I’ve been pondering Natalie Wood. 
She was in Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean. She played opposite Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. She was tragic magic in West Side Story.

Wandering in Googleland, I stumbled on Natalie’s description of lying down on the deck of a drifting boat,
“At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still, you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space.”

Flashback. The night is a black Dalmatian dog wearing a coat of tiny white stars and a studded collar of lights that beckon from the shore. Pennie and I stand on the deck of a 3-masted ship on the Aegean Sea near Kusadasai, Turkey as it prepares to sail through the night to Istanbul.

The sea is glass, the ship is still and we, like unblinking statues, gaze without breathing at the shorelights that encircle us.

They move steadily, evenly, from left to right as we stand upon the epicenter of the universe and watch the city, the world and the stars beyond revolve around our boat.

I was there. It happened. Don’t tell me it didn’t.

Roy H. Williams