So we 86ed the cleaning yesterday ("But I was almost done with the bedroom!" I feebly protested) and took a day trip to visit the Titanic exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Let me just say that the flooding around Milwaukee as we left--
--police cars were blocking exits on an emergency basis, and the impromptu ditch ponds were deep enough to be developing their own waves--
--was eerie.
"That's right," said the water, coldly, calmly. "I'm everywhere. Land is a ship as well, and just as easy for me to flood. You came from me and to me you will return. I can wait."
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The exhibit seemed to want to convey the human pathos of the Titanic disaster, but at the same time, it kept the temperature and lighting quite cold--and most of the recovered objects had gotten quite a makeover from the sea. They no longer belonged to us anymore, they belonged to it. Thus, everything seemed strangely remote.
The nature of the tragedy itself, of course, is quite impersonal. It's not the damn ocean's fault that we set out across it with (A) no binoculars for the lookout guy, (B) not enough lifeboats, (C) no law to make sure every ship had someone in the telegraph room at all times, and (D) on a super-northerly, glacial route in the first place. The Titanic disaster was entirely a human and pathetic one. In fact, the ocean could be said to have acted as a friend to the victims of all this bungling. It was very still that night, no swells or crashing, and its sub-zero temperatures spared most victims from drowning, killing them with cold instead. The ocean was merciful.
And it has kept the broken Titanic far better than we would have. Tell me--what happened to the Titanic's sister ships? The other great cruisers? Where are they now? Are their cathedral windows and carafes and gratin dishes and brass beds in anywhere near as good a shape as Titanic's? In the IMAX movie about Jim Cameron's dive to photograph the wreck, Bill Paxton says that "[None of this is] supposed to be down there." I begged to differ. Ships ultimately do belong to the ocean, and the ocean has taken excellent care of this one. It's almost like a message: "Look, I love you, I love your pretty things. I keep them for you. Would you stop dumping poisons in me now?"
But then, I'm an Aquarius. It's inevitable where my sympathies would lie.
