Today another request! This time Eros! From a male friend could I read a paragraph of a love letter … which was a touching request. He and I don’t agree on much because he is full of youthful idealism, in contrast to my Beckettian acceptance of the awfulness of everything amen, so we often spar, however on this we agreed. The paragraphs were beautiful. Paced. Thought out. Painstakingly so. It was so moving. It was wonderful to see caution thrown to the wind over the more typical strategic cloaked murmurs.
I was rather lifted and moved by the romance of it all. “You’re such a sensualist”, he said critically, but I misheard it as “You’re such an essentialist.”
I like this accidental term essentialist.
***
On the ferry at the weekend it was rough and windy from Cortes to Quadra. I’d never been on a bumpy BC sailing before but I spent my childhood, being of the Sealink generation, back and forth on the vicious Irish sea. Sometimes it was sooo windy we’d have to pull ourselves along the rails outside on the boat and it wouldn’t be possible to get around the corners at the head of the ship. Your hair would be on end!
Between Nanaimo and Van on Sunday it was again windy, but nothing like as hard on the stomach as that Cortes ferry. I was pleading with my son to come out and run along the deck with me for the craic, but he was nervous at the prospect. Given that sea air and fighting the wind is such a rare enough experience and it’s worth tackling nerves and I offered a few games of pac man in the arcade afterwards. Compared to the old Sealink winds of the 1970’s this was merely a bit of a breeze but we’d a hoot pulling through it.
The smell of boats has changed so much. There was almost a diesel or metal industrial smell that pervaded in the 70’s which would dissolve when everyone inevitably started puking their ring up. I recall if the sailing was rough, people had those bags to their noses and vomit would be the pervasive smell. I must look up and see whether things are just as rough between Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire and Fishguard.