Cabin Fever

I am so ready for a vacation.

I can't wait to take a few days and have no plans or hurries or worries or phone calls or scanner traffic or keyboards or pagers beeping or faxes printing or newscasts or... you get the idea.

True, I can't exactly escape (nor would I want to) my little boy. But the rest of it? I'm ready to leave it all behind and re-charge my duracells.

Sometimes, I just have to see the ocean. I know that sounds nutty, but let me explain. I do not believe in past lives... but had I lived a century or more ago, and been a man... I think I might have been a sailor. The sea actually calls to me. I just itch to feel its spray on my face and smell the salty fragrance of unhatched dreams, imagine the possibilities on the distant shores and think about where the wind may take me.

As a child, I discovered this poem that sums up exactly what I mean:

Sea-Fever
by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.