I’m traveling this week, so I don’t have time to do a normal post – but I wanted to post something because I spent a bunch of time trying to reformat the home page and postings page of the website. Thanks to all of you for your comments on the site; it’s helped inspire me to learn a bit more about how to make it work, although not nearly enough to make it spiffy. Bear with me – I’ll do my best to make it functional and easy to use.
I’m on my way to London. I’ll be there for just a few days.
I watched Casablanca last night, for about the fiftieth time. The only inspiration I got was to be really underwhelming in my dialogue.
The weather in Seattle has cooled off, but I hope I get a few more days to swim in Lake Washington before I leave town.
My dog is at his boarding facility. It kills me every time I drop him off, even though he rather likes it there and, in fairness, gets much better walks and outdoor time there than he gets with me. But whenever I put the small cooler that I use for his food at the kennel into the car, he knows I’m sending him off, and he drops his head and looks sad. It makes the little lilt in his step as he trots off to the fields around the kennel that much more painful – he’s basically saying screw you, you’re abandoning me but I’ll have a good time without you.
My son is with his mom. He’s going to start “jump start” week next week, a week for just incoming kindergarten students to have the run of the school on their own, to get used to the space they’ll learn in for the next five years. But holy moly, he’s starting school. It’s brought on a flood of memories of my early school years, and it’s been hard. I loved learning, and loved teachers, but I hated school. The kids were all so different from me, and they never really liked me – they liked me in the way that kids in school can like everyone, but generally, I was a loner, and not by choice. I wonder what it was in me – what it is in me – that makes me repellent, that radiates a sense that I’m not a friend. And I hope with every ounce of my being that my son didn’t inherit that from me. He seems different – kids want to make friends with him, they want to bring him into their confidence, in a way that they definitely didn’t for me when I was his age – and I hope that is his experience of life and of other people.
I mentioned a few days ago that I’m trying not to fall any more, I’m trying to accustom myself to the endless feeling of falling and realize that it’s not falling that I’m doing, I’m just floating. And I feel that today, but it’s an empty kind of floating. It’s like a sensory deprivation tank – my body feels room temperature, my skin feels no contact, the sounds around me are white noise.
Flying is amazing, zipping through the stratosphere at 565 miles an hour, crossing continents and oceans in reasonable comfort (I got upgraded). But I’m still one of the early generations of air travelers, ultimately, and we humans haven’t gotten used to the displacement, especially when its accompanied by the jet stream noise and dessicated air of this generation of planes. I’m sure they’ll get better, and in twenty years time we’ll be in planes which are so silent we complain about not knowing whether we’re flying or not, but for now, you know via the rushing background rumble of the jets and the hissing whine of the overhead fans.
Some trips you’re bubbling with excitement to reach your destination. Some trips you’re happy just to be traveling, a loved one beside you or the notion that you’ve earned an interlude away from phones and chatter enough to make you smile. Some trips you dread, knowing that when you land it’s going to be a bad conversation, you’re going to get dumped, or fired, or sued. I’ve been through all varieties.
This trip is different. It’s a sensory deprivation tank. I don’t have anything to say. I’m not sure there’s anything worth hearing.
I love London, but I found living there stunted, and I’ve found visiting there to be cliched. Why is it compelling? No idea. But I feel I own it, it’s mine, and I’m heading back to familiar ground – but that is part of the problem. This isn’t an adventure, this isn’t a vacation, this is a delivery job to a city I love but it’s not my own for this particular visit.
Sensory deprivation is a lousy basis for a trip. But, in that respect, this makes it new for me. I said I’ve had all varieties of travel – not true. I’m now visiting a city I know well, for a purpose that doesn’t have meaning. This is new.
Keep falling.