Thursday 18 March 2010

Ship Lag: This Was Three Hours Ago

How delightful the departure! Not because it’s a departure but because it’s delightful—just the way I would have done it: fire the engines backward from the ferry terminal (the 11-lane parking lot, near full two hours ago, empty now), let the back end drift out a bit, fire the sideways engine at the front until the nose points out to the exit channel in the middle of Santander Bay, and then fire forward, letting loose with a deep, echoing blast from the horn and sliding past the para-sailers, faster than a man can walk, and out beyond La Magdelena peninsula, where I spent such happy hours yesterday, out to open sea.

First I was ready to claim this ferry is so large I can’t feel it moving. Then, walking back to my sixth-deck cabin near the back left corner of the ship, I felt it move. One step of my Spanish sandal seemed to land sooner than expected, the next not landing at all.

If I wanted to hum, I’d hum “Farewell Iberia”, if there was a song of that name. Land of the sea.

Having finished Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (borrowed from Maria in Vigo and already posted back) and Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (bought second-hand in Lisbon), I’ve started Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked, almost the only book in the ship’s shop by someone not named Steele, Brown, King, or Ludlum (although I almost opted for a Patricia Cornwell mystery). After Woolf and Sterne, and Moure before that, the Hornby seems thin, quick—like travelling by plane, instead of the mightyPont-Aven, bound for Plymouth.

2 comments:

Tracy Hamon said...

Mr. Hill said he would buy the flowers himself. Probably one of my all time favorite novels, Mrs. Dalloway; I really like the ease of the transitions between external and internal, but also how both of these are mirrored throughout each character's experience.

Gerald Hill said...

Agreed, fabulous, great wheeling paragraphs that swoop in and out again.