Cruising

 CRUISING

My wife and I have been cruising for almost 30 years.  We’ve cruised through hurricanes that kept us awake for days with their rolling seas, and we’ve cruised tranquil seas that would put most people instantly to sleep.  We’ve cruised the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal and the Fjords of Norway and the Baltic Sea and Iceland and Canada and on and on.  We’ve cruised young and healthy, and we’ve cruised old and sick and tired.  My wife has caught the norovirus 3 times on cruise ships and found herself quarantined repeatedly – once for almost the entire length of a 9 day cruise.  But really, that’s not that big a deal.  I once had a heart attack in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  The cruise line wanted to dump me and my heart attack on some island off the coast of Africa I had never heard of.  I fought it.

I hate to admit this, but my wife and I have spent more than a year at sea on cruise ships.  I think that’s more time than Ishmael the main character in Herman Melville’s great seafaring novel Moby Dick spent on a ship.  

We’ve been back from our last cruise for 4 days.  The next one is coming up in a couple of weeks.  The one after that is scheduled for the end of July.

I know what you’re wondering.

Why do these people spend so much time on cruise ships?

Good question.

I’ve been wondering about it myself for the last 30 years -- since I started cruising.

The answer – like all the answers to all the great questions of life – is not easy.

I know why my wife loves to cruise.  She loves not doing anything.  When she gets on a cruise ship, she sails away from all the things that usually call for her attention.  She puts aside cooking and cleaning and shopping and worrying about the things that she usually worries about.  She can then devote herself to the pleasures she most craves: reading, playing card games, drinking her favorite cabernet, gambling in the casino, eating way too much really good food, and the pleasure of my company.  

At home, I’m really not much fun to have around.  In the morning I typically exercise for about an hour, and then I start writing: poems, essays, novels, books of poems, more novels, letters to friends, and even letters to enemies.  My wife and I get together for meals and a little socializing in the evening, but other than that she’s on her own.  

So you see why she likes cruising.  

And me?  Why do I like cruising?

I think that what most keeps me cruising – other than my wife’s obsession with this sort of vacation – is the way it throws me together with lots of people who are genuinely interested in chatting.  

Like I suggested above, I don’t spend a lot of time away from my writing desk, and as a result I don’t often get a chance to chat with people, get to know them, find out what they’re reading or what they’re watching on TV.  I think I’m like a lot of people in this.  I live in a world that’s pretty isolated, a world that doesn’t open me up to a lot of people.  Cruising is, therefore, just about the perfect vacation for me because it gives me the chance to do what I never do otherwise.  

Cruising gives me the chance to ask you how you’re doing and whether you like to cruise and whether the book you have in your hands is really keeping you awake?