The suitcase

The suitcase this morning felt so familiar as I packed it, and my little dog, Bronwen, dropped down into depression when she saw it happening. The security lines, taking out my laptop and cell phone and keys, taking off my jacket and shoes, pulling out the sandwich bag of cosmetics; then rushing to throw it all back together and head down some long walkway, linoleum and stainless steel handrails, and windows that look out onto tarmac. On the plane, buckle up, air on, lights out, pull the window shade, put on the head phones. Off the plane and into the ladies room, where I find myself swaying in front of the mirror. No, I am not fainting. I'm a sailor!

What fun, I am still a sailor, and I hope I keep a little sailor inside forever.

Full Speed Ahead!

Did I ever mention that the MV Explorer is the fastest little cruise ship in the world? No kidding, she is. We did 31 knots on our way to Miami that last day? I celebrated by getting on the elliptical machine and going as fast as I could while the big blue flashed past.

Good preparation I suppose for this...LA this weekend, DC next week, Kernville next weekend, Sacramento the next week, Chicago the next week. Then back to LA for ten blessed weeks of terra firma. Or such is my fantasy.

Alternate Realities

Today I used car keys, and a debit card, and I grocery shopped, and cooked for the first time in four months. I have been without cell phone, without credit cards and debit cards, without car keys, without any keys. I remembered that shopping and cooking are laborious and time-consuming, and also satisfying and delicious. As I built up my stew, adding layer upon layer of ingredients, Elizabeth sighed and said "The house smells so good; it hasn't smelled like this in so long."

I have yet to unpack the suitcases and begin the laundry. Yes, I recall this reality, and it moves me away from that reality, where I did not swear, or whine, or vent my spleen, where I never missed anything I was supposed to be for any reason. Even sick I showed up and said "I'm sick so you might not get my best performance, but I am here."

Wonder what I will learn about being here; wonder what I might be able to do differently for having been there, there on the ship, there in South Africa, and Cambodia, there in Guilin and there on Mt. Koyasan, there on the equator, there on the international date line, there where the Southern Cross rides the horizon, there where I was rocked to sleep, there where the dark at night was deep and the silence a great cocoon in which to rest at night.

Rock n Roll in Emerald City

I am on land in the USA! Key West, Florida. The first thing I noticed pulling in to Miami is what a rich place this! Odd because it is not as glamorous as Hong Kong. It is not the glitz, but the width of the streets and the fact of landscaped median strips, and the clean and high functioning equipment and the smooth organization of life. Wow. Emerald City.

I have acquired a funny new characteristic which I will no doubt soon lose, but for the moment I sway quite a bit, literally and physically. I am not yet off the ship, though I have this staggering sense of having just been around the world. It feels bigger having done it than it did in the process of doing it.

Meanwhile, I look like I have some strange neurological syndrome and, in fact, that is exactly what I do have.

Woman Alive

I am reminded at journey's end of the G.K. Chesterton novel, Man Alive, that I found so compelling when I was my students' age. Innocent Smith is the character who goes around the world in order to find the life at home....

And, in the words of the poet Rumi:

Either this deep desire of mine
will be found on this journey,
or when I get back home.

It may be that the satisfaction I need
depends on my going away, so that when I have gone
and come back, I'll find it at home.

I will search for the Friend with all my passion
and all my energy until I learn
that I don't need to search.

If I had known the real way it was
I would have stopped all the looking around.

But that knowing depends
on the time spent looking.

Flying Fish, Make a Wish

The flying fish have been our constant companions. At first I thought they were birds and wondered how the little things managed to get way out to the middle of the ocean. Okay, I was no sailor. But now I am. These little fish shoot out of the water and spread their dorsal fins, which look for all the world like wings and they soar along the surface of the water for great lengths. Often half a dozen or so take to the air at the same time. Flying fish.

I wish for world peace. I wish to make good decisions. I wish to die knowing for sure that I lived. And, of course, this adventure is on the "oh how I have lived side of the scale." Back to world peace. I don't want to just wish for it, but to imagine with clarity and focus, to hold it in my heart in spite of the vulnerability of such radical hope, to work for it with my words, with my hands. World peace. "Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." This was our closing song at convocation tonight.

Kay Widdows, who gave the faculty address, described a series of Faure songs that express the sentiments of a young man who lives in a port town and watches the tall ships and tries to convince himself he wants to live a safe and familiar life on shore. But in the last song he knows "that I have great departures inside of me." In the morning I arrive home, having circumnavigated the planet. But that arrival is a departure from this life, this ship, this journey. And Elizabeth and I have more great departures in the very near future. That, I suppose is how adventures start, with great departures.

What goes home with me?

For today and tomorrow the literal question is, what goes home with me? Those things which have given great pleasure to my daily life will likely go to Courtney, my French press and thermos and aromatherapy spray. The time for final sorting is here on the material plane. I have five large boxes packed and ready to go, a big duffel bag, a suitcase, and a backpack. And I have already sent off three boxes of teaching materials. That's a lot of stuff. Surprisingly, I don't have the sense that I really shopped too much, as I thought I might. And I don't have more than the US Customs limit either. Perhaps I will sing a different tune when I see the shipping tab!

What else, though? What else will I take home from going around the world? A sense of the aloneness, the essential 'I-ness' of life, the way birth and death are "I" events, at least from the self perspective. Because going around the world in a ship is hard to articulate, much less to 'get' as a listener. Yet I question this interpretation even as I write it, because we are not born alone but born to a minimum of a mother and a world. And so, though I am enculturated to think of indescribable experience as belonging in a lonely way to me, it is actually all held together by the communal nature of reality, the web of existing in relationships. And that is probably what I will take home, an enriched self who, to the extent that she gives it away, will share the enrichment in rather subtle ways.

A not so subtle reality for me is that I have done something I really wanted to do in life; I have taken time from what I must do in order to do something I want to do. And I feel very energized by that....

"If the world is to be healed by human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear. People who can open to the web of life that called us into being, and who can rest in the vitality of that larger body." (Joanna Macy)