the pace of a camel

I liked this article I read from the BBC awhile back. It imagines a world without planes, in the future. It starts off rather silly, but progresses to something lovely.

Whatever the advantages of plentiful and convenient air travel, we may curse it for being too easy, too unnoticeable – and thereby for subverting our sincere attempts at changing ourselves through our journeys.

Indeed. I constantly use this convenient air travel to get in a couple of hours somewhere it would take a day to drive and many days by foot. It’s a bit unsettling. I can fall asleep briefly and wake up in different weather.

It’s still pretty exciting to go new places, though. New places that start with planes, continue in cars and end on foot are the best. A gradual progression from here to liminal airplane space to there.

chicago! chicago?

As I walked a mile or so home from the ballet tonight, two guys about a block and a half from each other were playing a sort of competitive saxophone. One played popular standards and the other went with a sort of free-form jazz. A few weeks ago, when we had that spell of warm weather before it went back to being unspringishly cold, I saw a puppet show on the way home from the office.

A puppet show! On my walk home! It was operated from a wooden box towed by a bicycle.

There are some spectacular things about Chicago in the spring. Once it’s fully in flight, people will be all over taking pictures and touristing, and there will be even more than the usual public art (there’s a lot already, also a spectacular thing, but year-round if you can stand to go outside). Downtown is so constantly populated that I feel safe walking alone almost all the time. On nice days, people also stand around outside soliciting donations and political participation and religion and clubs to go to, or weird shit people are selling. They’re pretty aggressive. It’s charming in some ways.

But. The street hawkers also provoke this blindered thing Chicagoans do. I find myself doing it, too: walking down the street trying to avoid eye contact or interest. It’s the people begging that get me. I want to be helpful, want to give everyone a dollar, but I’d need to get $50 in ones every morning to do that thoroughly.

At home, if I don’t have a dollar for each person I see (which is rare; I usually see something like one a day), smiling and hoping their day goes okay at least gives them a smile in return. It’s not much. Chicago’s street folk are rarely interested in smiles. I wouldn’t refuse someone my dollar if they were an asshole, but when they show the same anger whether I give money or not… well, the world’s suffering makes me sad and uncomfortable sometimes. It should, I suppose. There are sad things in the world, and I live much of my life insulated from those things.

So I understand the blinders, and walking down the street with ruthless attention to purpose, the sidewalk, and one’s wallet. Being confronted with suffering several times a day is pretty painful. I start believing that nothing I do is helpful if I pay too much attention, and I start to forget that the universe doesn’t exist purely for my benefit if I pay too little. It’s a constant effort to find a balance of some sort. Mostly effort. Little finding.

I’ll keep trying.

travel broadens the mind

I am awake at 3am local time, which is a little annoying. If I could, I might poke my internal clock in the eye.

This is the thought I woke up with: when did I stop using plastic baggies? My home airport keeps an enormous box of them just outside the security line, and I picked up the second plastic baggie I’ve acquired in a year as I left on this trip. I think at some point I decided that, whatever I was doing with regard to plastics, at least I wouldn’t willfully buy small plastic bags to transfer things out of larger plastic containers. As for the small plastic containers used to transport toiletries in carryon luggage… well, those are pretty easy to reuse, at least. Except for toothpaste. [Well, people have suggestions, but how many pairs of scissors does one household have?] Yet another argument for finding a toothpaste recipe that doesn’t taste awful, or like dessert.

There are other ways traveling shows – and perhaps creates; cause and effect are pretty subtle sometimes – the changes I’ve wanted for myself over the past mumble mumble years. I packed – as I’ve been telling everyone – one large carryon bag & a laptop (in a bag that will also be my purse and walking bag) for a week. This is going to be my new standard for work travel, so it may as well be my standard everywhere. One Bag is right, though: if you’re doing a single bag, wheels are a bit stupid – they’re heavier, and a bit unwieldy even in airports. Noted.

Bag logistics aside: I forget sometimes that I was once given to impressive meltdowns when forced to travel. The first time I went to Hawai’i, I cried at a Starbucks in LAX – before we even got there. And possibly again at a rental car counter in Honolulu? My poor travel companion! I finally left the US for a bit this year, in part because I gained a sense of humor and let go of that overwhelming need to have things happen according to plan. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. Which is great! That’s where the real fun starts.

Partly, also, I think I used to be afraid of… well, anything that wasn’t familiar or comfortable. Forcing myself to deal with new degrees of discomfort helped get me over that. In fact, as I try to list examples, none of the things that should sound uncomfortable actually are – I mean, sure I’ve camped in 100 degree heat, but there was a shower and a swimming hole; or there were those there-and-back-in-a-day job interview flights, but the tacos were fantastic; getting up to the tip of that mountain was hard, but it was amazing and only took like an hour and a half anyhow. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to do scarier stuff. My stuff just isn’t that scary. But. It sure would’ve seemed that way to the version of myself who melted down at LAX that one time.

And the tacos really were fantastic.