Floating world.For the last several years, I have accompanied my mother on cruises on a six-star luxury line. Populated pop·u·late tr.v. pop·u·lat·ed, pop·u·lat·ing, pop·u·lates 1. To supply with inhabitants, as by colonization; people. 2. largely by society's elite, captains of industry, I have found myself in a world largely unfamiliar to me, the world well beyond the first-class curtain on airplanes. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The rarified rar·i·fied adj. Variant of rarefied. Adj. 1. rarified - having low density; "rare gasses"; "lightheaded from the rarefied mountain air" rarefied, rare and archaic traditions observed aboard contemporary cruise ships This is a list of cruise ships, both those in service and those that have since ceased to operate. Both cruise ships and cruiseferries are included in this list. (Ocean liners are not included on this list, see List of ocean liners. , the sheer numbers of powerful individuals at play, and the voluminous consumption of gourmet food and spirits, are both repellant and addictive. I hasten to point out that this is not the environment depicted in commercials for Royal Caribbean and on the television program Shipmates Shipmates was an American syndicated television show that ran for two seasons from 2001 - 2003. Reruns later ran on the cable channel Spike TV. The show was created by Hurricane Entertainment and the executive producer was John Tomlin. Chris Hardwick was the host. . It is more the thing of Masterpiece Theater; two week cruises replete with four to five formal attire evenings, lectures by presidents of major auction houses and Mars Lander geologists, libraries, food and wine lectures, escargots and caviar caviar or caviare (kăv`ēär), the roe (eggs) of various species of sturgeon prepared as a piquant table delicacy. . [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I have found myself able to infiltrate the boundaries of their floating world and ferret out both the tender and broken as well as the forceful and arrogant. The people I've met, most of them quite nice, spend most of their time discussing what the last cruise they took was like, and whether or not they will be aboard for multiple cruises in the coming year. In a deliberate desire to completely vacate To annul, set aside, or render void; to surrender possession or occupancy. The term vacate has two common usages in the law. With respect to real property, to vacate the premises means to give up possession of the property and leave the area totally devoid of contents. , I suppose, they rarely if ever converse on the intellectual level of which most must be capable, given their financial acumen. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One might spend several days chatting intermittently with the same people, and discover on the last day of the cruise that they are actually a well known author, the owner of an international rum company, the comedy writer of a Rat Pack rat pack n. Slang A closely knit group of people sharing interests. rat pack n (Brit) (inf) → journalistes mpl de la presse à sensation film or even make the hamburger buns for the largest fast food chain in the world (all of whom I have met and photographed over the last two years). But in the end, their gluttony Gluttony See also Greed. Belch, Sir Toby gluttonous and lascivious fop. [Br. Lit.: Twelfth Night] Biggers, Jack one of the best known “feeders” of eighteenth-century England. [Br. Hist. , loneliness, and affectations--their rabid humanity is what interests me. Their identity becomes an assumed persona in the context of a brief artificially intense 'friendship'--for lack of better words--ships forever self-determined to pass again and again in the night. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] COLLEEN col·leen n. An Irish girl. [Irish Gaelic cailín, diminutive of caile, girl, from Old Irish. MULLINS is an Art Administrative Consultant based in Minneapolis, MN. email: mullins@umn.edu |
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