A siren's call
Funny thing - I'm living on a boat.
Not just any boat, a houseboat in the central valley delta outside of Stockton, California. My mother's houseboat, to be exact, looking out over cormorants and pelicans, and filled with three computers, a 14-year-old dog, and a significant collection of liturgical music. But of course...
That's not the funny thing.
At night, when it rains, and in the day as the wind blows, the boat rocks and rocks. It's a sort of soft chaos, a ghostly galleon, a pontoon cradle, making it difficult to emphasize or gesticulate without staggering.
That's not the funny thing either.
What's funny is when I step off the boat, up the deck and out to do business in the real, solid world...The world I trusted, the world I thought I knew, the world I live in, it now rocks. The same sort of gentle roiling I feel on the delta, I feel while sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant, or buying bread, or scamming wireless, or merging onto Rt. 5 - all of it in constant motion. It makes it hard to concentrate, and I think I sound stupider than I usually do. My head is so busy overcompensating, there's room for little else.
Not just any boat, a houseboat in the central valley delta outside of Stockton, California. My mother's houseboat, to be exact, looking out over cormorants and pelicans, and filled with three computers, a 14-year-old dog, and a significant collection of liturgical music. But of course...
That's not the funny thing.
At night, when it rains, and in the day as the wind blows, the boat rocks and rocks. It's a sort of soft chaos, a ghostly galleon, a pontoon cradle, making it difficult to emphasize or gesticulate without staggering.
That's not the funny thing either.
What's funny is when I step off the boat, up the deck and out to do business in the real, solid world...The world I trusted, the world I thought I knew, the world I live in, it now rocks. The same sort of gentle roiling I feel on the delta, I feel while sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant, or buying bread, or scamming wireless, or merging onto Rt. 5 - all of it in constant motion. It makes it hard to concentrate, and I think I sound stupider than I usually do. My head is so busy overcompensating, there's room for little else.
posted by shagreen at 11:38 PM
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