Virginia Is For Families

And the wind shall say

“Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”
~T.S. Eliot

TS Eliot must have been having a bad day when he made this pronouncement.    And why did he decide to pick on golfers?   I don’t understand.

Wait a minute!  Maybe he WAS a golfer.  And he had just shot a 78 on the back nine when someone overheard him say this.  And of course they wrote it down.

I do understand his concern about asphalt however.  Especially when it gets hot.  But why does it seem like so many artists have such a gloom and doom outlook on life?

Here are a few more quotes.

Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.  ~Author Unknown

A living civilization creates; a dying, builds museums.  ~Martin H. Fischer

What?!   No wonder the making of antidepressants is such a lucrative industry.   It’s so easy to say life as we know it can’t go on.  But I have a serious question about the six inches of topsoil.   It seems to me that there ARE some civilizations out there in the desert.   They have managed somehow to keep things going.

Or maybe this person was saying that if ALL the topsoil was lost we would have a problem.   What would we do then?   Well we wouldn’t be playing as much golf.    And that would solve one of  TS Eliot’s problems.

My feeling is that people who spend too much time being rational miss some of the joys of life.  They overlook the wonderful things that exist all around us.  And I’m not saying they should spend more time being irrational.  Maybe they should just get in touch with some positive feelings.  They do exist inside us.  And they are very powerful.

But they can be blocked out.  Repressed.  Erased.  And that’s a shame.  Intellectuals get themselves tied into so many knots.  They derive pleasure from being smart.  And then they go overboard with it.   Here is a photo I took when we spent a short time at the Atlantis complex in Nassau.  I thought it was a lovely area.  And it was completely deserted.  Everyone was upstairs packed together in the gambling area.  If I was younger and had a date I think I would bring her here.

We returned to Nassau yesterday afternoon.  After a nice dinner everyone decided to wander over to Atlantis.  The group was planning to walk over the bridge but I knew that I would be ready to crash by the time we got there so I decided to take a cab.

And guess what?  I had a lot of company.  So we all arrived there after Captain Jack’s favorite cabby “Harry” turned up.   The younger ones went straight to the casino to donate their funds to the island and Captain Jack and his wife, Beth and I went to the aquarium to see the fish.

It’s a pretty amazing place but I have seen it before and am tiring of the crowds and the confusion.  Everything about it is very expensive as well.  I prefer the solitary beaches and the star lit canopy we slept under last night.  The generator broke yesterday and so it was hot below deck.  I slept under the stars.

Today we will catch a flight home.  As usual I am up and about while everyone else is still sleeping.  There is a convenience store across the street from the marina with WiFi and Bahamians streaming in and out.  They are either up very early or have not yet gone to bed.

We really did have a lot of luck this trip and barely saw any evidence of the hurricane.  Captain Jack did an excellent job of skirting it.  We heard stories of past storms however including Andrew which leveled so many homes like the one we were invited to for a barbecue a few nights ago.  People often take years to rebuild.  This home is still not completely rebuilt.  Bahamians don’t do things unless they have cash in hand.