{"id":767,"date":"2011-12-30T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T03:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=767"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:25:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:25:04","slug":"on-solitude-st-maarten-12302011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=767","title":{"rendered":"On Solitude \u2013 St Maarten \u2013 [12\/30\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There is little in the way of solitude on a ship, and when one has to deal with the presence of a another person, however considerate, \u00a0in what was once her own hard-earned, heavily protected, very private sanctuary, there is even less.<\/p>\n

So it is that I find myself turning more and more to the solitude found in the written word. By which I mean words that others write, not myself. My writing is…I don\u2019t know… something else. But it\u2019s not solitude, \u00a0I don\u2019t write for solitude. But read? Oh yes, I read for solitude. Where do you think the entry titled \u201cClosing Time\u201d came from all those months ago? That was a real recording of the last ten minutes of my evening, on a night when I had just boarded the ship and I was trying to process a lot of things at once.<\/p>\n

Not that I\u2019m not still trying to process a lot of things at once, we all are.<\/p>\n

Like everyone else, I create my own version of sanctuary. Some find it in music (I envy them), some in video games (I pity them)…or others like me…in the satisfying rustle of a page. It always disappoints me when I can\u2019t fully immerse myself in a book, when I\u2019m too tired or too busy or the book is too thick, or when I just seem to lack the ability for no particular reason. But when I need it, I can disappear.<\/p>\n

As of late, with every other option for privacy eliminated…I\u2019ve needed it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never understood people who \u2018don\u2019t read\u2019 though I know many of them, some very close to me. For me, I\u2019ve always said that you could take away my computer, take away my television, take away any of the myriad distractions this electronic world could provide \u2013 and, while I\u2019d suffer withdrawal for a while, I ultimately would be fine. If you took away my library…my personal one, not the one I work in…I would very quickly go mad…<\/p>\n

Like I said, there\u2019s very little solitude on a ship, especially one that you\u2019ve spent so much time on, established such a reputation with.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sometimes odd realizing that I live on this ship. I don\u2019t just work here, this isn\u2019t a normal contract, and this isn\u2019t a temporary home. This is home. People come and go, shift and blend, appear and disappear, and I stay still. Like a rock in the middle of the river. I\u2019m established. Part of the furniture. Somewhere along the line, I\u2019ve become part of the permanent flagship crew…something you never could have convinced me was going to happen even this past spring when I first walked up this ship\u2019s gangway. That\u2019s something my roommate said to me the other day, after asking me whether or not I thought the dimensions of our shared cabin were smaller than other ships. I told her I didn\u2019t really know, since I\u2019d spent most of the last year in this exact room.<\/p>\n

I keep forgetting that this is your home…<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t mind me, the end of the year always kind of makes me like this…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is little in the way of solitude on a ship, and when one has to deal with the presence of a another person, however considerate, \u00a0in what was once her own hard-earned, heavily protected, very private sanctuary, there is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-holiday-cruises-2011"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-cn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2197,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions\/2197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}