Sunday, November 29: Still at Sea

Getting up at 5:15 finally got me a sunrise. It wasn’t much – the canvas of clouds onto which the sun could splatter its colorful return was stretched pretty thin – but I watched it develop and took as many photographs as I thought worth the memory, both mine and the camera’s. Since my days are falling into a kind of routine, I came here next, to the computer center, to work on my blog. The process is very slow and I’m always afraid that at that moment when I’m transferring the information from the Word program in which I write it to the blog itself, it will get perversely lost on its way. But yesterday it worked, giving me a great sense of accomplishment. Breakfast outside on deck was lovely until Nancy showed up, complaining about her roommate, Donna, who does seem depressed. Nancy tells me she spends hours on her make-up and hair, and while they are always very nice – she has large eyes that she smears with mascara – the time-consuming effort doesn’t produce a result I’m sure she thinks she’s produced. But then, aren’t we all like that? Working hard, one way or the other, on how we present ourselves to the world when if we’d just let ourselves go, the picture would probably be just as bright, just as interesting? Nancy, always loquacious, and without much sense of editing, rattled on about her husbands, her house in Jamaica – how little she paid for it and how much it appreciated during the time she owned it – her children, and how difficult Donna, a long-time friend, is to travel with. I couldn’t help but wonder why Nancy decided to take this cruise under those circumstances.
After breakfast, I have a little scrap of time before I’m required to make an appearance at the coffee corner where my job is to mingle with the guests, introduce myself and help to smooth over any of their irritations. I’m getting used to it. This morning, Kay (a man) was working on his morning Sudoku – Elsa, who produces them, gives the guests harder ones on days at sea since they have more time to fill. We were shortly joined by Pat (a woman) from Alberta, who has a tendency to complain. She was outraged that the ship recognized Thanksgiving but not Veterans’ Day. I try, sometimes without much result, to blunt this attack, whatever its nature, but I’m only partially successful. This morning she and Kay were talking (as usual) about the cruise levels and what they get for achieving them. Eighteen people here have reached the titanium level of 300 nights or more aboard a Regent ship. The way I figure it, that translates into about a quarter of a million buckaroos, not even including the standard 75% single supplement.
To me, there seems something sad about spending so much of your life going from one port to another – “Oh I’ve been there so many times I can’t even remember,” or “I’ll be going through the Panama Canal for the fifteenth time” – collecting days that finally add up to free laundry or free computer time, dipping one’s toes into the water of life but never really swimming. When I ask people if these things are important to them, important enough for them to be incentives to travel, they always say no. But then when they get together with other Regent guests, they don’t talk about how interesting St. Helena was and how Napoleon must have felt when he arrived there. They talk about their hard (and expensively achieved) privileges.
This morning I met Virginia and her husband (whose name I can’t remember – I’m getting better at it but when the names come in rapid succession, I’m still not perfect) at coffee corner. They’re the only other guests from Baltimore, where they live “…in a large condo on the waterfront.” When I pressed them about where it was, they were vague. It didn’t matter. They were not friendly and I thought, why bother?
Speaking of which, I haven’t really had an interesting conversation with anyone, even with Heinz. And so far, no one knows anything about my life. Not that this matters either. I’ve become rather skilled at the game of “Talk about Yourself.” I’m not allowed to participate; I’m just the game’s facilitator.
The dance lesson for today was meringue, a street dance where you simply stomp on one foot and then the other – “don’t stop, don’t stop” – doing pretty much whatever you like with your hands. We stomped so hard that we interrupted the lecture going on in the theater beneath us. Gabrielle came up to the studio to complain.
Ah Gabrielle. She’s taken a shine to me. And if any Solo should like to be with me, I’m happy it’s Gabrielle. She’s invited me for dinner tonight in Signatures with “two couples from Canada,” who I hope will be interesting. And she wanted to be with me at cocktails and insisted that we try the rumba together. She’s a little stiff but a pretty good dancer. And she shares many of my hobbies: keeping a diary of the trip, taking many photographs and editing them on her computer by using Picasa. Elsa placed me next to her at dinner – Elsa dines with us often and always puts the table together and tells us where to sit. I asked her later if I was paying too much attention to Gabrielle at the expense of the other Solos and she said, “On no, no, no, not at all. Gabrielle needs taking care of. She’s titanium. And she’s sometimes quite diff-E-cult. That she’s found someone whose company she enjoys is wonderful. That doesn’t happen often with her. No, no, no, no, no. Please. Just keep her happy.”
The weather was great and I enjoyed some time outside in what I thought was a secluded and shady spot. But apparently the reflections of the sun on the water invaded my spot for, without thinking I needed sunblock, I got very sunburned. My forehead hurts and looks like I placed it directly on the bottom of a hot frying pan.
H. Stern, the Brazilian purveyor of high quality jewelry, has two sales people aboard. They mingle with the guests and soften them up for a trip to Stern once these guests go ashore. One of them sports a sapphire watch, the movement placed into a hollowed out sapphire, which twinkles expensively in the sunlight. I’ve seen three of them on the ship. Gabrielle told me at dinner that H. Stern always sends a private car for her in Rio, so she can go wherever she likes, without having to be confined to a bus with all “those other people. I know they want my business. And I give it to them.” She was wearing a triple stand of beautiful large pearls, fingering them as she told me this.
One of the Stern guys told me that a couple of years ago, sixteen tourists got trapped on St. Helena. The cruise ship they were on had gotten them ashore by tender but as the day progressed, the sea became much rougher and the ship could never land a tender safely. The captain decided to leave the passengers (hardly a way to treat a guest) and sailed on for Rio. The people had to stay overnight in St. Helena, take a small boat the next day to Ascension, fly from there to London and then taka a London/Rio flight to catch up with the ship. That must have cost Holland America a fortune.
Sasha and Olena dance beautifully but in the Russian/ballet, controlled tradition. After all, they’re from Ukraine so that is natural. But Fernando and Mayara move with a Brazilian sensuality that is mesmerizing. I remember how it felt to dance like that, making complex moves and showing off my partner. But even with a reminder course in Salsa, and dancing it with several Solos in the lounge after dinner, I’m reminded that I’m no longer capable of such abandon. Maybe it’s my mind, losing its flexibility along with my body. On board, there are mirrors everywhere – not only prominently in my cabin/suite but also in elevator lobbies, the gym, the lounges – and I have the odd sensation when I have to look at my reflection in them (which is almost unavoidable) that the person looking back at me is someone no longer me. Big breakfasts, which I love, and ice cream in the afternoon, which I also love, will do that to a body, no matter how much it stomps around dance floor. I feel like the first Queen Elizabeth, who banished mirrors from her palaces after she reach a certain age. I know now how she must have felt. Old. Stay tuned.