@Sea-Emperor's New Suit
Open Water · Funemployment · Disney Ships · Atlantic Crossings
Answer the CallThose Who Are at Sea
There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.
Going out on open water is the infinity of hope—the preview of life's coming attractions, where you have final cut in your own movie.
You can lose yourself in the ocean's food for thought. Its menu is the meal, and itineraries are full of promises.
The sea gives you a sense of destination and the energy to get started again.
The Asymmetric Equation
Time Released + Open Water + Possibility = Funemployment Leaving the clock creates the space in which a different life can become visible.The Call
A Passion for the Possible
Adventure begins where planning stops controlling every outcome.
Call it faith: a passion for the possible. I was full of it and shooting from the hip.
Having an adventure is something more—but nothing less—than bad planning.
It was Funemployment: quitting a job, or using the absence of one, to have the time of your life. Instead of punching a clock, you head for the beach. In my case, the high seas.
The itinerary was not a schedule. It was a promise. Open-water field note
Answer the Call
Going Out of Your Mind to Come to Your Senses
Living aboard is not conventional life. That is precisely the point.
I am not a sailor—perhaps a sailor with a small s.
Living on a ship might be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria. It is not real life but an alibi.
It is like going out of your mind every day in order to come to your senses. A fool who persists in his folly becomes wise.
Life Aboard Equation
Monotony + Hysteria + Repetition = Transformation The routine becomes the pressure chamber in which a different self appears.Trials
Eleven Ships Later
The joke survives because the experience became large enough to require one.
After eleven ships—yes, eleven—I no longer wanted to cast doubt on perfection.
There was nothing I would not do for my country, and nothing it would not do for me. That was how we moved through life: doing nothing for each other.
The Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything was now in session. Give me a wide berth. I was a loose cannon and three sheets to the wind. Anchors aweigh.
Signal 01
Wide BerthDistance is both a nautical instruction and a reasonable social policy.
Signal 02
Loose CannonFreedom without restraint eventually becomes part of the ship's entertainment programme.
Signal 03
Three Sheets to the WindThe English language carries more naval history than most passengers realise.
Power of New
When New Interrupts Now
Picasso imagined it. Disney believed it. Repetition at sea made it lived experience.
Everything you can imagine is real. Picasso said it, Walt Disney believed it, and I had lived it.
Yet Walt's Power of New was always interfering with the Power of Now.
I was onboard with the face that launched a thousand dreams and three cruise ships, suited and booted for formal night aboard the Disney Wonder.
Dreaming With Eyes Wide Open
The Archive Becomes a Life
Atlantic crossings, the Adriatic, Santorini, Alaska, Mexico, and the accumulating evidence of a life built through movement.
Companion Stories
Continue the Crossing
Three earlier posts extend the route from first departure to a life at sea.
Disney Wonder · 2011
Sea Emperor's New Suit
Alaska and Mexico aboard the Disney Wonder, where imagination, performance, and the reality of shipboard life overlap.
Costa Atlantica · 2010
Atlantic Crossing
The long route across the Atlantic, where distance itself becomes the setting and the days begin to alter scale.
Celebrity Solstice · 2009
Son of a Beach
The first-month-at-sea archive: Adriatic light, possibility, and the early proof that the voyage was becoming a life.
The Elixir
Everything You Can Imagine Is Real
The sea did more than provide travel. It created time, distance, repetition, and permission—the conditions in which imagination stopped being an idea and became a lived operating system.
Continue to Disney Wonder