Everyone is drunk with food, beer, wine and cigarettes. But most of all, they're intoxicated by the sun and the easy motion of the boat, as it rocks and sways in the ocean.

This giant ship is the largest hotel I've ever had the pleasure of riding on -- certainly the only one I've ridden across the Atlantic on -- and I'm drunk with it all. I'm here because my girlfriend Nadia invited me, but she's working, busy with 11-hour shifts and hardly a moment to herself. She answers questions, listens to passengers' problems, solves their issues, and sends them back into the sun without a care or concern; so they can continue with what we're supposed to be doing here: to relax.

I consider this, as my hunched back tightens, and I crouch a little closer to the meticulous lines of my notebook. While leaning over the pages, and stretching my crooked spine straight, I remember Ms. Halifax -- my high school English teacher. Every morning, you could find this little woman, and her curly mop of hair, sitting behind the helm of a rusty, V-8 Camaro, as its throaty vibrations made their way through the parking lot. Once, the eyes of its headlights caught me in their sights, and I was surprised to see Ms. Halifax behind the wheel. This quiet, 29-year-old woman would carefully bend over our papers with bespectacled eyes, like a woman three times her age.

"Is that why you have a hunched back, Ms. Halifax?" I asked her one day. "Because you spend so much time reading?"

It sounded like an insult, but my question came from a place of awe, as I imagined her late at night, reading the greatest works of literature. Ms. Halifax didn't take it as a compliment, though, and she turned a shameful red.

"You think I have a hunched back?" She asked, while looking to my fellow students for support. The glares of my friends made me backpedal internally. I couldn't explain what I meant without digging a deeper hole.

I wanted to tell Ms. Halifax how much I admired her knowledge of the greatest works of fiction and the esteemed place of "well-readedness" she had achieved, and if her crooked back was the result of such activity, then it was a subject of awe and perfection -- not a flaw or inadequacy. But how do you tell someone this without insulting them? I'd committed a social faux pas.

There was a sharp-as-a-tack mind behind Ms. Halifax's beady-blue eyes and there was little she didn't recognize or see. My grandmother would have admired her too, if she could have met her -- because my grandmother was well-read and she relished the great classics just as much as Ms. Halifax. And, until I met my high school English teacher, I don't think I'd ever met anyone with such a solid foundation of self-education, except for my grandmother, Virginia Stone.

To smoke, to drink coffee and to read were the divine triangle of my grandmother's spirituality, but to read -- and to read alone -- was the supreme occupation. Eventually, the smoking was taken from her because it made her sick, and she never smoked again. But God, how I wish she could have smoked and not gotten sick. Perhaps one day, when science and medicine have progressed enough to put tiny healing machines in our bodies, perhaps then my grandmother -- or a woman just like her -- will be able to smoke to her heart's content; but for now, it surely isn't possible to enjoy this kind of bliss until you're completely satisfied -- because that satisfaction will never come.

My grandmother's other "vice," her books, were well organized, on the bookshelves that decorated every inch of space in her tiny trailer home. Among them, you could find several by Charles Bukowski, who famously said, "Find what you love and let it kill you."

We all have different favorite things. For Ms. Halifax, it was books, and for my grandmother too. But unlike Bukowski's pessimistic line, the books were not going to kill them. Indeed, my grandmother quit the cigarettes, so she could have more time to read; my grandmother had found what she loved and it wasn't going to kill her. You can read, and read, and read, and read, and it will only make you smarter, sharper -- and it will turn your beady-blue eyes into sharp little tacks. Just like Ms. Halifax's. Yes, reading is harmless in excess, and it's the perfect kind of addiction. 

As my back stretches out, and I continue to write these words, I'm thinking of all the tortures we endure, so we can enjoy the things we love. But not everything we love comes from Bukowski's imagination. There are so many glorious things that do not kill. Just pick the one that's most attractive. 

Joseph Campbell said that we are richly rewarded when we seek the things that bring us bliss, and I agree. I don't think the world seeks to punish us when we look for pleasurable experiences. And, "if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.” 

Ms. Halifax and my grandmother shared the bliss of reading, and by simply living that bliss they opened doors for everyone they touched, and encouraged them to follow whatever bliss they chose. Writing is one of the blisses I enjoy, and its nice to know its harmless in excess, even if it takes its toll on the spine... But there are remedies for that too, like moving into a sun chair, to let its warmth caress me into a deeper relaxation.