Or a slightly different take on 'Hi Mermaid...' - you can go and find the original if you are interested.
Robert Pirsig wrote a book called 'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance' beck in the early '70 s and it was the cult book when I was at Uni. He used Zen as a contextual basis and motor cycle maintenance as a metaphor for life and how it is lived. Lots of bits of it that I remember, but the difference between the romantic and the classic attitude to life has always stuck. The romantic is the person who sees a motor cycle as a glorious sculpture of chrome tubes, alloy gizmos, glossy paint and a sexy leather seat. The classic view of the same object is as a groovy collection of moving parts that just happens to constitute a motor cycle.
We have both extremes in the boat. For McQ, this gig is one big, coool, mental as anything Adventure. For me, it is a series of planning lists and milestones, each of which has to be ticked off in order to see an eclipse in august. And get out again safely. Everyone fits somewhere on the bell curve and, of course, we all carry , inevitably, part of the other. Pascal, I think, might be in the middle somewhere. Leroy and most of his colleagues out at my end, Speed - interesting - probably out towards Mcq even though he's a brilliant inventor of very clever gizmology. Kimbra - dunno - towards the middle? But enough speculation.
And on to some more. In Consultation with Dr Pete - onya mate - I've just been listening to the Bruch and Mendelssohn violin concertos - I bet for the first and only time they will ever be heard in this part of the ocean. I do not understand music - As the way out classicist, I love it for the virtuosity and the skill - wow! how did he get that violin to do that?? and the conductor - all those people, all so together...but I still get some sort of emotional experience from it, as long as I am not distracted and have time to actually listen to the music and not the boat babbling away at me. Someone Who Knows once told me that the Bruch is Baroque and Boring. No bloody way! Flogging leeches, again, unfortunately, got in the way just enough too distract. Going to have to learn to live with them for a day or so if the Grib is right, then this 18 - 20 kts will ease and we can roll out the sail again.
