when the swells were higher than the boat’s sides
• 25-30’ seas make putting on eye makeup a real challenge
• The cuisine is varied and delectable; the gym and spa need to be much bigger.
• How puny and unimportant humans are despite their beautiful machines
• The sea is so many hues, no wonder it is so difficult to paint
• Spume flying from tops of the ship’s wake reminds me of snow blowing off the ridges of the Jungfrau massif and the Matterhorn
• Even on a slight swell day, the North Atlantic contains a sense of danger and caution
• “Roll on, thou deep and blue ocean, roll.”
• Room service for breakfast is intoxicating and addictive
• Was Samuel Coleridge a real sailor or did he experience ocean immensity only in his opium dreams?
• My stateroom creaks like it’s haunted as the ship rises and falls on the swells
• I am sooo glad I chose to bring flat shoes as I watch women teeter on their high heels and grasp handrails every time the ship rolls
• Two years ago, my iPad was attention-getting on board; this year, they are prolific. Congrats, Apple!
• Bring boat shoes! Flats were not designed for wet decks. I have to walk really slowly, almost shuffling, not to slip on the wooden and painted decks
• The wind blows so fiercely over the decks that sometimes opening a door onto a deck is like being a wind tunnel – you are pushing and pushing and going nowhere,  greatly resembling a mime
• Passengers form a kind of loose family or community very quickly
• Chaucer was a visionary. Travelers have not changed over the centuries – they still spin tales and embellish their mundane existences

Wallet Photos

Several times in the last two weeks, I have been asked if I have pictures of my family, especially Mom, with me. To my chagrin, I had to reply in the negative. 

I have hundreds of family pictures but they are all digitized and safely stored in the iPad and in the cloud. What I do not have are wallet pictures. I wonder if people even do that anymore…carry Kodak moments in their wallets. Most folk I know carry images and small videos in the cell-phones, which is less than useless here in the middle of the North Atlantic. Is this another instance of the divide between digital natives and those who dwell in the analog past?

Digital images never fade. They remain as crisp and colorful as the instant they were created. Generations from now, descendants will call up a picture of great-great-great Grandpapa in all his startling reality. What will we have lost when those ancient images are no longer blurred and faded with age? Will some of the romance of the past die with them? Will future children never enjoy the wonder of the hunt to find when and where the picture was taken because it was geo-tagged so can never be lost?

I miss those evenings when the family gathered around the photo albums and speculated about many of the yellowed and faded images pasted there.  Where was Pop when he was snapped wearing those hideous sheep-skin chaps? (Dad thought it was Idaho; Mom thought it was Montana.) What was the color of Uncle Will’s sporty roadster displayed in the 1926 photograph?  What color were Great-Grandma Moore’s eyes? No one knows, but the mystery lead to lively discussions and conjectures. These moments of wondering add a degree of imagination to family history; will future Mayers lose this magic as they leaf though album after album on their iPads or iPhones? 

I have been scanning old family photographs and tintypes so we don’t lose the images when their paper finally dies. Intellectually, I recognize the advantage of digitizing, but viscerally, I almost pity my future nieces and nephews who will never have the opportunity to hold the crinkled paper images of their ancestors. It’s much like the arguments for and against e-books and audio-books. The portability of digital versions is obvious but there’s just something electric about the tangible feel of a book or photograph against your fingers.

Dinner Conversations

When it comes to diversity and stories Chaucer’s pilgrims had nothing on my dinner table this past week.

I adore the crap shoot that is dinner seating during a cruise. I have been fortunate in the past, but seem to have hit a jackpot on this one. Maybe it’s as easy as the fun people dine later in the evening? I don’t have the answer, but I relish the results.

My table assignment is on the first curve of the second level of Britannia Restaurant. Excellent view of much of the dining room, so people watching would be more than possible. Over 5 evening meals, I have never gotten the chance to even peek at the neighboring tables; I have been consumed by my fellow 320ers.

Since we are 7 at a table for 6, there is no distance between us, so everyone hears and responds to everyone else’s comments or anecdotes. We talk over and around each other, with no one person commanding the table for long as the discussions ranged in all directions:

• Theater or film
• Disfiguring paintings
• Edmund Burke’s definition of government responsibility
• An impromptu rendition of  La Marseillaise which might soon be on YouTube
• Prizes won as opposed to accolades received
• Shipping antique cars across the world
• Multiple marriages
• How many houses we have called “home”
• Language samplings: Greek, Portuguese, Tagalog, French, Latin, Spanish, American and British
• Books on our beside tables
• To pasta or not to pasta?
• Heavy mining equipment
• If you buy someone else’s creation, is it yours to do with as you wish?
• 10-minute plays
• Challenges of French river barge life
• Best movie ever made as opposed to the one movie watched over and over and over again
• Victorian artifacts
• The weight of kilts
• Chilled soups vs. hot soups
• iPad or Kindle?
• Innovation
• Shipping crates and valises
• Living in the Azores
• Clive Palmer funding the creation of Titanic 2
• Media literacy
• Film versions of favorite novels
• Would Sophocles and Euripides agree that literacy is more than just reading and writing?
• Public school educations
• Life on an Indian reservation
• Train travel
• Airports
• Experiencing the Rhine in a canoe
• Fishing
• Vegetarian diets

The most diverting conversations revolved around us as characters in an evolving Agatha Christie piece. Lacking the “life is a village” perspicacity of Miss Marple and the “little grey cells” of Poirot, we are still questioning each other to solve the mystery of the nearly downed man. I have one more night with Table 320. Though I hope our crime caper is resolved, I really don’t care.

 These men and women have offered me mental and conversational stimulation and challenge. They have made dinner each evening worthy of a Noel Coward play.