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ROGER ROSENBLATT: "There is nothing, absolutely nothing half so
much worth doing as simply messing around in boats, or with boats. In
'em, or out of 'em, it doesn't matter." That's from "The Wind
in the Willows," not from me, but it expresses, as one says, my
sentiments exactly. I cannot explain it, but of course I'll try-- this
fixation with boats, adoration of boats, boat contemplation and worship.
I am not even talking about the elegant boats; the tall ships that recently
made their royal progress into New York Harbor, or sailboats, the birdlike
vessels of real boaters. I'm talking engine-driven, down and dirty powerboats:
The short ships. I have a Boston whaler, out of Hampton watercraft and
marine in Hampton Bays; it's my "Pequod," my "Santa Maria."
I sit in her for hours while she's tied up in her slip. I hose her down.
I think about her. It has something to do with the sea, I suppose.
In the bad movie made of the good book, "The Perfect Storm,"
George Clooney dreams into his work, and defines his freedom. Cast off
the bow line, cast off the stern. Then he and his fisherman crew go
out to meet a 50-foot wall of water. I'll take my waves a bit smaller,
say, one or two feet. Still, the attraction has to do with the sea.
It has something to do with writing, too. E.B. White has an essay that
begins, "Waking or sleeping, I dream of boats." He might have
been talking about writing-- the same obsessiveness, the same remote
feeling of never getting it done. You want to give up the ship, sell
the boat to the boatyard, but you don't. Two irresistible crafts: Something
to do with writing, something to do with the sea. A play on Synge's
play, "Riders to the Sea." Writers to the Sea. It's where
one goes alone. Here's the connection: Too easy for words. "Cast
off the bow line, cast off the stern."
Whether one writes as gently as E.B. White or as furiously as Conrad
or Melville, writing is scary, often involves a willful loss of bearings.
You don't know where you're going. The slightest shift of wind or current
can throw you off course, but you, in your skillful, reckless pursuit,
do not always know if off course is off course -- before your eyes,
a placid, terrorizing blue. Attack it in so many forms-- rowboat, yacht,
barge, ferry; poem, novel, play, essay; big wake, no wake; taste of
salt. And what lies or moves under all that water? Monsters, natch.
You created every one. I don't own a wooden boat, but I wish I did.
"Don't ever buy one of those," my betters tell me, "you'll
sink a fortune into the upkeep." Yes, I get it. Ridiculously imprudent
to buy a wooden boat-- one for example, like a 1924 Fay and Bowen runabout,
a 1921 launch, a 1930 Blanchard dream boat, a 1920 pagan canoe; any
of these things ridiculously imprudent. I think I'll call her "ridiculously
imprudent." In the morning, one may sit down to write or take out
a boat. It's much the same thing. The blank paper pretends that you
have never met before; a woman of the night faking coquetry and virgin
territory. Blameless and dark as the sea, it beckons, dares you to place
something on it, to make your mark with a pen or a boat. Cast off the
bowline. Cast off the stern. I have taken this trip a great many times.
I know how to do it. My heart's in my mouth. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.
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