It is obscure the podcast in which I read Jude the obscure out loud and comment on it as I go.

Unusually, however, I am not on it I go

unusually however I am not speaking to you from the

wild of Connecticut and the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library

instead I am on something of a secret mission. It is my first ever journalistic assignment

and I speak to you now from a hidden location. Now, the reason it's a hidden location is because I'm

not allowed to reveal my presence to the other people that I am with. And the reason is, and I will just tell you exactly where I am

And exactly the circumstances for how I came to be here

Because by the time this podcast is aired, there will be two factors at play.

The first is it won't matter and the second is because nobody's listening and so it wouldn't matter.

Anyway. because nobody's listening and so it wouldn't matter.

Anyway.

So I find myself currently,

and if you listen carefully,

you may be able to hear evidence of this fact.

I find myself currently in the middle of the Caribbean steaming from St. Martin to Bermuda aboard the cruise ship Celebrity Summit.

Celebrity is the name of the company.

Summit is the name of the ship. I speak to you from Deck 7, State Room 7197, where I am ensconced. I am alone. I am on day three and a half I guess of this cruise. It is a

cruise I am taking alone. Which in a way is a metaphor for life in general. We are all on our cruises and we are all alone.

However, like me, we are also all surrounded by all kinds of different people who we

experience moment to moment, sometimes uncomfortably close, sometimes not close enough.

We experience them from our own vantage points looking out at our own Caribbean seas

...