Fading in Continuation

I'm finding in myself the wretched weakness of the flesh. My memories fade like wisps of smoke on the night air against the starry sky of reality. Even as I told myself the vision of that beauty cannot fade - in all its meaning and weight and presence - the smoke evaporated, the fire died, and I now can't grasp at my own mind to scrape out the essence of what I had experienced. Nevertheless, I'll press on.

Lady Liberty

The top deck was crowded with passengers waiting for the passing of the big green lady on our way out of New York Bay. Little Mom managed to find a cocktail table to perch herself on, overlooking the sight barriers built forward of the topmost deck, pointing her camera towards the area of interest. I waited with phone in hand. There was such an air of expectation - held in silence by this collection of strangers in a front-faced huddle - that the soft motion of the boat provided a pulse to the shared experience of that short period of passage. The tall buildings strafed our view, and then the old fortress that once guarded the throat of the Bay, and then - a green monument, facing along our course, held her torch in welcome to ancestors past.

Behind her, the endless expanse stretched, and above her, the limitless sky dwarfed the outstretched limb. And yet, her pinnacle confirmed that endless expanse and welcomed whatever the abyss would bring to her. Backwards our course, into the abyss, far from a land of freedom that I felt less free, carrying the children of the desparate to places less desparate than some stolen dreams we never realized we had lost - perchance to find them again. Her torch pointed to the Land Beyond, but our passage only led to the focusing lens of that long-sighted landscape. And so we left to see the Isle of Devils, a chip on the coursing torrent between lands of former hope now escaping despair.

Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy and food

I hesitate to transcribe this experience because of the sheer strangeness of it that hasn't coalesced into a coherent whole for me - and, by the nature of its compounding ingredients, I don't think it will ever coalesce. So, with a bit of trepidation, I continue.

The first night on board the Breakaway, we were to join together as a family and fill a 14 person reservation in the Spiegel Tent restaurant and performance area. The night's entertainment was to be a performance of Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy - featuring aerialists, jugglers, contortionists, and musicians, completely unrelated to the Cirque du Soleil of such wild fame (and there are trademark disputes over use of the term 'Cirque', which is ridiculous, as it's just French for circus). A three course set menu was provided, along with special options for differences of dietary opinion or requirement.

(First symptoms of 'allergies' arise here - something to remember for later.)

First impressions: the servers looked pretty ridiculous. Garbed in bright feathers from head to toe, sporting a layered feather-headdress that would make Chicken Little jealous. I couldn't take them seriously, and it took almost physical effort to treat the waiting staff civilly (especially when more distractions were to come from center stage).

(They looked somewhat like this - credit to Amadeus (1984))

Note: no further pictures were taken, as photography was prohibited. 

The show began with exaggerated, simple motions: a jungle explorer (decked out in typical pith helmet and the tan army surplus) hears a strange creature and goes exploring, only to fall into a menagerie of strangeness. The costumes were ornate and fascinating to the point of distraction, and there weren't built in pauses or breaks for food to happen. This was especially true for one of the first acts, in which a magical frame transforms both the jungle explorer and his prey into a variety of lavish costumes - instantaneously.

I'll go on to describe more of what I saw, but I have to add this in: I was starving, and I knew that, with a set menu, I would probably have little to no choice concerning what I was about to put in my body if I wanted to have a full stomach. The first course came: a little piece of tender meat surrounded by potato wedges and a few sprigs of broccoli. Meat and broccoli down - while straining my neck to see the show and poking at my plate blind - I left the potatoes for the servers.

Each course was incredibly understated - typical high-restaurant style (small servings of what is meant to be excellent food) - but I kept getting the impression that the food was really just small versions of what could have been larger in other restaurants at the same price. Not high dining.

A contortionist - was that a little belly he revealed there on his open midriff? - began with flamboyant dancing between courses. A bottle of wine that Nate and Maria bought came out, and we poured out some glasses. An awkward moment arose - distractions, everywhere - when a couple came late to take the unoccupied seats beside the leftovers of our party (no 14-seat tables to see the performance, so 10 on one and 4 on the other had to do).

No, sorry, the bottle of wine is ours, not the table's. Awkward distractions. My goodness, she's a vapid thing. And those accents (don't judge, don't judge). They're fine, they're just watching. Yes, it's a set menu. Yes, it's too bad.

OK - don't even care, let them be themselves, I'm watching the show.

The contortionist had finished his arm waving (yes, that's nice and pretty, but what does it mean?) and had begun the first motions of his real routine. His arms supported him as he bent his whole frame backwards and over his foundation. Nicely done, chap! Aaand you didn't need to use that arm after all? Pivot the weight over and balance with the free hand, yes, and - well done!

Here, I started a random round of clapping and his intro finished. The awkwardness of realizing that what he was doing was pretty dang amazing and no one was shelling out appreciation stunned me. Do I accept his excellence in silence? Can't they see him questing out for response from the crowd? These guys live for that. Give a little, people.

The contortionist brought out a pair of staves, which he thrust into holes invisible to the audience. His routine continued similarly, except there was obvious effort to balance his not inconsiderable frame on top of these posts. A waver (are you faking? Good for you!), a pulse, and then - there it is again, balancing his entire frame on the single staff, but this time stretching the legs out farther over himself and reaching just a little more outwards as if to snatch an audience member.

Polite applause. Seeing where this was going, I wondered how many staves he had up his sleeve.

It turns out, he had four more. The trick of the performance wasn't the act itself, which was repeated, but the fact that, each time, his center had to be more precise, and weight placement and accuracy using tiring muscles that much more refined. The last pair was mounted; his weight shifted to a wavering center; the waver continued, was exaggerated – and he held.

Simply wonderful.

Throughout all of this, I realized I’d made audible cries of astonishment and even tried starting a couple claps prematurely, but who cares. I ate it up.

I wanted to concentrate on this fellow here because his performance was akin to many of the others.

I may have omitted or forgotten: a brief seafood salad may have started us or taken place second in the food courses – it was not memorable however, as the show dominated all.

The juggler/hostess who led many of the transitions – almost akin to the little spirit in the Flatley performances – had her own performance, in which she gained audience sympathies by making a mistake on the final and hardest portion of her performance. She continued on admirably – even completing the maneuver – but the beat of the performance was lost for a bit. A lovely job all the same. I would see her later on in the cruise, though never a spoken word or brief glance was exchanged.

The final acts – a two-man team of acrobats, the stockier of which kicked the other into flips (and probably crushed the virility out of him several times over); a small but smiley woman who could flip tables and chairs and spin pieces of cloth with her dexterous feet; an amazingly well-etched man who did astonishing flipping and twirling things on a net that fell and rose on command – blurred into the night as I fought myself from eating my dessert: three exquisite little morsels side-by-side that I struggled to avoid, only to taste each in turn and find disappointment.

The night ended in polite applause. The lights rose up. And that was all. 

The Butterfly

When dusk had fallen and the New York skyline had long sunk below the horizon, I wandered the top decks and looked at the sea. I found a little corner near the forward sun deck and vaped for a while.

Note for later: first impressions of others' reactions to vaping came that first evening - impressions which would cool off towards the end of the long trip.

A calm, endless sea is such a complicatedly simple thing to observe. It stretches from your closest vantage until you simply can't see it anymore, and in between: a rolling, random tumble of interacting wavelets and counterwavelets and tiny bulges trading small energies with each other. Below the surface, all is hidden by this rippling curtain of minuscule interacting forces. I had the sense that the ship's passage affected that rippling curtain, but I couldn't point and say, "There's our contribution," or, "This is because we're here." Almost as if the ship, despite its size and density and precious cargo, glided on into a sea as a tear slides down the face: leaving behind a small trail, crossing an expanse oblivious in outward reaction to its presence, and yet with motion that was filled with such importance and meaning that the surface's nerves are afire with the smallest progression of its movement. I could intuit the sea's awareness of our presence, of the water's inexorable shifting to account for our displacement, of the grandeur and noise and tumult of passage that must be witnessed by thousands of sea creatures hidden by the curtain.

As these thoughts crossed my mind, I saw a black butterfly flitting helplessly in the sea breeze above the forward deck. The passengers negligently batted it away as it interrupted their lives in its fleeting desperation. A pang of sorrow struck me at its plight.

Lost at sea without sustenance, carried by forces incomprehensible and immense in its small world, the butterfly was caught in the sea-soaked air of a foreign environment. I thought of its quest for food, of its biological desire to expand its senses to find vegetation and mate, of its fight against the turbulent breeze that tossed it about in its frantic attempts at control.

How much had we unknowingly carried with us in these ocean crossings? And to what end? Perhaps this butterfly could find some small sustenance on the ship and carry on its existence. Perhaps it could even find its way to Bermuda, and rough an extended existence passing New York pollen onto Bermudan flowers.

Could such small wings cause the cliched storm when passed between such disparate shores? The fragility of island ecologies is stereotypical in evolutionary theory; such a small creature, carried so indiscriminately by our massive boat, could bring a new form of life to a place of such isolation, and a destructive imbalance to the awaiting pocket of island creatures.

And yet, I hoped for the butterfly in its struggle against forces it couldn't control. The forces that buffeted it were paralleled in the forces that buffet us all, unseen and immense, and, if effects were dire, then so be it. I accepted the butterfly, and knew that from unknown doom springs hope for a stronger future.

Leavetaking

The Norwegian Gem, harbored in the neighboring port, began its slow exit 5 minutes before our scheduled departure. From inside the ship, the uncanny feeling that we were moving and the Gem stood still was preserved until I rushed to an open-sky deck and found the Big Apple skyline for reference. The Gem pulled away from her moorings almost imperceptibly, and all I could think about was how gently the free ocean caressed her now, and would she move and would we move similarly as we escaped the coast. (And whether my body would reject the rocking cradle of the sea, having become so accustomed to the firm foundation of Mother Earth.)

As I heard the warning farewell of the Gem's three blasts, I was led to the forward deck to watch for our impending leavetaking. I rested against the outer hull facing the forward bow, and the only hint that we were soon to be off was a lifelike tremor that reverberated from the ship's unknown depths. I took a panoramic shot and waited for our slow withdrawal from the docks to turn out into the New York Bay.

In silent slowness, we turned and turned. So mesmerizing was the quiet procession of the nearby skyscrapers across the bow that I was lost in absorption when the first blast rang.

To the tune of the second and third blasts - and in glee at the dismay of my fellow passengers at the resounding clamor of the ship's announcement - I made my way to an even higher deck to watch as we left the bustling madness of New York behind.

Statistics on the Norwegian Breakaway

For those unfamiliar with the ship or cruises in general, here are some stats to refer back to when I reference them in later posts (this is especially true of the deck descriptions). I felt it appropriate that I describe the setting in fine detail and without embellishment so that it will be easy to look back to if things I describe are unclear.

The Norwegian Cruise Line ship 'Breakaway' launched in April of 2013 and is the 9th largest cruise ship in world at 1069 feet in length and 144,017 gross tonnes. It boasts 18 decks:

- Decks 1-4 are blocked off from passengers, presumably for cargo, engineering, and staff quarters.
- Deck 5 has medical services and, I presume, several luxury suites. Passenger stairs only reach the forward end of this floor, though, leading me to suspect that the majority is meant for staff of the ship.
- Decks 6-8 are largely devoted to restaurants, spas, the casino, guest services, a cigar etc., as well as a few luxury suites:
       - 6: the Manhattan Room, Taste, and Savor restaurants (the only other free eateries for all passengers), The Teppenyaki (hibachi grill), Le Bistro (French), art gallery, and Spiegel Tent. Also, guest services, the library, a comedy club, a card room, and an Internet cafe.

(yes, this boat is really, really big.)

       - 7: I literally did almost nothing on this deck, except play in the casino on the last night. Suffice it to say that there's a bunch of stuff on this deck - none of which I plan on referencing, so I'll skip it.
       - 8: Drinks, meat, and more drinks. Malting's Beer and Whiskey bar, the Humidor Cigar Lounge, Shaker's Cocktail bar, Tradewinds Tax & Duty-Free liquor and cigarette store, Cagney's (Brazilian) Steakhouse, Prime Meridian Bar, Moderno Churrascaria (another bar, I think), Fat Cats Jazz & Blues club, and the SVEDKA/Inniskilli Ice Bar (not a bar for ice, but a bar MADE of ice). Deck 8 also hosted all of the lifeboats, which I'll come back to later.

Note: Deck 8 was one of the few decks I could actually walk around 95% of the circumference of the ship on the lower levels, and I spent a lot of my time vaping outside the Humidor (with the smokers - more on this).

Another note: When I say 'outside', I mean that the outer portions of the deck usually either had balconies of staterooms separated by easily-closed barriers or were open for walking around portions of the outside of the ship.

- Decks 9-14 are almost entirely reserved for balcony and indoor staterooms.
- The aft segment of deck 15 hosts the Garden Cafe, which is the 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffet free to all passengers. Deck 15 extends into pool areas, hot tubs, and the initial portions of the sunning deck all open to the air. A bar runs tangent to the adult pool, and a glass-enshrouded section near the pool is reserved for smokers/vapers. The forward end has ping pong tables underneath deck 16's sun deck, straddling spas and a fitness room and salon.
- Deck 16 is largely open to the sky, hosting many sundecks, a jogging track, and access to the rock wall. On the aft side, indoors, is the teen lounge and 'Spice H20' (neither of which I explored). On the forward end, private suites and restaurants.
- Decks 17 and 18 are really just extensions of 16 - more sundecks, and more activities akin to the rock wall: a ropes course, mini golf, a bungee trampoline, and two spectacular water slides - one of which, named the Free Fall, required that Aaron remove his earrings (for obvious, and horrific reasons). On top of everything is a caged basketball court (full size) and, yes, another sun deck.

Most of my wanderings happened on 15 and above at night and dusk, where I could wander and vape in peace and quiet and watch the stars and sea.

Please post questions if you have them. :) I'll also be using this as reference for posts as they come to me. So much to write about...