The next 24 hours will be steeped in anticipation, because, tomorrow night I will be going on a little formal boating adventure, having secured two tickets to a four-course dinner cruise aboard a yacht, with cocktails and music (and dancing … and plenty of romance I presume … but, let’s hope no pirates, even though I’d be fine with a reasonable amount of swashbuckling)!
I don’t mean to oversell this thing, but it’s going to be kind of an all-out affair with some pretty-close-to-formal attire. (I will actually be wearing what some might call a “gown,” even though it’s technically made of jersey material — don’t take away my comfort!) I may be making way too big a deal out of it, but, if we can’t get excited about the little things, what’s left?
In preparation for my trip, here are some delightful quotes about “the sea” and all its mysterious magic.
“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” — Henry David Thoreau (from Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)
“’Look at that sea, girls–all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.’” — L.M. Montgomery (from Anne of Green Gables)
“My soul is full of longing/for the secret of the sea,/and the heart of the great ocean/sends a thrilling pulse through me.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“And now I know that we must lift the sail/And catch the winds of destiny/Wherever they drive the boat./To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,/But life without meaning is the torture/Of restlessness and vague desire—/It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.” — Edgar Lee Masters (from “George Gray”)
Julia Rogers 