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In March of 2018, I left for Manaus, Brazil with my good friend Jane, to begin what I called My Year of Living Travelly. Today when I disbark the ship, what grew into a full second year is now complete. Since I have no cruise until past the anniversary date, this is indeed a marker for me, made especially sweet by the fact that i am once again traveling with Jane. These kinds of bookends always add special meaning to events.

It is, in a sense, closure on this chapter in my life, because the things that marked truly living travelly were giving up my condo to tenants and getting rid of my car. I will sleep in my own bed for the first time in two years, and once i have wheels, I will no longer have to arrange a ride, or limit myself to what i can walk to. My San Diego friends have gotten so used to this that whatever we plan on doing, it is either walking distance or they simply add “I’ll pick you up.” Now I can do a little returning of the favor, though I must admit in a lot of ways I have actually liked life with no car. That is good to know as i plan my future.

There is another chapter ending today With great sadness, I announce that I will be ending my seven-year association with Silversea effective today. No, I have not been let go—in fact my evaluations are as high as ever. The problem is that the line has introduced new requirements of lecturers that aren’t acceptable to me. I hope they will soon change their minds, but the professional standards and code to which I hold myself aren’t consistent with working for Silversea at this time.

I am not going to say more here, because I value my relationship with the line. I sincerely hope they change their new policies, and when they do I want them to ask me back. Public airing of my issues is not a good way to enhance the chances of that. To me, the things they are now requiring aren’t worth the loss of good lecturers (I am pretty sure I won’t be the only one), but I have to recognize how many people would love to step into our shoes, regardless of what the line demands, so I have to be prepared for this to be forever.

Either way, I could never find words adequate to express my gratitude for the opportunities Silversea has given me to see the world and to continue teaching. Nothing but praise here for the wonderful people who have made my life soar far beyond my expectations and fulfill so many of my wildest dreams.

And San Diego, get ready.  You’ll be seeing more of me, at least for a while.  The next chapter, whatever it is, awaits!

I had a weird and wonderful experience yesterday.

A little background first:  for the last seven years I have never gone on a cruise where I wasn’t at least a little obsessed with being prepared for my lectures.  I leave home with everything as ready to go as I can make it, but I always discover problems with builds or images in the  slides, or decide I need to make it a little shorter or add something I just learned. I look things up that I have new questions about.  I doublecheck pronunciations of  place names and people.  It’s worth every minute to go on that stage ultra confident, and so far I have avoided anything close to a disaster.  Even when my hard drive failed earlier this year in Vietnam, I had a back up plan, or two or three, and limped through the rest of the cruise with the audience unaware anything was wrong.

The last two cruises have been particularly stressful because I have been in the role of destination speaker, meaning that my content is supposed to stick pretty close to the ports we are visiting.  I spent time between cruises a year ago visiting New Zealand, where I had never been, so I could get some awareness of the lay of the land and the general feel of the places we were going . Nevertheless, I still had to talk with a degree of authority about several places I hadn’t been able to visit.  Adding to the stress was the extraordinary number of Aussies and Kiwis on board—well over half the guests.  I hadn’t expected that because I assume people go away to take cruises, but when you live so far from so many of the world’s destinations, a chance to cruise locally is very attractive.  If I was a fraud, Iwould be found out for sure.

It all went off without much of a hitch, and since things went so smoothly I guess I wasn’t aware of how much stress I was experiencing.

On this cruise and the next (the last for this assignment) I am an enrichment speaker.  That means that I can talk more generally about interesting topics of my choosing, like women at sea, famous mutinies, Polynesian navigation and the like.  I am totally in my professorial comfort zone, and in fact have given all of the talks multiple times before.

Yesterday morning I had no lecture to give, and since I am ready for all upcoming ones,  I had nothing at all to do or to worry about.  I was hanging out in my cabin, reading  a totally enjoyable book on my veranda,  drinking a second cup of coffee, watching the  sunlight on the water—all the good stuff passengers on vacation can do.

I went in to my cabin and saw that it was still only about ten in the morning.  I was astonished.  Why in the world was there so much more time than I was used to?  Oh well, I said to myself, and settled in to do something to fritter away a little more time before lunch. I was just bobbing along, floating.

Then it occurred to me:  there were things going on that morning. I always go to my colleagues’ lectures and one of them was almost over! I dashed to the theatre just as he was finishing, then realized that another talk followed his that I wanted to go to.  I was so utterly out of it that I hadn’t even checked the schedule, wasn’t even relating to anything outside my own veranda, my own chair, my own time.

And it was wonderful!  I was actually on vacation, however briefly.  By that point it was over.  I had roiled the waters.  I was back on board, back in role. But I caught a glimpse of something I have difficulty ever achieving—a real, true break.

People may think of my life as one long vacation, but it’s not.  I am on duty every time I step out of my room.  I  have to please at a certain level or I won’t be invited back.  I’m not complaining, but please don’t picture me poolside with a tropical drink in my hand listening to the ukuleles play, because that almost never happens. Don’t picture me walking on stage and chatting my way through a lecture, because though I want it to look that way, that absolutely never happens.

I spent some time yesterday, walking by myself on the beach, occasionally recapturing that sense of  happy drift (selfie below). Today I am going off on Mare Island, New Caledonia, on a ship tour. I will be the escort, which means I go for free, but I have to be vigilant about what is going on with the guests.  At some point we will stop at a beach for a swim.  Sounds great to me, but you know what I most want to do?

Ditch it all, lie on my back in the water and just float.

 

 

 

This morning I awoke to headlines about the assassination in Iraq of a top Iranian military leader.  I felt my blood rising to a boil over the appalling mess the current inhabitant of the White House is making of everything he touches.

I moved further down my list of mail and came across a reference to a wonderful article, “Ichigo Ichie,” about the importance of  being “moment hunters,” of looking for value in a precious  instant of time that will not come again. The value of just being still, of  looking around,  of grounding in the present.  I have linked it here.

https://link.medium.com/OxNub5VkX2

What could I do to apply it to the negativity I was experiencing?

Then I remembered a precept  from Julia Cameron, author of Walking in the World, which I am now reading.  In it, she talks about the importance to creativity of taking  a walk each day.  Since I can’t walk on the ship except around a boring track or on the treadmill in the gym, I decided to go stand outside and watch the water, to see if I could move my head into a better place.

Within a few minutes, a transformation began.  Cameron is right, that dusrupting routines invites the inner artist to surface.  I haven’t written anything creative  in years now, but within a half an hour, I became a poet again.

The ocean calls,

Come out, stand at the rail, see me.

Watch the show the ship and I put on for you.

See the spray escaping from the bow,

How every plume is different.

This one a skier’s trail down a mountain of new powder

This one breath on a dandelion

This one the tumble of spilled white paint.

A roar in a packed stadium

A slammed door echoing in a hallway

The whisper of a conspirator beckoning.

Drawing close, each swell says “here I am, this one is me.

What can we become  before I take my water back?”

The ocean stretches to a monotonous horizon.

Ship and swell make art of the moment.

It’s not particularly good poem, but because I am staying in the present, I don’t  intend to polish it.  It is a poem about a moment. It is mine, and that is good enough.  And at least for now, my rage is tamed.

Today is another turnaround day between cruises.  This morning everyone got off, and by later this afternoon a whole new group will have arrived.  There’s a period of time between about 10AM and 1PM when the ship feels so different.  The suite attendants and butlers  are working at breakneck pace to get the rooms ready for the next occupants.  Managers, officers,  and guest relations people are hustling behind the scenes to be ready, but everywhere else, the ship is quiet.

It feels a little like that moment between exhaling and the next inhalation.   The bars are empty, the gym is empty, the lobby is empty, the restaurants are empty.

I was the only one in the gym, and then a little later, the only one in my section of the restaurant where the lunch buffet is served.  Eventually, down at the other end, the singer from the supper club was coming in to start her day, having slept in after her late night show.  Most of the waiters were standing at attention with no one to be attentive to.  It is a part of life on the ship that most passengers never see.

That was beginning to change by the time I finished lunch.  The first arrivals were trickling in.  The sense was rising that we were on duty again, no longer part of the private life of the ship but a piece of the collective identity of those in service to the experience of the guests.  In a few minutes the Cruise Director will come on over the sound system to announce that the rooms are ready, and the halls will fill with new guests and their butler escorts, “going public” again.

That for me is the start of the new cruise. I am in my room now, but when I next step out into the hallway it will be as my public self, with a smile and a name badge. I will be Laurel Corona, Guest Lecturer again.

In a few hours I will stand up in one of the lounges to greet new guests with a pitch for what I will be speaking about, then on to dinner with the solo travelers, as I always do the first night.  Before I know it I will be back in my room brushing my teeth and hopping into bed.  It begins in earnest tomorrow, with my first talk and from there, an ongoing obligation to stay actively and pleasantly in the public eye.

I’m ready.  I’m just glad there’s time for a nap first.

 

I lost a good friend to cancer this week. Sheryl Gobble was a former colleague of mine at San Diego City College, and we kept in touch when she moved to another campus. A few years ago she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that affects the linings of organs such as the uterus and creates havoc all over the body in time. She endured surgeries, and several rounds of chemo in her effort to live with the cancer.

That was always the way she put it. It was her cancer journey, she called it. She didn’t see cancer as her enemy, focusing on her own body as this amazing thing that was doing its best to heal. She talked about her cancer as something she coexisted with, and that was what she did, as long as she could, with an alien presence she knew would prove too powerful maybe within five years, ten at the outside. She got three, but those years were packed with milestones like seeing her last of three sons out of high school and on to college, and some special trips with her husband Luis and family.

Sheryl lost her hair but none of her sparkling personality with her first round of chemo. Since i was retired and not cruising at the time, I took Sheryl to some of her sessions at what she called The Kaiser Day Spa. Yes, she could laugh about it. That was one of the things that was so awe inspiring about Sheryl. For a while she brought little photos and other items to decorate the space where she would sit for hours while toxins dripped into her body. She packed a lunch for us, and though it sounds weird, we had a lot of fun.

After chemo Wednesdays were over we still got together every Wednesday for a while to do something else fun, like a walk at the Self-Realization Fellowship Gardens in Encinitas, and having wine afterwards with lunch in Del Mar. Here we are.

I took Sheryl on a cruise a few months after the completion of her first round of chemo, to celebrate life, hope and friendship. Her hair had started to grow in again in these crazy rag-doll tufts that we decided needed some taming. We went to one of those free beauty consultations on the ship, and the hair stylist took Sheryl on as a project and gave her her first post-chemo hair styling. You can see the result in the photo at the top of this post.

Sheryl went through subsequent chemo when the cancer came back faster than expected. I got wrapped up in living travelly, and our time together dwindled. In September of this year before I left on an assignment, I realized I hadn’t heard from her for a while, so I sent an email asking what was up. It slipped to the back of my mind in the flurry of my life, and I just realized after I heard of her death, that I never heard back. I guess subconsciously I knew it must be bad if she didn’t reply, and I guess I wasn’t quite brave enough to follow up.

Sheryl, the eternal optimist, the chirpiest voice in the room, the quickest with the positive comment, the one who showed up at any event that was important to anyone, including me.  She was slipping away.

I am here in New Zealand coping with this sad news. The day I heard, I was in Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty on the North Island. I went ashore and bought a rose from a florist—pink for the pussy hat she wore at a rally (against you-know-who when he said you-know-what), and variegated with red for her courage, energy, and just plain brightness.

 

I took it to the bottom of Mauao, a volcano sacred to Maori, and waded out into the water of the bay to let it float away.  Sheryl, you were a rose. And yes, when your body could no longer support your life, your spirit rose. Enjoy the universe, beloved friend. Tell me all about it when I get there. I’ll pack a lunch.

I had this idea.  I would take all the cruise assignments I could in one year, rent out my condo, give my car to my son, and “live travelly” for that year.  I reached the one-year mark in March 2019, and had a packed second year of cruise assignments, so I just kept going.

Since I have no more assignments until April 2020, I will be completing year two when  I reach the end of my current assignment on Feb 1.  That means the ship I am on has become the venue to reflect on what all of this living travelly adds up to, and what is next.

I have now visited 97 countries, about 30 more if you use a list that treats  non-contiguous parts of countries, like Alaska and Hawaii as their own entities, and not really what we mean by a trip to the US. A few in Europe and the Caribbean I had visited before I started cruising, but most I have visited at least once again, so about 90 or more of that list came to me as a result of the blessing of this job. I have at least set foot on every continent except Antarctica.I have no idea how many ports I have called at, or how many sites I have visited, except it has to be several hundred

The map below shows in orange the countries I have visited.  The big holes now I could reach by ship are coastal Africa, plus Japan and the rest of Northern Asia, which now define my bucket list.

My guiding principle for my life has been to ask,”what are you doing that makes you feel as if you are still growing, and what doesn’t feel that way anymore?”.  Until recently I’d have answered unequivocally and resoundingly that cruising had a powerful growth trajectory but I am not sure how I feel now. Yes, I still love every minute of being in new places, or revisiting favorite ones, and the social aspects of life on board are still full of possibilities.  But I can’t help but wonder if maybe I am more marking time at this point than adding value to my life at the rate I used to , or perhaps even hiding out on ships from what might be more growth oriented for me.

I haven’t gone much further in my thinking than to allow in that niggling thought about how maybe I am hiding from my future at this point. My life story up to now would suggest that thoughts like these tend to burrow in and fairly quickly sprout into huge blossoms if anything is to come of them at all.  Suddenly, in what feels like scarcely overnight, I realize I am done with something and ready to move on.

I doubt it will be that dramatic with cruising, since I just can’t imagine saying no when there’s an opportunity to go somewhere interesting. But there are changes afoot that make me pretty sure I will be cutting back substantially  in 2020 and perhaps beyond. More about these changes in a future post.

I do know a couple of things: when I get back in February, I am moving back into my condo and getting a car.  I am also close to certain that my former San Diego life won’t hold me for long. What then is anybody’s guess but 2020 is shaping up to be a year of big decisions for me.  A little less living travelly, perhaps,  but hopefully a little more living meaningfully and excitedly.

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I got exactly what I wanted for my seventieth birthday— a complete stealth event.

It’s funny that I don’t mind standing on a stage talking to audiences, but  a bunch of waiters singing the birthday song is for me a form of torture. I guess maybe it’s because a lecture is about the subject and the birthday stuff is about me, and I really do not like being the center of attention.

I had asked Dan not to do anything to call it to the attention of anyone on board, as I truly did not want any fanfare. A lot of times people say that but don’t really mean it, so I could see he was a little perplexed as to what kind of “don’t do anything” this was. Fortunately,  several repetitions over several days did the trick, and indeed our celebration was a toast over dinner for two.

I was a little worried that the manifest would have passport details, so anyone with access to our information could have picked up on the situation but fortunately no one did.  So I am now sailing into a new year, literally, and completely on my own terms.

For me my seventieth doesn’t signify anything relevant. I don’t hear the ticking clock of time particularly loudly on birthdays, nor do I feel “one year older.”  It didn’t even occur to me to take a picture at dinner to commemorate the occasion.

People who don’t feel as buoyed up and carried along by the wonderful opportunity to exist in this precious world as I do may  have more need for days of acknowledgment. Maybe it’s about how much one likes and feels appreciated the rest of the year.  Gifts  and dinners can’t more than temporarily offset the negativity when relationships are bad, nor for me do they add much to relationships that are good

For me, yesterday was best celebrated by treating it as just another day in a life blessed with adventures, imagination, curiosity, and opportunities to grow.  I get 365 days a year of that, year in and year out.  What song or candles on a cake can compete with that?

 

It’s “smoky Sydney,” tonight.  This afternoon the sky was bright and blue, but around 4PM, the strong winds had turned the air a dingy pinkish-yellow from a bushfire somewhere near the city.

I am staying in the area known as The Rocks, the site of the original colony, where the oldest remaining stone buildings were built with convict labor and almost every block contains a historical marker about the early years of what would become the nation of Australia.

My historical memory should have served me better than it did at lunch today.  I should have known, based on the bad fish tacos I have gotten everywhere other than San Diego,  that the chances of an Irish pub in Australia knowing what fish tacos were all about were (shall we say kindly?) approaching statistical zero. Indeed these examples were crimes that really should be prosecuted. Flour tortillas instead of corn? Sweetened cole slaw instead of raw cabbage?  Avocado sauce? Mayonnaise dressing?  That there were three of these monstrosities on the plate was a good example of the expression “kill it before it multiplies!”

Not being a breakfast eater, to have lunch be a bust can be problematic, especially when evening rolled around and the smoke was too thick to want to leave my room (no room service here). Google to the rescue!  A search for “Happy Hour Sydney Rocks ” produced a hopping pub a block away, where Aperol Spritzes ( my go-to drink) were $5– cheap in USD but here, with the Aussie dollar at 68 cents, practically free. A salad and TWO Aperol Spritzes later, I am back in my room no worse for the little bit of time in the smoke.

I probably wouldn’t have bothered to post about this, but something melancholic and pretty wonderful happened while I was in the pub. All of a sudden on the other side of the room a group started singing the birthday song to a friend. Wow, I thought—December 2!  Whoever the person was, he or she shares a birthday with my son Adriano.  My beloved boy only stayed in this world 22 years, and I am closing in on spending as many of his birthdays after losing him as I had with him.  So when the birthday song broke out, I sang along quietly over in my corner, adding his name.

December is a tough month for me, marking both his birth and death. But today, halfway around the world, I sang out his name. Happy Birthday, Adriano. I carry you tucked safely in my heart wherever I go.

I posted a while back about how I was trying to get more adventurous in port, and I took another step today in Phuket, Thailand.  There was no shuttle into town due to a strong taxi union, and everyone had to bargain with the swarms of taxis drivers hanging out at the port gate.  When I heard it wasn’t going to be a simple as shuttle in, shuttle back, and it would be expensive to boot because the drivers expected to be your escort for 4-5 hours minimum as you made your way around town, I had this moment of old Laurel, asking why bother going in at all if it would be a hassle, but the me I am trying to become won out, and I got a driver  for $70 and gave him the list of places I wanted to go.  Took a photo of him and car license just in case, but he was perfect and always found me.

 

I also swore to myself I would eat lunch in town instead of chickening out due to tender tummy issues, and indeed I did!  Here is a photo of my crab curry with some sort of  leaves and rice noodles.  It was wonderful.

I learned something interesting about Thai table manners too.  The restaurant was packed with Thais and I noticed they all were using their fork to place food on a big spoon, which they then used to eat.  Very different, but when in Rome, or Thailand, do what everyone else is doing, and I have to say it worked just as well as any other way.

I had a clueless moment, however, when I forgot to ask in advance if they took credit cards (it was a very nice restaurant, so I just assumed), and they did not, nor would they take dollars.  Uh oh!  I wandered around  looking for an exchange booth, but it being Sunday, couldn’t find one.  I went back to the restaurant only to be told that really credit cards were fine with a 5 % surcharge, which sounded just fine to me, despite a little annoyance at wandering around in sauna-like air to solve a problem I apparently didn’t really have. But note to self:  always take debit card, not just credit card and American cash, if I don’t have local currency.  And second note to self:  don’t assume anything.

Still learning!

But the big deal for me is that I pushed my usual boundaries.  I did what doesn’t come naturally, and what I hope someday will.  I can’t say I love Phuket, but I can say I didn’t let it pass me by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Linda Olson

 

I am in Muscat, Oman, on my last day in the Middle East. Barren, rocky mountains loom behind the town, pressed into a tiny strip between land and sea— a reminder that people don’t easily make a place for themselves here. Beyond the mountains lie hundreds of square miles of sand dunes, the “Empty Quarter” of the Arabian desert.

Hardship brings communities together, but scarcity of resources can also work the other way.The Middle East illustrates both. Competition over water has pitted families against each other for centuries, while within these communities, I am told, one will not find greater friendliness and hospitality anywhere on earth.

I observe the lovely, languid way women in their black robes and headscarves move through their world, chatting among themselves. I observe the way men are more solitary, how even when in groups they tend to look outward, monitoring everything that passes by. Even today, when water and electricity and other niceties of urban life can be relied upon, their watchfulness may be a culturally embedded remnant of a time when threat had to be continually assessed. Or maybe I am, in my ignorance, reading too much into things again.

Despite the curiosity and desire to learn I bring with me everywhere I go, I am eager to be gone from here. I try to be open and and non-judgmental about other cultures, but this is simply not my kind of place. There’s a public aloofness in this part of the world.  People keep to themselves and public acknowledgment of the presence of strangers is minimal.  That’s fine.  It’s their right. They don’t owe me anything.  But for someone who grew up in a culture that goes overboard to say hello and smile at every social opportunity, it’s a bit of a disconnect.  Also a bit of a relief to be off the hook, not to “owe” them sociability back.

For another thing (hence the title of this piece) I can’t tolerate the desert. By the middle of the day in Doha, our first port, I was beset by a dry hacking cough, which turned into laryngitis the next day, followed by that nasty, noisy, infected cough you get at the end of colds. I seem to be nearing the end of it—much better today, thank you—but when I look back over the years, there seems to be a perfect correlation between these symptoms and being in a desert, whether it is the Atacama, Mojave, or here on the Arabian Peninsula. So yes, I have been literally choking the last few days.

Which brings me to why else I am calling this post “choke.” My two lectures so far have both been done in difficult circumstances. First, we had an unexpected sea day when swells made us unable to use the tenders to visit our port. I had about ninety minutes notice to get showered and dressed, review a lecture I hadn’t planned on giving, add in a few minutes about an additional port, and get early to the lecture venue because it was my first talk and we need a little extra time in case the equipment doesn’t sync. I was a bit frazzled by all of this, but it went off without a hitch. In other words, I didn’t choke. Experience is a blessing.

I woke up the morning of my second lecture barely able to squeak. I tried my usual remedy (hot water with lemon, ginger and honey), and was able to get to a pretty strong croak. My worry was that it would get progressively worse as I talked, but the cruise director and I decided the best course was to try, and then if I was going downhill after ten minutes to stop and reschedule. Much to my surprise, I got through just fine. I might have been literally choking, but I didn’t choke.

I am back on the ship after a morning in the souk. Those of you who know me won’t be surprised that I bought earrings—three pairs! I am done with the Middle East and now have two sea days before our first stop in India. Challenging in its own way, but at least it’s not a desert!