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harbormaster
03-27-2004, 11:42 AM
I was cleaning out of my email boxes this morning and ran across an email that MadPoodle had sent me a year ago.

The following passage was at the bottom of his email. After reading again I felt like it was so profound that I had to post it here....

"Houses are but badly build boats so firmly aground that you can not think of
moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable
world not of the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay
transition. I admit doubtfully, as exceptions snail shells and caravans.
The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward
with a single anchorage. the desire to build a boat is the desire of a youth,
unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final anchorage.

It is for that reason, perhaps, that, when it comes, the desire to build a
boat is one of those that can not be resisted. It begins as a little cloud
on the serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can
think of nothing else. You must build to regain your freedom. And always
you comfort yourself with the thought that yours will be the perfect boat,
the boat that you may search the harbours of the world for and not find."

Arthur Ransome -Rancundra's First Cruise, 1923

MOP
03-27-2004, 04:01 PM
How true! How many of us will break our Butts on our houses like we do on our boats.

MOP

Digger
03-27-2004, 04:02 PM
wow! good stuff! that Ransome dood must've been pretty smart :biggrin.:

Steven Cohn
03-28-2004, 09:55 PM
Well, I lived on my boat for six years. Does that mean for anything?