Message in a Bottle

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Prologue


The bottle was dropped overboard on a warm summer evening, a few hours before the rain began to fall. Like all bottles, it was fragile and would break if dropped a few feet from the ground. But when sealed properly and sent to sea, as this one was, it became one of the most seaworthy objects known to man. It could float safely through hurricanes or tropical storms, it could bob atop the most dangerous of riptides. It was, in a way, the ideal home for the message it carried inside, a message that had been sent to fulfill a promise.

Like that of all bottles left to the whim of the oceans, its course was unpredictable. Winds and currents play large roles in any bottles direction; storms and debris may shift its course as well. Occasionally a fishing net will snag a bottle and carry it a dozen miles in the opposite direction in which it was headed. The result is that two bottles dropped simultaneously into the ocean might end up a continent apart, or even on opposite sides of the globe. There is no way to predict where a bottle might travel, and that is part of its mystery.

This mystery has intrigued people for as long as there have been bottles, and a few people have tried to learn more about it. In 1929 a crew of German scientists set out to track the journey of one particular bottle. It was set to sea in the South Indian Ocean with a note inside asking the finder to record the location where it washed up and to throw it back into the sea. By 1935 it had rounded the world and traveled approximately sixteen thousand miles, the longest distance officially recorded.

Messages in bottles have been chronicled forcenturies and include some of the most famous names in history. Ben Franklin, for instance, used message-carrying bottles to compile a basic knowledge of East Coast currents in the mid-1700s--information that is still in use to this day. Even now the U.S. Navy uses bottles to compile information on tides and currents, and they are frequently used to track the direction of oil spills.

The most celebrated message ever sent concerned a young sailor in 1784, Chunosuke Matsuyama, who was stranded on a coral reef, devoid of food and water after his boat was shipwrecked. Before his death, he carved the account of what had happened on a piece of wood, then sealed the message in a bottle. In 1935, 150 years after it had been set afloat, it washed up in the small seaside village in Japan where Matsuyama had been born.

The bottle that had been dropped on a warm summer evening, however, did not contain a message about a shipwreck, nor was it being used to chart the seas. But it did contain a message that would change two people forever, two people who would otherwise never have met, and for this reason it could be called a fated message. For six days it slowly floated in a northeasterly direction, driven by winds from a high-pressure system hovering above the Gulf of Mexico. On the seventh day the winds died, and the bottle steered itself directly eastward, eventually finding its way to the Gulf Stream, where it then picked up speed, traveling north at almost seventy miles per day.

Two and a half weeks after its launch, the bottle still followed the Gulf Stream. On the seventeenth day, however, another storm--this time over the mid-Atlantic--brought easterly winds strong enough to drive the bottle from the current, and the bottle began to drift toward New England. Without the Gulf Stream forcing it along, the bottle slowed again and it zigzagged in various directions near the Massachusetts shore for five days until it was snagged in a fishing net by John Hanes. Hanes found the bottle surrounded by a thousand flopping perch and tossed it aside while he examined his catch. As luck would have it, the bottle didn't break, but it was promptly forgotten and remained near the bow of the boat for the rest of the afternoon and early evening as the boat made its journey back to Cape Cod Bay. At eight-thirty that night--and once the boat was safely inside the confines of the bay--Hanes stumbled across the bottle again while smoking a cigarette. Because the sun was dropping lower in the sky, he picked it up but saw nothing unusual inside, and he tossed it overboard without a second glance, thereby insuring that the bottle would wash up along one of the many small communities that lined the bay.

It didn't happen right away, however. The bottle drifted back and forth for a few days--as if deciding where to go before choosing its course--and it finally washed up along the shore on a beach near Chatham.

And it was there, after 26 days and 738 miles, that it ended its journey.

***

Nicholas Sparks

[Link mogu videti samo ulogovani korisnici]

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/ ima i film, [Link mogu videti samo ulogovani korisnici] , imam ga chak snimljenog, ali nikako da ga odgledam zanimljiva mi je glumachka ekipa, ali me najava ipak nije narochito privukla, pa... uvek ima neshto preche pa samo da pitam, jesi li gledala i film, and if so - gledati ili prochitati? /

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Ni jedno ni drugo. Eno me knjiga ceka u autu (tek danas sam isla da je pokupim iz biblioteke - nadam se da cu je procitati za vikend, ako naravno nesko ne "iskoci" pa da me odvuce od citanja) a film nisam gledala (u stvari jos uvijek trazim The End of the Affair - koji nikako ne mogu da nadjem, a tako zelim da ga pogledam :shmrc: ... jer mi se knjiga jako dopala).
Anyway, ako pogledas film - javljaj kakvi su utisci.

Dopuna poslije vikenda:
Uspjela da dodjem do pola knjige. Znaci procitala sam nekih 150 stranica a ni sama ne znam kako. Nije mi dosta - hocu da je procitam cijelu sada i odmah al' nemam vremena.
U svakom slucaju moram da pohvalim piscevu opustenost pisanja ... lezernost.
Lijepa ljubavna prica.

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"Dear Teresa,

Can you forgive me?

In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore. You, my darling, are the wind that I did not anticipate, the wind that has gusted more strongly that I ever imagined possible. You are my destiny.
I was wrong, so wrong, to ignore what was obvious, and I beg your forgiveness. Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead. I was a fool to ignore my destiny, but even fools have feelings, and I’ve come to realize that you are the most important thing that I have in this world.
I know I am not perfect. I’ve made more mistakes in the past few months that some male in a lifetime. I was wrong to have acted as I did when I found the letters, just as I was wrong to hide the truth about what I was going thru with respect to my past. When I chased you as you dorve down the street and again as I watched you leave from the airport, I knew I should have tried harder to stop you. But most of all, I was wrong to deny what was obvious in my heart; that I can’t go on without you.
You were right about everything. When we sat in my kitchen, I tried to deny the things you were saying, even though I knew they were true. Like a man who gazes only backward on a trip across the country, I ignored what lay ahead. I missed the beauty of coming sunrise, the wonder of anticipation that makes life worthwhile. It was wrong of me to do that, a product of my confusion, and I wish I had come to understand that sooner.
Now, though, with my gaze fixed toward the future, I see your face and hear your voice, certain that this is the path I must follow. It is my deepest wish that you give me one more chance. As you might have guessed, I’m hoping that this bottle will work its magic, as it did once before, and somehow bring us back together.
For the first few days after you left, I wanted to believe that I could go on as I always had. But I couldn’t. Every time I watched the sun go down, I thought of you. Every time I walked by the phone, I yearned to call. Even when I went sailing, I could only think of you and the wonderful times we had. I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same again. I wanted you back, more than I imagined possible, yet whenever I conjured you up, I kept hearing your words in our last conversation. No matter how much I loved you, I knew it wasn’t going to be possible unless we – both of us – were sure I would devote myself fully to the path that lay ahead. I continued to be troubled by these thoughts until late last night when the answer finally came to me.

...

Oh, Theresa, I am sorry, so very sorry, that I ever hurt you. I am coming to Boston next week with the hope that you find a way to forgive me. Maybe I’m too late now. I don’t know.
Theresa, I love you and always will. I ma tired of being alone. I see children crying and laughing as they play in the sand, and I realize I want to have children with you. I want to watch Kevin as he grows into a man. I want to hold your hand and se you cry when he finally takes a bride, I want to kiss you when his dreams come true. I will move to Boston if you ask because I cannot go on this way. I am sick and sad without you. As I sit here in kitchen, I am praying that you will let me come back to you, this time forever.

Garrett"

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Nothing I expected.



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Black, ja pogledala The End of the Affair ... veliko razocarenje. Nema ono nesto sto sam osjetila u knjizi.