On the Subject of Cruising

"Never a ship sails out of bay but carries my heart as a stowaway."

Roselle Mercier Montgomery, poet (1874 -1933).

Fourteen years ago this month, I had the great pleasure of spending two weeks cruising around the Caribbean aboard P&O's Artemis, in celebration of reaching my half-century.

For me, cruising is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Which, for those who know me well, may be considered somewhat of an unusual statement. Cruises are often considered to be relaxing, and I am not renowned for my ability to idle away time (or certainly that was the case back in 2010). Beach holidays, for example, certainly do not do it for me. However, I do find that cruising is one of the quickest ways to relax. I can spend entire days sitting on my cabin's balcony, happily reading or simply watching the water as I mentally compose a stanza or two for another poem. In fact, the first daft of my novel, Lamplight in the Shadows, was completed whilst onboard a cruise ship. 

The reason for this apparent paradox is quite simple. Whilst cruising, one is in the process of actually going somewhere. It is not a stagnant process (like sitting on a beach). Psychologically, I am content with the thought of being in the process of travelling to a new destination. The fact that I am not having to make any effort in bringing about that process is additionally satisfying, as well as relaxing. It doesn't even matter what the destination is, as long as one is moving.

That latter thought is very much in tune with the 19th century Scottish novelist and essayist, Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote:

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is the move."

I couldn't agree more.

Notes from a Reading of Thomas Merton

Last evening, I was in the splendid company of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, priest, writer, and poet. 

Sadly, Merton died in 1968. However, he left for us a tremendous literary legacy, much of which is accessible to the 'lay person' and not just meant for those of an academic mind. Through his books, one can truly be in his company and be inspired by his words of insight and wisdom.

Anyway, back to my reading of last evening. I was engrossed in what Merton said about (and indeed, wrote to) the Russian writer, Boris Pasternak, the author of Dr Zhivago. Dr Zhivago is one of my all-time favourite books. It falls into the literary genre of an historical-novel; the love story of a beautiful woman and a physician-poet, set amidst the social turmoil of Russia between the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. 

To Pasternak, Merton wrote:

'all our work remains yet to be done, the work of transformation which is the work of love, and love alone.'

He continued:

'All great writing is in some sense revolutionary. Life itself is revolutionary, because it constantly strives to surpass itself.'

The act of reading, alongside his writing, was extremely important to Merton. To further quote from him:

'I always have at least three books going at the same time'. 

That sounds familiar, and I can further concur with him when he says:

'The real joy of reading is not in the reading itself, but in the thinking which it stimulates and which may go beyond what is said in the book.'

In Merton's mind, for a monk, reading and thinking are inseperable processes from that of meditation. I am sure the idea is not confined to monks. Anyone with a love of silence and contemplation will warm to his words.  

Continuing that theme, Merton wrote that the books he read (which were, not surprisingly, mainly theological and philosophical in nature, although also including some novels such as Doctor Zhivago and also the poems of William Blake)...

'and others like them, have helped me to discover the real meaning of my life, and have made it possible for me to get out of the confusion and the meaningless of an existence completely immersed in the needs and passiveness fostered by a culture in which sales are everything.'

That world to which Merton refers still exists. It is the materialistic world of capitalism and commerce, and it is not a world that I warm to. As I sit here writing in my library, I know that it is a world metaphorically and literally "on the other side of the wall" to my own world of God, love, and books. However, it is increasingly a world that is strange and unrecognisable to me. It may be a product of age, but I find myself retreating further and further from that world, and in the process, rejecting what it stands for - with the exception, of course, for the ability to purchase more books...

and ice-cream.

The Value of Indolence

Following on from yesterday's post, I unearthed an entry from my journal, written in March 2010 at the time of my first reading Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. The following paragraphs are reproduced from it...

Cerebral Tai Chi

'Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.'

So wrote Lawrence Durrell in his 1957 book, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. He later described the necessary travelling companions in order to achieve this utopia; namely, loneliness and time, declaring them as 'those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything'.

He was, of course, writing about his time in that wonderfully complex, Mediterranean retreat otherwise known as the Birth Place of Aphrodite. Indeed, it is where I am now writing, accompanied by a welcoming, though yet still cool, morning sun; its rays reflected by the expanse of yellow wild flowers and intensely luxuriant grasslands which rise behind my home here. The only sound is that of sparrows in a nearby carob tree, interspersed by the distant call of a wood-pigeon, and the soft mewing of a ginger cat, which has seated itself expectantly on the terrace outside my kitchen door, and which now stares back at me in the hope that I have something more exciting on offer than the occasional man-made 'meow' I return to it in the spirit of trans-cultural friendship.

Durrell is a writer I immediately warmed to. His work speaks of a man who understands the enormity of the mundane, the intrinsic value of indolence, the desirability of solitude, and the wealth of material residing just out of reach within the grey cells of one's mind, just waiting to be freed by the onset of some melancholically-induced cerebral exercise.

Cyprus is an island which allows for all of that. It is impossible to ignore the whispers from centuries past that filter through the rocks, like vapours through the pores of a living, yet antiquated, historical tome. 'Listen to me,' the land murmurs; 'listen and feel; listen and learn; listen and understand.'

So I listen, alone and unrushed. I allow the sounds of nature to filter through the labyrinth of neurones which somehow act as the repository of my thoughts; I let the rocky terraces speak to me of the island's origins and the tales of centuries past, laid down within it like seams of history, layer upon eventful layer, and I feel my mind tuning in to that same wavelength which endeared itself to Durrell, as it has to so many writers over the centuries. Yet, as I do so, my thoughts stretch, not just back down the monumental ages belonging to this island, but laterally across to the other side of the world, to the Caribbean Sea, where I sailed less than two months ago, and where, alone and with all the time in the world to muse, I cerebrally travelled back not just centuries, but through millennia, to the time of the world's earliest existence. It was a cathartic moment, and one which I tried to capture in a haiku, written whilst sailing:

Wave laps against wave:

wind's primeval voice echoes

from the start of time.

That, I believe, is precisely what Durrell understood could be achieved from travelling introspectively, with time and solitude as one's companions. It is achieved through bouts of unmoving contemplation; that splendid quality the Moslems know as kayf. It requires no more than the gentle stretching of the grey cells. However, the reward is immeasurable.