05/06/2020
By Stephen Kessler
Traveling, with a map and maybe a few tips or contacts provided by friends familiar with my destination, I'd venture out in search of the unexpected, not necessarily sights to see or monuments to visit or tourist attractions to check off a list but serendipitous encounters, spontaneous theater of streets where nothing appears to be happening, maybe some little shops or hole-in-the-wall cafés in out of- the-way neighborhoods or storefront restaurants in little towns where a family serves.
I've never understood the appeal of cruise ships, even before their emergence as hot zones of viral contagion and floating prisons of stranded passengers. The grotesque scale of these monstrous vessels, ersatz cities at sea with a vast array of eating and entertainment and recreational opportunities in a contained and controlled environment, with stops in touristic spots where their thousands of customers can flood famous places with their cash and their cameras to record the fact that they've been there without actually seeing anything for themselves? proof of pseudo-experiences they've never actually had? these leisurely wandering palaces of gluttony and decadence have always struck me as symptomatic of civilization gone overboard.
To voluntarily sign up for weeks of confinement with people too bored to know what to do with themselves is, for my money, an oddly unpleasant way to spend one's time and disposable income. There are so many other, more interesting ways to actually see the world rather than just be able to say you've been there and seen that, I don't understand why a cruise would be on anyone's list of desirable getaways.
Now that such travels, or any travels, are out of the question, and these gigantic liners are docked in port or quarantined at sea, it's time to rethink their value and to conceive more-practical uses for their ballrooms and staterooms and swimming pools and theaters and sundecks and nightclubs and gyms. If they weren't so hideous that no city in its right mind would want one dominating its landscape, they could function as housing for the homeless. And come to think of it, maybe a Brobningnagian luxury structure parked at the edge of town?or an upscale Ghost Ship where artists could customize their individual spaces according to their own esthetics? would be no more unsightly than a sprawling encampment of tents and squalid temporary homesteads sprouted under some freeway or on other public property.
And if not housing for roofless or creative humans, how about underwater communities of ocean life, artificial reefs which over time would replace the destroyed coral of globally cooked natural submarine wonders. Like New York City subway cars that have been junked, stripped of toxic materials and sunk off the Atlantic Coast, decommissioned cruise ships whose plastic fixtures have been recycled could serve as brave new habitat for undersea creatures and minerals and vegetation that would animate those vessels with an abundance of organic activity.
An added bonus to sinking those ships is that no one would have to see them corrupting the horizon. The visually untainted surface of the ocean, no matter how many millions of tons of trash are slowly swirling in enormous patches of pollution, is one of the few remaining spaces where our eyes can seek relief from all the heartache and suffering plaguing the land.
The unnatural environment of the cruise ship, having outlived its usefulness and lost its appeal to idle consumers spooked by contagious diseases, could be repurposed as a modest sacrifice to the habitat it formerly defiled. Instead of spewing its waste into the depths, the cruise ship industry could serve the planet by going under to begin again a fresh cycle of life.
Stephen Kessler's column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the Sentinel.
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