So here I sit again, being bored in the library. I spend so much of my days being bored in the library that I suppose it makes the interesting parts more interesting. I also spend much of my time composing letters, and then worrying that I’m writing to many letters and may well be driving those nearest and dearest to me insane with my constant inane chatter. As I’ve said in the past, I talk too much.
To those who have been the recipients of my near-daily ramblings, I both apologize for bending your ear, and thank you for allowing me to do so.
I do of course, have other ways of occupying myself during the course of a very long series of sea days that seem to stretch forever from horizon to horizon.
Having temporarily given my mind a breather from the saga that is Song of Ice and Fire, I’m currently I am occupying myself re-reading Jane Eyre. For I think the 6th time or so. Jane Eyre is like a security blanket for me, I come back to it in times of confusion, of troubled mind, of weary heart. Someone very very dear to me introduced me to that book years ago, and I’ve carried the story with me ever since. For the longest time I used to carry my own physical copy wherever I traveled. Now I make do with an electronic copy that I can read on my office computer. I suppose to this day there’s something in Jane’s character that resonates with me, though as the time goes on I’m less able to pin down precisely what. As I go on, it’s different aspects of it that appeal to me, when I was younger I could very much indentify with the young girl who thought no one wanted who “contrives affection from a doll she cradles so”, the one who’s a bit too serious a child for the world to handle. Older than her years, but younger than most in some ways. Yes, that was definitely me. Now, not so much, but the whole concept of being brave enough to face the world on your own terms and to love on your own terms, whatever that may mean, I suppose that’s what resonates with me now.
So yes, I always have my books, whatever title I may be absorbed in at the moment, and I always have my sewing. People always find it unusual that I sew – save perhaps two, and those two seem to be surprised by utterly nothing about me – but I always have. Ever since grade school. There’s something therapeutic about embroidery, about the methodic nature of choosing the right colour of thread to make the picture, of the repetitive motion as I guide the needle through the stitches. I’ve been working on this pattern for so long that I’ve no real concept of what I’m going to do when I’ve finished it, which will be probably within the next day. Despite the fact that I’m proud of it, I don’t think I have any desire to hang it on my wall, I suspect I will gift it to someone, someone who might have wall space for it, and who will appreciate what it may or may not represent.
At any rate the days march on aboard the flagship, punctuated here and there by a port day, here and there by rain, here and there by something that seems magical. People come and go, most barely making an impression on our lives before they disappear again, some imprinting so deeply on us that we wonder at the empty space left behind when they once again disappear. Some, in some ways, never leave at all.
57 days left until we dock in Fort Lauderdale and life shore-side as we know it can resume for the temporary period of however many days we have off before we’re shipped out again to parts unknown.
57 days may seem like a long time, but in ship time it’s the blink of an eye. This will all be over before we can turn around twice, and we’ll be left to sort everything out shore-side, to see our loved ones and our friends and hold our sweethearts close for as long as we can…before our first love calls to us again and we run towards the horizon…
With apologies for the overly deep thoughts, I suppose you could blame it on the weather,
Bright blessings,
Shaughnessy