Shipwrecked

Dear Mago,
What a week this has been, huh? It is well that you were able to satiate your curisoity with the name of that beautiful liner on Tuesday my time. I also wanted to follow you and see what you saw, and so I went out looking for photos of the Aquitania. In the process I discovered the optical communication - a precursor to modern digital communication - that I wrote to you about a couple of days ago, the exchange of light signals between the Captain and a curious destroyer in her native waters.

That was the day after I had my hearing tested. As the audiologist turned up the volume of the interference used to mask the transfer of signals through my skull, I sensed that I was being pierced by an impulse far beyond visual or audible perception. In the split second that I might somehow perceive the pain of the intrusion, I found myself being catapulted into an enemy zone. Was the Captain not entrusted to steer this vessel through the Battles of the Atlantic? I note in retrospect that he exhibited at once the charm of a proud father – 'read the world news' - as the dictates of a Caesar – 'can you keep up?' Soon thereafter I shipwrecked. Faint signals can still be detected coming from my heart at the site where I bottomed out: in the nave of the nearby Church of Maria Magdalena, to the silence and song of brothers from Taizé.