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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Maritime Quote of the Day

Happy, but belated Vernal Equinox to everyone. The official end of winter and the persistance of gray cold days brings to mind a classic Melville quote:

whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

If I were to go to sea for such a reason, it would be in late January, early February. Annually that is when this quote starts running around in my head. The gray days, the cold, the wind, the hours inside dark rooms, dark houses. This year I didn't knock anyones hat off, no coffin warehouses in sight and so I thought maybe the winter blues weren't getting to me. But today I'm wondering if it was a more of low-grade, insidious 'deep November'. Here it is Spring, and I just don't feel sprung. This morning I woke up thinking that I could row across the Atlantic. (And not in one of those fancy decked out rowboats, but more in the Harpo and Samuelson style). I hope real spring comes soon!

Today I'm at the Boston Navy Yard - more on that later.

2 comments:

Dwayne Clark said...

Hang in there.

Dwayne

Kelly said...

Thanks Dwayne. I think we'll make it.