OUT OF THIS 'WORLD'

OUT OF THIS 'WORLD'
Chicago Tribune: For those who want to get away from it all -- and stay away -- the traditional choices have been places like Sri Lanka or some obscure island in the South Pacific. There, one with deep pockets and a deeper craving for solitude could escape the sturm und drang of modern civilization. Or at least, that's what people like sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke and actor Marlon Brando believed.
Now there's a fresh take on the age-old desire of some to escape the boundaries of home. It's a 12-deck luxury liner called The World, and its Norwegian owners bill it as the world's first and only "resort community" at sea. The two- to six-bedroom condominiums on board range from $2.25 million to $7.5 million, and the ship is scheduled to visit 140 ports in 40 countries in its inaugural year.
The residents must also have a "land" residence. But they can stay on the ship, theoretically, all year, every year, for the next 50 or so, until the leasehold expires.
Now there is a depressing thought.
Why? Because your home cannot be a ship that is always sailing. It can't work. Home is deeply imbedded in the human psyche as a place, on land, in a country, on land, where you belong, like it or not, to a larger community, on land, with friends, neighbors, relatives and a lot of strangers you just pass on the street without making eye contact. It's being rooted in a country through good and bad, not reading or hearing about it in a place where you're not sure what side of the international date line you're on.
Fish live in the water. Humans live on land.
The whole thing brings to mind the Edward Everett Hale classic, "The Man Without a Country." That was the tale of Philip Nolan, a young officer, who, after being court-martialed "cried out, in a fit of frenzy: Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" Nolan was sentenced to sail aboard a Navy ship from that day forth, but never to hear of the United States again. He spent more than a half-century on ships and lived to regret his remark.
Of course, The Worlders aren't sentenced to a life at sea.
No pets
And the ship does sound posh, even though the crystal table lamps are bolted to end tables, and they don't allow pets. It has a casino, restaurants, a deli, and a spa. There's even a putting green with real grass on the deck.
It just sounds claustrophobic, even a touch lonely. Wandering the decks day and night, the only relief a dip in the spa or some matzo ball soup at Fredy's Deli. The residents will argue that they can disembark at any exotic port, and the whole thing is something of an adventure. And it probably is, for the first six months, or maybe the first year. But what then? How long can you circumnavigate the globe and eat at Fredy's Deli?