September 3, 2014 5. Sea and Suez The time and place for such considerations is approaching even while we steam through this quiet green water, a majestic daisy chain of sedate ships. I don’t know if “steaming” is the right way to describe our movement. Steaming is inaccurate, unless the black bunker smoke counts as steam. Driving sounds wrong, despite the engines. Sailing is daft. It is a small point of vocabulary, but I have time to make it into a big one in these listless days and thousands of nautical miles, so that it ends up as a grand theory about how we haven’t bothered to update our language for these modern ships; the bigger they have become, the farther they have traveled from our vocabulary. Clearly there is an empty space in my brain that needs filling. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
No comments:
Post a Comment