sea change

Then came a small storm. I found myself standing alone in the cold moonlight, with spray everywhere and my black cape whipping, and my face probably looking a little sick but covering, I am sure, wild and unspeakable thoughts. Suddenly I seemed so ridiculous, so melodramatically Mid-Victorian about my Hopeless Passion, that I blushed with embarrassment, straightened my hair, and went down ...

I would bathe elaborately, calmly, and then lie safe under the feathers, moving with the water all around me, flat so that when the ship rolled I could feel my guts shift delicately against my spine. I would sip, and nibble, and read somnolently of other more tepid dramas than my own, mystery stories as mild as pap beside what was happening on that ship ...

-- M.F.K. Fisher The Gastronomical Me