Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…a tale of a fateful trip
We arrived at the airport just before 6 am and the flight was painless – the soft cacophony of voices, the drunken fog of sleepiness, the disembodied voice of the pilot. You feel like a child again when you're on a plane, like you’re on a bus ride, the flight attendants are the “adults” who bustle by you and serve you like your mother did when you were sick. We arrive to the blinding sun of Miami, Florida. Is there a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, held captive too long by Old Man Winter? The sun is discomfiting; too faux, too ripped from context.
Before long we are in our cabin and I’m sitting on the balcony in the the G-force winds smoking a cigar. All horizon, all the time, a sea broken by whitecaps. Call me Ishmael. I am Mogli, raised by the sea. This balcony is a wondrous thing. At Hilton Head, the balcony over looking the ocean has a view that never changes, but here every day you wake up expectantly to see what the port of call looks like, pre-tooth brushing and still in underwear. Cruising does have its moments. No wonder William F. Buckley is so enamoured by it, although his sailing is to this cruise as hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail is to a walk in the park.
Cruises force you to make time to do what you’d really like to do, once you run out of things you think you should do. After the obligatory exercise and morning ablutions, there is, at some point in the long afternoon, a joy. This came today at the adult pool, “adult” not for pornographic reasons but because it is farther from the rockin’ music. I was buoyed by Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” and by our location, which was mercifully far from the endless drum beat of the music at the main pool. The music was fine the first hour – how would I know that I’m on a cruise without hearing, “Hot, Hot, Hot!”? – but unaided by much alcohol the music wore. I popped in a CD – instant bliss. Twenty-two Marian hymns by the choir at the National Basilica. When the sopranos take it up a notch in “Hail Holy Queen” it’s all goosebumps. I look over at the Asian gentleman across from me and he’s reading “Deconstructing Schizophrenia”. I wonder how relaxing a read that can be. His wife is reading a mystery novel. Roth’s prose is so seamless that you forget you’re reading him, or reading anything for that matter. There’s something self-effacing about it – he disappears behind the story, unlike with Updike. Updike is often so lush and poetic that you never really forget you are reading him; it’s like trying to forget you are watching Jack Nicholson play someone other than Jack Nicholson.
The ship has its share of the very attractive. My wife notices a beautifully built woman and mentions that fact. I’m not sure why after the resurrection glorified bodies have to be wonderful bodies, such as the ones we had at 25 or ones we potentially could’ve had at 25. I think it would be wonderful to look through the eyes of Mother Teresa, eyes without prejudices. An ugly person would be completely without stigma in heaven, perhaps the greater exalted for it. But also you would want for the ugly person to receive a beautiful body as part of their recompense.
First Stop: Nassau
Our first morning was Sunday and they fortunately celebrated Mass on board. In fact, Mass was every morning thanks to the presence of a priest. The first port o’ call was Nassau, Bahamas where I walked/jogged around the city both for the exercise and to see more. My wife went shopping with her friends; shopping is an anathema to me. The guidebooks had warned not to go on the “other side of the hill”, the hill being at the heart of downtown. I wasn’t sure which side of the hill they meant until, of course, I got there. Then it became immediately apparent. Mean streets look mean anywhere. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ignore the guidebook, but I ran down the street anyway coming to the old 1885 church St. Francis Xavier, where Mass was going on for an impressive 90+ minutes. And it was packed to the rafters. Amen.
I liked the Mass times sign:
Mon: 7am Tues-Thurs – 7am Fri: 7am
...along with the less regular weekend Mass times.
I peaked my head in a window of one of the many doors of this large church and saw many, many very well dressed folks. Blacks tend to dress for church better than whites, and Nassau appeared to be no exception. Since I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I couldn’t go inside though I was invited by the usher. I waited outside awhile and listened to the music. At first it was as though I were standing outside a Baptist chuch in Harlem. No “Amen’s” and “Hallelujah” ejaculations but the singing was right there, with a little bit of Dixieland jazz thrown in (I realized later that came from the presence of a saxophone in the church ensemble. There was a LOT of music in this Mass. Mostly music, in fact, punctuated by words instead of the typical words punctuated by music. But after this unfamiliar tune I suddenly hear the words of the creed: “There is one God..” recited fervently and without affectation and it was melting, this Church universal. These were my brothers and sisters in every sense, including their incipient reception of His Body and Blood, creed and sacrament.
Sunday Night
This ship really gets the details down right. Our room has curved shower doors that form a half-capsule when closed. Huge full length windows in the topside deck bathroom allow you to easily imagine engaging in every guy’s primal desire – to pee in the ocean. But the main thing is the easy availability of food, really an astonishing thing. Oh for my youthful metabolism. Today I interrupted my sunning for a late lunch by simply grabbing a bowl and filling it with grouper and salmon and taking it back up to top-deck. It certainly feels free, although we paid for it a couple of months ago. (The price was reasonable because we put a deposit on it about 9 months ago aided by discounts.)
The variety of foods offered at lunch is jaw-dropping. I went on a cruise in ’87 and I recall nothing like this. There is an amazing lack of scarcity. I constantly pass ice-cream cone dispensers and the hassle-factor in having one infinitely approaches 0. I’m amazed at my own restraint. I only eat one all trip.
Irritations of varying degrees nip at the vacation; a sense of disorder pervades. The routines, rhythms, and small disciplines vanish – in a moment you forget to return your eyeglasses to their case, sticking them in your pocket instead. Moments later you pull them out, broken. (Okay.
I broke my glasses. “You” would be presumptuous in assuming my folly is the norm. I scotch-taped up the glasses as best I could. Arrgghh.) You misplace your cruise-issued towel at some point between lunch and the stairmaster and you get charged a cool $20. Arrgghh.
Twenty-five mile an hour winds today; folks in their 70s lay in it for hours, placid as though in the eye of the hurricane. One fellow wears a NY Yankee cap and I figure it must be superglued to his head for it not to be blown off. I see the eldery Sox fan and think “Stoic, Frugal New Englander”…i.e. “I paid for this trip and bygummit I’m going to enjoy it!”. The sun comes and then goes. Our watches are so helplessly derivative, as if they have any intrinsic meaning. On a vacation, where the sun is the raison de etra, clocks derive what power they have strictly from the sun’s time piece.
After dinner we went to one of the on board shows. The entertainment was light, but enjoyably light, like key lime pie. They also have these improvisationalists circle around the ship doing things that bordered the surreal. One guy, dressed as a plumber, went around with a toilet plunger randomly plunging the floor. Another sprayed room deodorizer after guests pass, as if they smelled.
Dinners
Our dinner companions were better than expected. At the table of eight, four I didn’t know before the cruise. One couple was from Ohio and one from Boston, Mass, and they were as different as ice from fire. The Ohio couple, at least the guy half, was very easy-going and easy to get along with. The girl was sort of a live-wire. She didn’t get along with the Boston guy. The Boston couple was older, about 60 years old, and they have been on 19 cruises (“2 every year – we don’t want to leave anything behind”). Chuck was very opinionated and brash, exactly what you would expect from a blue collar Italian guy from the east coast. Very quick-witted, he made the dinners infinitely much more interesting. Having met him three minutes before, he made it clear he was very much against this war in Iraq and said he couldn’t stand Fox’s news coverage of the war, which he said was biased. Didn’t like Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly (although at a later dinner called him ‘brilliant’). Perhaps we “looked” conservative, how else to explain this preemptive strike? Best I could tell about his politics is that he’s a Democrat except on taxes. Told us how bad it is in Taxachusettes. Has to go up to New Hampshire to buy things (since they don’t have sales tax). Both he and his wife were full-blooded Italians. The closest we came to discussing religion was that his wife mentioned that he’d wanted to be a priest when he was little and my wife interjected that all Catholic boys want to be a priest when they’re young.
Marie tended to finish Chuck’s thoughts a lot, after which he would invariably heave a long sigh and say, exasperatingly, that he threw his voice, ala a ventriloquist.
“Are you finished?” he asked her.
“You should know if she’s finished since it’s your voice you’re throwing!”
This Is Your Cruise Director Speaking...
I’m unduly fascinated by our cruise director, mainly how he can be so enthusiastic cruise after numbing cruise, saying the same things, making the same jokes (“Man, are you folks eating or what? I found a white suit lying on the dining hall floor. Oh no, I said, they’ve eaten a waiter!) . You can’t fake enthusiasm, can you? He appears ageless, a cross between Dick Clark and Pat Sajak. Can a game show host afford to have the dark night of soul? Is the unexamined life so bad? Saw him leaning on a post outside the San Juan pier. I thought how different it would seem if he were smoking a cigarette, as if that would seem cynical. Cigars, less addictive, seem to lend more detachment.
St. Thomas
Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering St. Thomas and the Virgin Islands during his second voyage to the New World in 1493. I assume it was named for the apostle and not Aquinas; I wonder what either man’s reaction would be to the plethora of “St. Thomas’s” across young girls’ backsides.
Today we did the “Bob” excursion. “BOB” stands for breathing observation bubble, basically an underwater scooter with a bubble helmet. You go eight to ten feet down and tool around. The problem with such a device is that I like to be in control of my breathing situation. I’m far too fond of oxygen and don’t like the scarcity principle applied to it. I’ve never felt a moment’s dread in an airplane, but for some reason I just wasn’t enjoying BOB so I got down to the bottom and then said I was ready to come back up. I snorkeled happily. Snorkeling seems a fine activity. God never intended for man to be eight feet below the surface of the ocean for very long if’n you ask me.
As luck would have it we were filmed by a crew from NBC. They say we’ll be on the Today Show some time within the next 2-3 weeks. My wife enjoyed BOB more than me and was interviewed. I hope she makes it on TV, although it’s embarrassing for me. The Captain thanked us for being here, for without us he’d have to get a real job. Industry seems light here on St. Thomas. Andy Rooney, hardly an authority, says that the colder the climate, the more work gets done.
Back at the cabin, I notice a man in a tiny coast guard boat floating about. How contemplative an existence! The only thing close I could think of is maybe a forest ranger during off-off season. How different his life must be, constantly sitting in a boat in the sun.
I can’t get enough of looking over these hills from the private balcony. Verdant, conical hills like green pyramids bedecked with white houses with Santa Barbara-ish red roofs. Sailboats sit in the harbor maintaining a proper British distance. Amphibious planes happen by. The sun lights up everything exquisitely. For some reason, I recall postcards sent by a penpal when I was in grammar school of her fjord in Norway.
Age may be the determining function for your location on ship at any given time:
<30 – at the main pool, with the band in front of you and the bar behind you
30-50 – at the quieter adult pool
>60 – upstairs on the private balcony (i.e. cruise as floating retirement community; assisted living, heavy on the ‘assisted’)
San Juan
Today was San Juan, and the day was hotly glorious. After a night of gastric distress, I stumbled to 8am Mass and then read until 10am at which point the group headed on a shopping excursion on the mean streets of San Juan, mean on your wallet that is. Store after store after store of jewelry and arts and crafts and t-shirts. Fortunately after an hour of this my wise wife and I bolted and explored the Old Cathedral of San Juan. Lots of side altars, one of which was being used for Mass. I bought a beautiful Marian t-shirt in the nave after exploring the undercroft which included a couple of fake bodies of saints under glass coffins, the sort of thing my evangelical wife finds creepy and strange. I try to explain that this was the style of 19th century Catholicism. The bloody crucifix was much blooder and gorier than perhaps any I’d seen – but how is it different than Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie, which, by all reports, is extremely bloody and gory? Doesn’t it take blood and gore to get our attention? Is this part of what Flannery O’Connor meant when she said you have to shout to get the attention of deaf people?
We walked down the florid streets of pastel buildings to the old fort of San Juan. Built in the 1700s as a defense, it played a role in the Spanish-American war. The Spanish built a small chapel to St. Barbara, which was hit by an American shell but didn’t explode, leaving the altar intact.
As we pulled out of San Juan harbor after a painfully short day (we had to be back on board by 1:30), for fifteen minutes or so a tiny coast guard vehicle clung to our side like a barnacle. Touching. Like an offensive lineman being guarded by the 90 lb kicker. Goodbye San Juan, we hardly knew ye. We shoved off and at once the blue desert, billiard-smooth, re-asserts itself.
I recall disparate books about the sea I’d read like William F. Buckley’s sailing books and Steven Callahan’s remarkable
Adrift, about his seventy-six days lost at sea on a five foot inflatable raft. And always John Masefield's
Sea Fever:
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume and the sea gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gipsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife,
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
At dusk the clouds look like islands as the sun leaves behind phantasmagoric aurora borealis-like lights. It’s only by concentrating that I consider we could be vulnerable out here in the middle of the Caribbean. The life boats seem like needless precautions, but then that’s what they thought on the Titanic.
Vacations teach you to “look” again – to see. When everything is new, such as a foreign port of call, looking “pays off” and you begin to notice more with begets noticing more. I notice the little sea light about the door of the balcony and the carpet and fine wood railing. And I notice the wording above the bathroom toilet: “Please do not thrown foreign objects in toilet bowl”. I make a mental note to make sure only domestically-made objects are thrown in said toilet bowl.
*
At dinner, the conversations deepen. Chuck tells us of his near death.
Self-disclosure is a tricky thing. Too much, too early and it seems a desperate thing, or it cheapens it. Self-disclosure by an author, whether in fiction or a memoir, seems respectable by virtue of it being his profession (a poor analogy might be disrobing for a doctor). Self-disclosures in blogs tends to be more disreputable, but I’m not sure why it matters whether you or not you are being paid for something.
So it came up in conversation, and he was initially reluctant to tell us of his disease, still obscure to me, that almost took his life. It was five years ago and he couldn’t move or respond but he could hear the doctor tell another doctor that in 12 hours it’d be one way or the other. 50-50 chance. Imagine hearing that and knowing that in twelve hours you’d be either alive or dead? If I understood correctly, he had a cyst on his intestine wall the size of his fist and if it had broken he’d have been instantly dead. So he was lucky to even be at the twelve-hour point. You always hear “if one more” or “if this had happened” and they’d be dead, and it never gets old because by definition the teller of the story has come through it. Dead men tell no tales.
Chuck mentioned how his father would drink like a sieve – wine, of course, as a good Italian, but also an obscure drink that starts with a ‘b’. We marveled at how much that generation drank – his father’s, my grandfather’s. Functional alcoholics, I’d say, with a tinge of envy. Their world was far harder than mine though, so I don’t begrudge them. I knew someone who was given the stark choice of “the drink”, as the Irish call it, and a wife. She gave him an ultimatum shortly after he proposed marriage – either me or the booze. To his credit, he was honest and chose the booze. To her credit, she stuck to her ultimatum. People were tough then. He died young, in his 50s, and his sister was distraught but heard his voice. “Don’t mourn, don’t be sad,” she swears she heard him saying, “it’s wonderful here.” As witnesses go, she was solid gold. Didn’t touch liquor, ever prayerful and religious without a touch of sentimentality. Visions and voices from beyond are only as believable as the trustworthiness of the witness, I guess.
Chuck and I also talked about the near slave labor conditions of the crew. We did win the lottery, as the Pearl Jam song goes, by being born in the U.S.. Six months of twelve hour days, seven days a week. Then two months off. Then six more months, 12 by 7. Ouch. (When do they go to Mass?) Our waiter, 35, has been doing it for five years. A look at where our wait staff comes from – the Philippines, Columbia, and Jamaica, is pretty much a statement on the poverty of those countries. An out-of-date but perhaps still ballpark indicator shows 1989 per capita income at $1,200 for Jamaica, $710 for the Philippines. The U.S. was at $21,000.
Labadee, Haiti
Haiti wasn’t what I expected it to be, but then we really didn’t see much of the “real” Haiti. Labadee is a private Caribbean resort, a little fenced off edge of the island. I jogged around the perimeter, feeling like a zoo animal. Just beyond the fence sat a couple of Haitians, surely wondering why this fool was jogging in the noonday heat. I wondered what they were doing; what is it like to have all that time and be patient enough to sit around with nothing to do? The world is divided into readers and non-readers, and non-readers must entertain themselves more easily. What is it like to be unemployed on a tropical island, rather than employed in frigid Ohio? From the ship you could see the tiny village of Labadee, a little collection of brightly colored and greatly weathered homes nestled in the bay and humbled by the great green mountain/hills above and beyond them. To call it picturesque doesn’t begin to cut it. I could’ve gazed at that bucolic scene all day.
Villagers get to sell arts and crafts from inside the resort, presumably a prime source of income for residents. There were three main flea markets, and the selling was aggressive, to say the least, at the first two. But at the third all was calm. I asked why there was no selling pressure and was told, “we’re always here – they have to take turns.” The difference was striking – overweight, sunburnt Americans and black, gaunt Haitians, mostly men in their late 20s, who would do everything to get you to look at their stall of little statues and cups and souvenirs. “Sir!”, “sir!” erupts when you turn a corner.
At the end of the day the ship sailed away from the newly empty resort as a little boat of workers sped back to their village. One waves at the huge ship and we wave back. Another goes to the aft and windmills his arms in exhilaration. At being done with work? At success in sales? Just because he’s alive?
The music as we pulled away from Labadee was, for once, wonderful. It was Latin but quietly soulful, which finally matched my metabolism and internal rhythms. The cruise was ebbing away, as was Haiti. Let go mon, a cruise is a series of goodbyes, and leaving Haiti was hard. That primitive impulse, always latent, gets triggered by scenes of utter simplicity like this mountain village. Jay McInerney put it in “Bright Lights, Big City”:
"You tell her there are so damn many things on your mind. You can tell her the date of the Spanish Armada, but you couldn't even guess at the balance of your checkbook. Every day you misplace your keys or your wallet. That's one of the reasons you're always late. It's so hard just getting in here every morning, let alone remembering all that you're supposed to do. So many little things. The big things - at least the big things declare open combat. But these details...When you are engaged with the main army - then to have these niggardly details sniping at you from the goddamned trees. Along the windows, the potted plants form a jungle skyline, a green tableau of the simple life. You think of islands, palm trees, food-gathering. Escape."
Of course, their life is neither as simple as I think and much harder than I can imagine. Goodness and purity come not from without, but from within, and that is what is ultimately attractive about anyone, be they city or rural folk.
Last Rites
An island off the coast. It’s Cuba. It’s also the last day at sea, so there’s Guinness, a ‘sippin’ drink’ and sun and reads. After Mass and the morning jog, the latter which feels exhibitionistic (I’m not used to running around a track around which lay two hundred supine bodies), I have time for books and music. I liberally read from Philip Roth, finish both Paul Collins’ “Sixpence House” and Philip Trower’s wonderful “Turmoil and Truth”. While reading Roth, I try to understand what is so horrible about “the American Puritanism” that he, or his character, appears to think is so bad. He is writing about the Clinton’s problems with Lewiniski, and he sees it of a piece with political correctness, seeing no difference between Kenneth Starr and William Bennett and Barbara Walters and Joyce Brothers. He claims it’s as though Sinclair Lewis had never existed and “Babbit” had never been written. I recently read an interview with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and he reacted in the same way – totally incredulous that Clinton could be impeached for oral sex. I just don’t get that they don’t get that it was about the integrity of the law and not about sex. When Clinton lied to the American people, that was something he would have to answer for to the voters and to God. But when he lied under oath and committed perjury, even after being given a heads up (i.e. senators told him that this was the time to step up and tell the truth) – he still didn’t. It was the perjury part that naturally unsettled the lawyer/politicians in D.C., because a nation is based on laws. No one considers how you murder someone particularly relevant. The crime of murder is just as bad whether by knife, gun or strangulation. That Clinton’s perjury was over sex seemed incidental, the mere instrument of perjury. Given that he would never face jail time or anything other than losing two years out of eight years as President of the United States, it would seem a very small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. But he ended up being impeached without losing office, something which no one should have reason to complain.
The lounge chairs on deck are arranged tighter together than two Sicilians at a family reunion. To my left – major snoring. I sleep farther away from my wife than I was lying next to this stranger. My wife, on the right, thought it funny.
Various
The “midnight buffet” proves that people crave ritual. How else to explain it? You’ve eaten 17 meals in 5 days, gone thru 3 packs of Alka Seltzers and yet you line up for a midnight feeding? I don’t get it. I can only assume that the very first or second cruise included an ice sculpture as an excuse to eat and every cruise since pays homage to this frozen calf with shrimp cocktail.
My theory is that cruises are devilishly attractive to women because they are constantly on diets of one kind or another and a cruise allows them to “eat like they’ve never eaten before”. I’m not that enamoured of food (Guinness is another matter). I’d have gladly skipped many of the lunches and dinners for sun and beer.
Men go for the gambling, the excuse to drink, and the food they don't get at home. No wonder cruises are so popular. They appeal to both sexes, and that’s not something you can say of everything. They also take all the work out of a vacation, something both men and women can appreciate. Your room is cleaned 3 times a day! I’ve got to buy stock in Royal Caribbean. As the population ages, this will be a huge boon to the industry since cruises attract an older demographic. Remember where you heard this. As always, buy low and sell higher. Uber-cruisers get addicted. One couple was at 101 cruises (yes, one hundred and one cruises) and another at 41. The couple with 41 currently cruise a dozen times a year. Over $25 grand a year. On the bright side, I’m sure there grocery bills are painless. Who wants to eat after a cruise?
After a few hours of head-banging music and close quarters with snoring girls, it’s nice to be on the private balcony again. This ten feet before me contains our own piece of the horizon, peaceful as our own backyard. Whatever Stockholm Syndrone there was seems to abated; the sun no longer feels faux. This sea that God covered 3/4ths of the earth with is strikingly beautiful. Why didn’t I bring something by Kipling? I wonder where the plank is on this ship, and if it’s suitable for walking. The clouds come and allow only a shaft of light to get through, under which a ship passes gloriously, wearing a diadem of rays. The last day at sea is a time to be grateful.
Last Hour
I surface top-side, one last time and find a ghost town. The stairmasters are riderless, the calypso band has disbanded. I pop in an Irish CD briefly but the songs sound sad, even the happy ones. It’s time to head home.
Plane Ridin' Home
The Da Vinci Code was everywhere. It seems like a cult book to me, sort of like “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” was a few years ago. The girl across the aisle is reading it and the flight attendant walks by and notes approvingly, “I loved it! I think I liked “Angels and Demons” even more. You’ll have to read that. The Vatican—“
She was interrupted by someone and when she turned back to the girl across from me she didn’t finish whatever she was going to say about the Vatican...
THE END
In philosophy, the Thomist revival was probably this moderate aggiornamento's most striking achievement. Outside the Church, St. Thomas and the scholastics had for centuries been treated as philosophical non-persons. But by the 1940s, sixty years after Leo XIII's call for the restoration of Christian philosophy, the situation had been completely reversed. Thinkers like Gilson and Maritain had forced even die-hard adherents of the 'religion equals superstition' school, represented by Bertrand Russell, to admit that St. Thomas, even if wrong, was a figure of world stature. 
