The Lass that a Sailor Loves

Artist: Robert Walker Macbeth RA (Scottish, 1848-1910)

Date: 1903

Medium: Oil on canvas

You’re always swimming. Gotta swim fast, you say, faster and faster still. When the net comes down, you’ve gotta be swimming fast to not get caught.

Can’t you just chill, I say. Lepak la…just live a little. What good is living if all you do is spend it swimming? Ain’t no use trying to run, anyway. Sooner or later, one way or another they’ll get us. So might as well be kids and have as much fun as we can before they do.

But you won’t listen. There’s no time to chill, no time to have fun, you insist. We’ve got to keep swimming, and we’ve got to swim fast.

Yup. When the net finally fell, you were swimming fast, the fastest ever, just like you said you would. And it got you all the same, just like I said it would.