Marriage and rowing

3

days until I return home

I was anticipating having more to say about marriage than I have had. Maybe it’s an experience better lived through than described. Maybe I’m afraid to sound too gushy; I’ve found it both immensely rewarding and greatly adventurous. I don’t think most people have that experience of it, though I do know and have read of some that do. Frankly, most people’s marriages look stale, flat, and unprofitable (emotionally) from the outside. I hope that this is just an indication that I am not sufficently observant to get a true picture, or possibly a sign that the people I know prefer to keep their private lives private. I’d hate to think so many people actually live like that.

Anyway, since I’ve run a bit dry on marriage, here’s my favorite quote on the sometimes related subject of rowing. I think that not only rowers but anyone who has had the experience of singing in a good choir will recognize this description. There are times when everyone is perfectly on key and the air seems to vibrate as the sounds swells. Rowing can be like that, at its best.

From Silverlock, by John Myers Myers:

Of all sports, rowing offers the least to outward seeming. It is hard work unleavened by variety. Worse, a man attending to business can’t see where he is going. The pleasure compensating for this madness is at once simple and subtle. A need of men, generally denied, them, is to feel a part of something which works smoothly and well. In a mated crew the ideal is reached, the feeling of perfection passing back and forth from the individual to the team like an electric current. Until exhaustion breaks the spell, there is no more to be desired.

Posted by dichroic at March 27, 2001 02:31 PM