Help I’m a Rock #2

The previous post about Tracey Emin marrying a rock asked, “I wonder how the rock feels about this. Will no one consider the rocks?”

Rocks have feelings too. Maybe not all of them, but some do. Basalt not so much, probably, or granite, but at Amazon a large, Italian, maritime rock named Jamie considers the book How to Avoid Huge Ships (Cornell Maritime Pr/Tidewater Pub., 1993) by John W. Trimmer and gives it 3 out of 5 stars:

Good Advice For Most Readers, But Doesn’t Cover All The Bases

There is one major oversight in this generally well-written book, and that is that it addresses animate readers exclusively. As a large rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Giglio Island, I have recently been confronted with instances in which avoiding huge ships was of fundamental interest to my personal well-being. However, the methods presented in Capt. Trimmer’s book were none too useful in my efforts to avoid huge ships, as I was recently struck by a very large ship indeed, a cruise vessel called the ‘Costa Concordia’. I think the ship came off slightly worse in the exchange, but the experience was disruptive to my afternoon and rather jarring. In a situation such as this, Capt. Trimmer’s advice would have been immensely beneficial to humans, fish, seabirds, and other animals, but I am none of those things. I’m a big rock. I can’t zig-zag or duck and cover. Rocks don’t do that. I’ve tried. I tried some time ago to scoot over to the left a bit to get some better sunlight, and it took me three thousand years! That’s not fast enough to avoid even the slowest huge ships. It is for precisely this reason that I would advise Capt. Trimmer to augment this edition with a section intended for readers like me—perhaps “How To Avoid Huge Ships If You Are A Rock, Iceberg, Or Coral Reef”. There is an audience out there for this, Capt. Trimmer, and I assure you it would be well worth your time and effort.