Diary

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!

Fortunately, I don’t freak out about hurtling in a tin can above  land and sea.  When the engines roar and the plane speeds up for takeoff, I say to myself, “if this is it, I have had the best run in this life and have no complaints,” a mantra I took from my late husband as he was dying of prostate cancer. I also say a thank you to whatever power might be out there that has protected me, sustained me and enabled me to rise up to meet the day.

I call  this post “fear of flying” not because I have sudden doubts about my safety but because on Wednesday I will embark on an itinerary that, even if it goes smoothly, will be the trip from hell.  Months back,  I got a huge bargain on business class  for what would be under any circumstances a grueling journey from San Diego to Dubai—roughly 50,000 points from a card I had dumped and was trying to zero out my points. Sounded great at the time.

It was what they call a “mixed ticket,” meaning that some legs will be in economy, but the biggie, Toronto to Cairo, and the last leg, Cairo to Dubai, will be in business. That’s okay, because the first two legs, San Diego to Chicago and Chicago to Toronto are in premium economy   Good enough.

the trip from hell part, however is twofold.  First, I have four flights to get there ( the first a red-eye)—four opportunities for game-changing delays and lost luggage ( universe, I did not say that).  Each stop involves a two hour layover, which adds to the hell, but does reduce the risk.

Second, the business class is on Egypt Air, which on the one hand has never crashed that I know of, but upon closer look has crappy seating in business and apparently the most lackluster service in the skies.  And, they serve no alcohol at all.  I don’t care about the last, except that some wine does help with napping. Still, the  happy gene sings in my ear,   at least I won’t be squeezed into Economy.

So what could possibly go wrong, I ask myself, my voice creeping into upper register.  Well, plenty, including my two biggest fears, that I  and/or my luggage won’t arrive on time to catch the ship.  I do that double nightmare “what if” every time I set out, which is why I (and hopefully my bags) always arrive a day early.  Though this one is a bit scarier, I tell myself it will work out somehow. It always does.

Still, when I see my bags slide down on the carousel in Dubai with  enough time to catch the ship, I will heave the biggest sigh of relief ever in my Years of Living Travelly.  Rude attendants, mediocre food, bad departure lounges—all things to shrug off, or maybe write about in my next post. And if there is one, it’s a sign I survived.

UPDATE:  Bags and I all arrived successfully. Thirty hours to get here, even with no delays. This morning we go to the ship!

This post is, for a change, not about Living Travelly. It’s about hair.

I consider myself pretty open to new things, and I admire people who show daring beyond what I am comfortable with. So why is it that going to the hair salon is such a source of existential dread for me?

My hair style hasn’t changed much since high school, except for the thick Sixties bangs I had then, or one foray into a perm when I was swimming before work and had no time to dry my hair. Not my best look, I must reveal—fortunately, I think all photographic evidence has been destroyed.

I don’t want anything even slightly different, just straight chin length blunt cut, thank you very much. I worry inordinately that it will be cut too short ( meaning maybe an inch more than I wanted). That was all I had to worry about before I started to cover the gray, and I got into the world of hair coloring.

In the last year or so, my body chemistry has changed in some way that affects my hair’s ability to take color.  The first time this happened, my hair turned orange. The second time, it looked great when I left the salon but had turned a  deep olive brown by evening.  Finally, i got a formula that worked, and I was good until about six months ago when a stylist on the ship decided that surely I must want a lemon meringue pie on my head. Seriously! I told her I was not leaving the salon until I didn’t look like Carol Channing.

All of these mishaps are pretty drastic, and it’s easy to see why I wasn’t willing to just go with the flow. But yesterday’s trip to the stylist was different. Yesterday made me dig a little  deeper.

By the time my hair has been out in the sun for a few months it is an almost white blonde I think is unflattering. I suggested to my stylist that maybe we go a little darker to cut down the natural bleaching process.  She overdid it a bit with the lowlights and I came home with hair that is more of a reddish brown.

My first reaction was to go back and have her fix it.  My second reaction was, well, you wanted darker blonde, and you were wondering  a while back what you would look like with a hint of red from those Scottish genes, so voila. My third reaction was once again,  geez,  go back and fix it! My fourth reaction was, this doesn’t look bad at all, just different.  So that’s where I am, and the hair is staying.

Actually , I am getting kind of pleased with it.  It’s interesting and different, two things I love, and I am getting in lock step behind it.  Maybe it’s the start of something….

But it got me thinking about why I care so much about an inch of hair, or a shade different than I wanted. Really, how shallow is that?  I have friends with involuntary boldness because of cancer or alopecia, for heaven’s sake. I consider myself strong, confident and well self-actualized, but I guess I should reconsider whether that is as true as I want it to be.

I suspect we all have an internalized view of our physical appearance we carry around with us. I am rarely taken by surprise when I see my reflection in a store window, because I look pretty much the way I thought I did.  Now I look in the bathroom mirror and see something I wasn’t expecting, and that makes me uneasy about myself in the world.  There is some truth in the idea that we dress for other people and maybe I care more about what others think of my physical appearance than I wish to admit.

At any rate, I am not happy with myself for reacting as I did.  I see young people with colored stripes in their hair and think , “if I were young I would do that!”  I think it’s true, but then again, if I haven’t changed my hair much since I was a teenager, maybe I wouldn’t.  Why is it that someone who thrives on change can be so weird in this one area? Why is it that I am so cautious about something so minor, when I will step on a plane and go halfway around the world alone?  I don’t get it. Do you?

I am so used to these short interims between cruises since I began Living Travelly, that I quickly fall into a routine that works something like this.

First few days: recover from jet lag and stagger through setting up appointments and contacting friends for lunch, tennis, etc.

Remainder of first week:  deny how much work I have to do, but find myself pulled toward my computer anyway.

Second and third weeks: work compulsively, broken up by going to all the appointments, lunches, and tennis I have set up.

These days, that’s about all the time I have.

Right now now I am in the second week, working like a dog to be ready to leave for Dubai early in November. From there I will float across the Indian Ocean and eventually arrive in Singapore, then on to Sydney for holiday assignments on Silver Muse.

Today, I am feeling the weight of it all. I’m  not quite to the point where leaving again feels all that positive. Too much to do, and even the fun I usually have thinking about what to take hasn’t kicked in yet.

It will, though.  As I review my lectures, I fall in love again with my topics, and can’t wait to share.  I think about how much I prefer the sound of waves to traffic outside my window, and how great it is to have every new day dawn with the promise of something out of the ordinary.

Just writing this is all I have to do to feel the first frissons of excitement.  Hello, wonderful world out there!  I’ll see you soon!

 

 

 

 

I arrived back in the United States day before yesterday, after a cruise that took me from Lisbon to Greenwich, then across the Atlantic to Newfoundland and down the eastern seaboard to New York, where I will disembark tomorrow.

After decades of travel, I can’t count the number  of times I have come back into the United States from abroad.  Until recently, I have always felt a strong sense of belonging when I would see airport signs saying “Welcome to the United States of America.” I would grin from the inside out at being home.

Not any more.  There is no sense of welcome, no sense of home. 

I feel ashamed  and disconsolate at what my country has been reduced to, and so deeply, deeply betrayed that when I approached the immigration agent, I could not even offer a polite smile. I feel knocked to the ground by unutterable sadness, at the same time almost airborne with anger,  as I reencounter a country that for all its flaws,  I used to feel proud to be part of, a country that undeniably has worked well for me.  

Yesterday, I accompanied a group making a quick tour of historic Boston’s main sites.  A couple of times I had to turn away and will myself not to tear up at the reminders of American patriots who were willing to pledge their  “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to create a nation I owe so much to.

I am too much of a skeptic, and have read too many alternative histories of the United States, to go overboard glorifying any of them, but yesterday in Boston the country I want to believe in was on full display, while the papers are full of stories about the president refusing to cooperate at all with a constitutional process that is at the heart of our democracy—the right to hold our leaders accountable to us.  Stories about abandoning Kurds to die, probably because  there’s something for the president to gain personally out of a conversation with a foreign leader. Stories of quid pro quo’s for venal ends on matters that affect my country’s safety and standing in the world. Yesterday  was a time for tears. Every day is a time for rage.

This afternoon I will arrive in New York Harbor.  I am honored to be asked by the captain to be on the bridge to provide commentary as we sail in, so I will have a view of the Statue of Liberty few civilians get to see.  If Boston was emotionally hard, I suspect this will be harder. I think of the children with their shiny blankets on floors in detention camps. I think of exhausted people hoping only that their fears for their lives will warrant asylum in an America whose president, when told they couldn’t simply be shot down if they tried to cross illegally, wondered aloud if perhaps non-fatal bullets in the legs might be a sufficient deterrent.

One time years ago, when I was walking in Battery Park and feeling the  beautiful benediction  of the statue in the harbor,  I felt such a rush of emotion that I called the people I love most, just to share being there with them.  It felt like such a blessing that day to be right where I was, part of this country. The loss cannot be measured, but perhaps our wholeness can be restored  I don’t know. I don’t see how.

I picture the beautiful woman in New York Harbor, saying the America she represents is a land of tired and poor who came and made good.  Perhaps the statue we now deserve would not be raising a torch but aiming a gun down the Narrows, or pointing to a sign quoting the president, “Sorry, We’re Full.” Or perhaps she would have uprooted these gigantic feet and gone to stand in reproach on our southern border. I am certain at the very least her face would be stained with tears. I suspect mine will be too when I greet her..  

I am listening to a novel in which the narrator, a mother of preteens, is at a a party where, for the first time in years, she gets stoned.  She tunes in to the conversation the other stoned mothers are having around her, and is bewildered that the conversation doesn’t seem to have changed.  They are still talking about their children, and their teachers, and the ups and downs of their lessons, sports, and other activities. She is feeling disaffected  and dissatisfied with her life, and wonders, “where is the yearning?” 

No one ever talks about that.  It’s as if we all hide behind superficial conversation and call that friendship, when in fact we almost never reveal what we really think, the things that are too scary to talk about, the things that, once spoken of, would require actions we don’t want to admit we need to take.

Looking back on my own life, I see now that when my toxic first marriage was taking such a toll on me that there were times I though just driving my car at high speed off the road would solve my problems, I never said one word to women I considered my best friends. I look back on those times and I don’t even recognize the person I was, and the cowardice of my lack of ability to be honest with myself, or to hint of my reality to others.

We are so good at hiding. If we should start an sentence with anything as daring as “I yearn for…,” would it dissolve into something hip, or shallow, or silly, like wanting a fabulous massage, or our all-time favorite cocktail or glass of wine? No wonder we feel adrift. We don’t even have the words for what we want, because we have dumbed down our vocabulary for feelings, or maybe we never really had more than a few words to speak for the gamut of our emotions to begin with.

Since this is my blog, I wish I could say, “Look at me!  See how I have worked through this and I have this sage advice to offer.”  Well, I don’t.  I think only that I need to be able to complete a sentence that starts with “I yearn for,” and once I can complete it privately,  to say it out loud to others and, in doing that, make a commitment to turning it into reality, whatever I am brave enough to determine  that is.

This is a form of living traveling too.

This morning we anchored in the bay of St. Pierre, part of an overseas collective of France, tucked into the southern tip of Newfoundland. I had this gorgeous thought that I would go ashore early and find a cafe where I could indulge in what, bar none, is my favorite breakfast.  Honestly, a piece of fresh and perfect baguette, slathered with good French butter and equally awesome jam, cannot be surpassed in this world. Better even than the best croissants, although they are close behind in second place, and can also be enough to make me swoon straight out of my chair.

St. Pierre is truly part of France in its orientation, and I just assumed this goal could be easily achieved.  Indeed, I saw the typical scene of shoppers coming out of the boulangeries carrying one, two, or sometimes a dozen baguettes, but they were taking them either home, or to shuttered-up restaurants in preparation for lunch. The bakeries didn’t have any tables, so fulfilling my fantasy right on the spot was out.

I wandered all around the little town and didn’t find a single place open for breakfast.  Poor me, or should I say “pauvre, petite moi,” in a bid for Gallic sympathy.  I was thinking of heading back to the ship for a baguette breakfast that would be almost as good,  when I saw one ice cream shop open that was advertising coffee and crepes.

Well, okay, I told myself. It’s not my dream meal, but really, crepes are pretty authentic too.  So that’s what I had.

 

It wasn’t the world’s best crepe, or more than just a good cafe au lait, but it was a moment to savor nonetheless. As Plan Bs go, this one was just fine. I’ll save perfection for another day.

 

I have crossed the Atlantic on ships before, but usually it has been from west to east, Florida to Europe. My one crossing the other direction took me from London to Iceland and Greenland, an then to Montreal, which had a very different feel from just going straight over the course of five days, as I just did,  from the Old World to the New.

This afternoon, the coast of Newfoundland showed up through a light dusting of hail on my balcony after a day of gale force winds and a fairly bouncy and choppy ride on the North Atlantic. I have gotten used to crossings and didn’t feel any sense of hallelujah at the sighting of land, but as I stood in the observation lounge on the ship overlooking the bow, I did feel a sense of camaraderie with the other people there, that we had all done this together.

When the ship was cleared by Canadian immigration around 5PM, surprisingly few people hurried down to go ashore to touch land, but i was one of them.  I packed totally wrong for wet weather in the 40-50F degree temperature range, and overnight temperatures close to freezing. I hate cold feet, so I hurried off to an outdoor outfitters store to buy a pair of wool socks and waterproof shoes. I have both these things at home and it drives me crazy to duplicate things I rarely use, but I want to enjoy the rest of this trip with warm, dry feet, so enough said.   It was funny though, because by the time I tried on shoes and got to the cashier, everyone in line was from the ship, having come away from home equally unprepared,

This is all a preamble to what I really want to say, and that is that at dinner tonight, by myself for a change,  outdoors on the pool deck with heat lamps and blanket (my favorite solo venue), I got to thinking about what it means to have crossed from the Old to the New World.  I felt a little giddy at the sense of being home. It was, of course, home in the most abstract of ways, because I am in Newfoundland, to which I have no personal connection.

Still, I found myself thinking about what it means to have one’s psyche formed in the New World.  I don’t pretend to know what is it like to be raised in the  British Isles or mainland Europe, but it seems to me that one must feel something about being the inheritor of well over a millennium of history, whereas I grew up in a culture where the meaningful past barely spans a generation or two.

I am part of a culture that traditionally has responded more to  open spaces than boundaries. I know I am speaking from the privileged outlook of being white in the world of which I speak, but still, being of the New World does relieve one of at least some of the burden of history, as much as it equally leaves one adrift without much sense of history at all.

This continent opens itself to possibilities, is steeped in reinvention, and  asks few questions about people’s pasts (tabloid journalism aside). I have been throughout my life so blessed with opportunities to change course, to  change me. It almost seems a requirement in this culture to be dissatisfied, and a defect of personality or character not to do something about discontent. It can be a scary, insecure world indeed, but an exciting place if one is at home in it.

I left the town of my childhood at age 12, and moved again at 13 and 14 to new schools in new cities.  Every time, I felt elation at being able to shed what I didn’t like about myself and embrace what I  believed I was becoming. This rather nomadic life made me very comfortable with change, eager to try new things, and not particularly attached to anything.  I think I would have done well as a pioneer in a former time. Now, in the 21st century, my pioneering means something different, keeping my life  interesting, growing, and productive.  Welcome home, I tell myself tonight, although part of being from the New World is to be home wherever I am.

Often people comment on how footloose and fancy free my life is, and often I wonder whose life they are talking about.  I am traveling the world, to be sure, but as that expression goes, “wherever you go, there you are.”

I bring my personality with me everywhere, and most of the time it serves me well. I am optimistic, resilient, and good at seeing things from multiple perspectives.  I can fairly easily see the good in people and situations, and when I am disappointed I can shrug things off fairly easily as life lessons.

Reluctance is a word I have never seen in the plural, so I will invent it here. I have a few reluctances that have made me less able to enjoy this traveling life as fully as i would like.

First, I am reluctant to take any risks in port that might cause me to miss the ship.  Of course it makes sense to not want to be stranded, especially in my role, where it would affect me professionally as well as personally.  I don’t have any problem choosing not to do utterly stupid things,  like going far from the ship with only a dicey plan for  transportation back, but I sometimes am prone to being too cautious.

And sometimes I’m not.  I met a couple who live in Bangkok who told me if I was ever there, they wanted to show me around.  I had a stop in Bangkok, and we set a plan months in advance, not realizing that the ship would have to dock about forty miles from the city. My friend, who is an airline executive and the owner of a travel agency, said not to worry, he would send one of his guides and drivers to meet Dan and me and drive us in.  We had a fairly short port call, which meant that we would only have a couple of hours in Bangkok.  There were tours going into the city, and of course if they were delayed, the ship would wait for them, but it’s tough luck if you go out on your own and don’t get back.

Dan wanted to cancel, given that traffic was unpredictable, and I might have gone along, except that Charin, my friend , had gone so out of his way to make it happen, and geez, it’s Bangkok!  We would otherwise have spent the day in a boring container port with nothing to do.  So I decided to go, and Dan decided that since I was going, he was too.  Maybe he was thinking it I missed the ship he would rather be stuck with me than sailing off without me.

Anyway, Bangkok was fabulous. I can’t wait to go back and see more.  We had an abbreviated city tour, a great lunch , and then we were on our way back.  We got to the ship with only about a half-hour to spare, and if traffic had been heavier, I doubt we would have.  That close timing was in retrospect a good argument for reluctance on the stop in Bangkok, but I am glad I didn’t let my cautious side prevail.

It’s little things that get me annoyed with myself.  Yesterday was one of those times.  We were supposed to dock in Greenwich but because of weather conditions ended up further down the Thames at Tilbury.  Because it was an embarkation and debarkation day, there wasn’t a regular shuttle transporting guests into town and back, but a special intermittent shuttle to pick up and drop off people in Greenwich who were planning to begin or end the voyage there, and now had to deal with the changed plans.  I decided to hop on the shuttle to explore the town, but as I waited on the shuttle bus, I semi-seriously considered getting off and spending the day on the ship. As we were pulling away from the ship, I felt that glimmer of dread that I had just voluntarily created a situation where it was not  completely in my hands to get back to the ship on time (i.e. walking distance)

”What have I done?” I asked myself as we drove away, and ruminated much of the drive about how many backup plans I could put in place to get back the twenty-odd miles to the ship.  At the other end, I didn’t leave the shuttle stop point until I had heard from about three different people exactly where I needed to be and when.

Then I was fine. I had a fun time wandering around the town and got back just fine, but not very happy with myself for ever having built up such a simple jaunt into an imaginary crisis. I’ve got to keep working on that reluctance, but I remind myself that yesterday I did indeed overcome it a little.

I made some progress on my second reluctance yesterday as well.  Let’s call this one Culinary Reluctance. I don’t have a cast iron gut, and even less so as I get older.  I will spare the details, but it comes down to being generally very uneasy  about  eating food off the ship. I watch these shows about great street food, and I am so envious, but I just don’t dare.

Now that I am on ships so much, I get really tired of the food onboard.  In St. Petersburg this summer there was a Siberian cafe just across the street from the ship and after trying mushroom ice cream there (surprise yum) and rye bread and honey ice cream (another surprise yum) with my Russian friend Tatyana on my last stop in St. Petersburg for the season, I have vowed I am having lunch there or elsewhere every time next summer when I do the Baltic again. Likewise I have made a resolution to have lunch ashore at least sometimes in every port, just to make sure I am not missing out on the highlights of a visit.  Yesterday in Greenwich, in addition to taking the shuttle, which I described above, I decided to live up to my new promise to myself, so I stopped in a pub and had fish and chips and a pint of lager.  Yes, indeed I did!

Today I had another great day, this one with very little trepidation, because I was in the care of friends Peter and Sue, with me here. who live in Cornwall not too far from our port in Falmouth.  They picked me up and took me to a beautiful garden with paths that meander down to the sea.  What a great outing it was, and I even had soup and a scone without worrying about it. You see me at the top of this post, ready to dig in!   I am now back on board, and on my way to being a better, braver Laurel!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not often I find a word so special and so perfect  that I wonder how I ever got along without it.  Yes, I am a coddiwompler, and proud of it!  It’s not that hard to travel purposefully, or to wander around without a destination, but it’s quite a different thing to travel purposefully toward—well, who knows?

I am writing in the Frankfurt airport, waiting for my connection to Lisbon where I will catch a ship tomorrow. I know exactly where I am going, and when I get on the ship I know what the ports will be, so there’s no really coddiwompling about any of that.

But that word “destination” has another set of connotations.  How differently we use the word “destiny,” though obviously the root must be the same.  A destination may be where you’re think you’re going, but turn out to be someplace very different indeed.  If you get on the wrong train, suddenly your destination is where the tracks are going.

I am—we all are— going toward what we may in retrospect see as our destiny, although looking back we may have thought at the time we were headed somewhere else.  Destinies—and destinations— are like that.  Actually, in my life I would have to say that often what I didn’t know would happen ended up better than what I had planned or imagined. The “wrong” turn ends up being so right because it took me to a place  I would otherwise have missed, to a person I might never have met, to an insight I  might never have had.

Sometimes I recite an old travel mantra I came up with in the infinitely frustrating and wonderful city of Venice: “I’m not lost, I’m just not where I expected to be.” I coddiwompled, setting out with a purpose and ending up somewhere else. But ‘ending up” doesn’t really describe it. Where I am is always a pause on the way to something else, whatever it ends up being. And that is just fine with this coddiwompler.