Why the emerald?

Bloggy dearest, you've been asking me for a while, how it was that I came up with your distinctive name. It all began in 8th standard when we were going through our reader. We had the first half Rime of the ancient mariner. An odd choice. I understand that the poem is a little long for kids of our age (then), but they could have chosen a shorter poem. The first half of the Rime is calculated to drive despair into the reader's heart, the redemption is never reached.

Thanks to baba, who loves poetry and quotes it constantly, I was not new to any of the classics, but this is the first time I was reading it and it sounds oddly to one versed in modern English. I pored over it making sense of the words. The poem really swings into pace with the words:

Listen, Stranger! Storm and Wind,
A Wind and Tempest strong!
For days and weeks it play'd us freaks--
Like Chaff we drove along.

Listen, Stranger! Mist and Snow,
And it grew wond'rous cauld:
And Ice mast-high came floating by
As green as Emerauld.

Can you see it? I can see it.

The poem is thought to be based on James Cook’s second voyage. I love it more for that, it makes it more real than an opium driven fantasy. Cook dipped below the Antarctic circle several times to see the fabled continent. Fabled continent… It’s beautiful, simply beautiful. I laugh at your Atlantis. Give me the real thing. The Terra Australis of Ptolemy. The fabled land that really was and is. Can you see it?

Cook in 1773 and the HMS Resolution and the great green iceberg. As green as emerald.

I made you because I wanted to be able to tell you everything I thought of, felt and read. To name you something in elvish was my first thought. But that would be a little elitist and not fair to you or me. Besides, what would be appropriate? Laurie Lantar.. ? Ha. Leaves don’t always fall, they grow and that means more to me…

So I named you after one of my first literary moments. I didn’t know about Cook then, all I saw was the green iceberg in mind's eye.