ship going nowhere

Kyle came over for dinner last night. He'd had two deployments in the Gulf of Hormuz--19 months--as a Navy helicopter man, which included a skirmish with Somali pirates. Now at last he's out of the Navy out on his own, making up for lost time with his wife Sarah by taking what amouts to a honeymoon tour of California.

He said living on a ship for a long period of time is weird. There wasn't internet and he could only talk to his wife in San Diego at specially agreed upon times. email worked sometimes but when it did the communications were censored. The food was terrible, the lettuce 'brown' and the meat of undeterminable origin.

I asked him what he was going to do NOW? Maybe this, maybe that, he said. I told him to finish his college education, which is pretty much my answer to everything whenever anyone young shares privileged information with me that implies a question relating to the future and their long term economic well being.

Sometimes I like to think that I'd like to take a cruise, that I'd have time to read all the books I want to read and fill up large notebooks with the right words. I'm older than Kyle and know myself well enough now to know I'll get more done by staying home and staring into the word processor. Besides, I can see the bridge from my window and hear the foghorns that guide ships into the bay.

Yesterday at Ocean Beach, I watched a ship turn around just off-shore. It stayed in one place for the longest time, turning turned around and around, practicing some sort of manuever. At last it sailed off, to Yokohama perhaps.