finally, my ship has come

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering. 

~ Paulo Coelho

My wife and I were on a trip to Bali, Indonesia, and I took this just before dawn, before any of the hundreds of other tourists took to the beaches or occupied the pagoda.

The ship is actually an oil tanker, but from this distance, i thought it looked like a 16th century schooner and the scene made me think of maybe what Asian sentries ages ago witnessed on their lonely vigils, as Europeans discovered trade routes into Asia.

Then my mind wanders some more and i realize this could have been a scene straight out of Tristan and Iseult.  I can almost imagine ailing Tristan, lying on a cot by the pagoda, staring at the horizon, and waiting for the ship bearing his Iseult to come in.

Poor Tristan; he never found out that his ship did come, flying the whitest of sails.