In Cabin'd Ships At Sea
In Cabin'd Ships At Sea
In cabin'd ships at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,
Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,
Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under
many a star at night,
By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land,
be read,
In full rapport at last.
Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,
The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,
We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,
The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the
briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy
rhythm,
The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,
And this is ocean's poem.
Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,
You not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not
whither, yet ever full of faith,
Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!
Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it
here in every leaf;)
Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the
imperious waves,
Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea,
This song for mariners and all their ships.
by: Walt Whitman
I am home, then. It's the same and not the same.
I've so much to say, and no place yet to organize my thoughts. Let me say this: pre-planning for a long trip with lots of short parts and stops and starts really helped a lot. Rick Steeves, much as he annoys me (I'm jealous, yanno?) was invaluable, as were Couchsurfing.com and student_travel. I was able to keep both body and mind together with things I learned there.
Now on to a short review of In Celebration.
Not being a Brit, let alone a Sheffielder, I know there are things that I missed. The universals though- sons educated past where they're comfortable, parents who sacrificed more than they could afford to educate the sons, an economy that's changed and is changing again right under their feet, knocking them all off balance; that, and then the hidden things, stories known and not told, told and forgotten- all that I got, and was moved by, deeply.
Orlando's got a hard part- not much to say, but a lot to show, from inside a formerly volcanic now muted and drained man- so when I heard people say 'He didn't show much,' or 'He was good except for the crying' I was a little (a lot) annoyed. This man, Steven, who never cried as a baby, finds himself overcome in the night [after the Celebration dinner for his parents 40th wedding anniversary, thus the title] with deep wrenching sobs, which throws everyone for a loop and opens the way for painful and undiscussed memories and events in the family's life to come to surface. He did a beautiful job- bottled up and burnt-out, someone who's undone completely by trying to be what he's not, and unable to be what he is, in the face of his family's need for him to be who they think he is. I was impressed. Were some of the other actors 'better'? probably [more practiced, and less scrutinized, anyway- I felt badly for him, so many people there only to see 'orli' and not to see the play/story/characters. what pressure]. Was he good in the part? yes. did the play suffer for him being in it? no. Should he do more theatre? God, I hope so.
I'm looking at making a trip back in September. There's a one-day mental health conference I'd go to, and it's right round the time the play's run is supposed to be over. Wish me luck, eh?
More to come. Specific questions will help me bring out more- so ask away, down there in comments, eh?