inspiration from Maureen Dowd

I don't usually like Maureen Dowd's NY Times columns. She has an annoying tendency to string smart-aleck phrases together without having any actual interesting thought tying them together. But in today's column, she talks about the values of silence. And the reason this is relevant to my upcoming cruise (30 days, 3 hours, 9 minutes, 11 seconds from now) is that the cruise is going to require me to fast from electronica. No more constant smart-phone/tablet/laptop distractions, which in my "normal" life take up hours and hours of my days. Access to the internet will be severely rationed by its cost, slowness, and relative inconvenience -- no wireless connectivity in my cabin, and, after schlepping the tablet up to the public rooms where I can connect, each minute will set me back at least $0.25. I've pre-ordered 1000 minutes, which seems like a lot, but the cruise lasts 112 days, making that less than 10 minutes a day. I'll have time to check email and post any blog entries I've written offline, then I must re-engage with external reality. And my choice of external reality will tend to be, not the ongoing carnival of bingo games and stage shows the cruise provides for its clientele, but sitting watching the ocean going by, walking around the promenade deck, reading books about the sea, or knitting. At least I hope it will. I expect to return transformed.