The Cruise of the Nona, Hilaire Belloc (1925; Loreto, 2014). Late in the May of 1925, around midnight, Hilaire Belloc climbed into a tiny boat and put out to sea so that he would have some time to think. The sea gives ample time to think, especially if like Belloc you disdain the use of a motor. Some wag once jested that sailing is like being at war: long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of abject terror. I suppose in some sense that’s correct, but give me the boredom of the sailboat any day over the boredom of the trench, the boredom of the cubicle, the boredom of endless doomscrolling.
On the particular point regarding the pleasure of doing as generations prior have, I've been mulling over this for some time, with still half formed thoughts.
I work near a street market in the City of London that's been going on since the seventeenth century or so, and I do take satisfaction being simply yet another financier grabbing a quick lunch in this same spot. Hardly an ancient communion with wrathful nature, but a kind of communion nonetheless.
And yet, what about this in particular gives pleasure? Getting stuck in traffic is also an age old London tradition, but hardly ancestrally evocative.
I've almost come to think that the meaningfulness of these actions has less to do with any actual history in them per se, but rather an anti-ephemerality, a sense that these are actions we could hope and imagine our own descendants (whether physical or spiritual) doing; the kind of thing for which we could *be* the ancestors.
An absolute delight from beginning to end.
On the particular point regarding the pleasure of doing as generations prior have, I've been mulling over this for some time, with still half formed thoughts.
I work near a street market in the City of London that's been going on since the seventeenth century or so, and I do take satisfaction being simply yet another financier grabbing a quick lunch in this same spot. Hardly an ancient communion with wrathful nature, but a kind of communion nonetheless.
And yet, what about this in particular gives pleasure? Getting stuck in traffic is also an age old London tradition, but hardly ancestrally evocative.
I've almost come to think that the meaningfulness of these actions has less to do with any actual history in them per se, but rather an anti-ephemerality, a sense that these are actions we could hope and imagine our own descendants (whether physical or spiritual) doing; the kind of thing for which we could *be* the ancestors.
I’m enjoying this book very much. Thanks for your recommendation!
And on seas, see https://dsimpson.substack.com/p/decoding-jungs-metaphysics - my little meditation on the significance of the Sea of Galilee, which I may one day swim or sail on, or drown in