ónen i-estel edain
There is something indelibly beautiful about a ferry ride. At the beach earlier this week our group rode the car ferry to and from the town of Southport, near Wilmington, for a late lunch at an oceanside seafood restaurant. The ferry ride was remarkably inexpensive and easy and the procedure well mapped-out. There was an air-conditioned passenger lounge upstairs from the car deck, but even in the heat, for my money, it wasn’t the place to be. Leaning on the rail, feeling the breeze coming up off the side of the hull, eyeing the pelicans perched on the buoys and markers and waving at the sportfishermen… That made the trip. What is it about ferry rides that makes them romantic? There aren’t really any moments or images of transcendent beauty. Sure, the waves receding from the bow and the foam tumbling over and over itself in the wake all has a hypnotic quality to it, much like a well-stoked fireplace, but romantic and beautiful aren’t exactly the first adjectives that come to mind. The environment’s the same way–there’s a kind of beauty in the wilderness, the tall grasses entrenched on strips of island, baked by the sun shining through the subtropical haze, but it’s not your typical romantic setting. I think a lot of it, in the end, has to do with the nature of the event itself, with the ferry ride. In much the same way a train ride is intrinsically romantic, the insertion of a lingering technology, especially one that involves so much iron and machinery, into a day-to-day we know to be modern, produces a kind of pervasive secondhand nostalgia that is enveloping for those of us just content to stake out a spot near the bow and watch the waves come and go and the terns plunge into the water for their dinner… It’s the anachronism of an older-world means of transportation.
I’m overwhelmed by preparations for school in a week and a half. There’s so much left to do. And yet… this is probably one of the first, if not the first, situations in which I haven’t been overly rushed, putting off everything to the last minute. In other words, there’s been no cause for panic yet. But it’s still keeping me up at night. Nothing keeps me up at night, especially with the sleep schedule I keep these days (but will have to shift radically for school purposes). My mind won’t turn off. And the feelings that I have about school–excitement, nervousness, anticipation–can’t keep up and linger from one subject to the next as my mind darts about, so I end up feeling unduly strongly about say, dialectical materialism or scenes from the movie I watched last night or theories of antigravity or my car’s tire tread depth or the geography of Sumatra… It gets really weird sometimes.
I have been on that ferry….for me it is the salt air that seals the experience
Southport
I have never ridden that ferry ,but I love Southport. Southport inspires in me a great desire to take an afternoon and stroll.
Yeah well…you’re really weird sometimes, ya know that? ;-)
I grew up at the beach, in the sound, among the marshes and tidepools. I miss it a lot. Some things still remain mostly untouched by man. These things are the ones that have some sort of unexplainable attraction to them…because there is no explicit reason or purpose that we have superimposed on their existence. Then there are the things that are a sort of nature/man hybrid…like bouys and seagulls…that seem to coexist almost effortlessly. I think it must show us something about God that we’re not used to feeling or thinking about.
Tread depth/tire circumference/friction coefficients…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – is anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think on these things. Personally, i think Paul was talking about all things automotive…don’t you???
Oh, and btw…i’m selling the ’69 after all. I think it’s God’s timing and i feel really right and at peace about it. Strange. I’m still sad, but it’s ok. It’s going to a good home (the guy i sold my old engine to) and i’ll be able to keep up with it and hear about it on a regular basis. Mebbe oneday i’ll be able to buy it back, but for now this is the right decision. My automotive focus is shifting from working on cars to driving them and selling the ’69 is going to make it all possible. I sure will miss her, though.
Hope you’re doing well. I miss seeing you here around these parts.
Oh, and i found the PS2. Somehow it wound up in the back of the ’69. See…you didn’t need it anyways. ;P
You around today and tomorrow? I’m doing the last of the moving and I’d like to maybe swing by your place…
I have errands and misc stuff to do today, but I’ll be at Sips tonight from around 8PM and dont have any real plans for tomorrow. Give me a call.