QUESTION: Did you read in the Navy?
ANSWER: "Yes. Everybody on a ship reads, whether it’s comic books, or Westerns, or the Bible, or whatever. They always read a lot. I was reading Moby Dick, which sounds terribly precious, but I thought if you can’t read Moby Dick in the roaring forties, you’ll never read Moby Dick. So I brought it along. I also read Ulysses on the same trip. I seem to have imprinted the ocean in a very strong way because I end up with all these marine images that just seem so readily at hand for me." --- US writer Robert Stone, author of DOG SOLDIERS.
Those were the days when a sea voyage from Panama to Japan took 29 days and a box of books will still not be enough, even though the radio will not keep the operator busy, with little traffic.
Sometimes a friend on another ship going from Vancouver to Australia with daily contact, will help pass the day. The lonely sea and sky...
In rough wx, tying the chair around the radio equipment would be the only way to send a Morse message, with a loose key moving around.
Ulysses...every June in our town the Celtic Club, with the only black Guyanese member,[to add colour to the party as the Irish would say], would visit a 100 year old tourist mining town and celebrate Bloomsday with JJ poems and songs.
My poem this year was 'The Homesick Pirate', while Roselyn from Dublin played my Mom.