Diary

Well, I seem to have done it again.  I am as ready as a person can ever be for a long trip.  It’s easier in some ways for me now, since I have shed myself of responsibilities for  the kinds of things that take so much time ( mail, houseplants, standing appointments, and the like)  when vacating ordinary life for just  a few weeks.

I have packed my bags, and gotten my lectures lined up on my laptop and—equally if not more important—backed up about three or four different ways. I’ve seen the friends who made a concrete plan with me to do so.  I went to the dentist, and am headed to the hairdresser this afternoon.  I played tennis enough times to be sure I still can.  Golf not so much, but it can wait.

On Monday, I get on a plane to Singapore, for several months in Asia, after which I take the long way home, going across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and then up to Athens, to catch a plane home in mid-May. Five months, plus a few days.    My longest stretch in My Year of Living Travelly to date has been three and a half.

So how am I feeling?  To be honest, a little apprehensive.  Asia is not my comfort zone, though admittedly seeing it from the safe haven of a luxury ship is hardly throwing caution to the wind and taking my chances with the universe.

Plus, have iPad, will travel.  It is so easy now to make reservations, find guides, and figure out what to see.  My first trip to Europe as an adult, back in their 1980s, I think I recall having to send letters to hotels and wait for their reply.  Now, I can get everything squared away with ease, and just have to hope that people on the other end deliver.  If not, I am pretty good at Plan B, or sometimes instant Plan C or D.  And I am pretty good at saying to myself, “this is what I am doing instead of what I planned, and it will be good in its own way.”

From time to time last spring I got on a plane and flew alone somewhere to spend time between cruises.  I spent multiple days alone in London, Nice, Marseille,  Corfu, and Riga, plus single nights in several other places, and it was really a piece of cake.  However, I have never traveled alone in a region of the world that is so new to me culturally.  Between cruises, I will have to rely entirely on myself, without the advantages of another brain to come up with ideas, another person with whom to puzzle through things, another person to help make the difficult parts a little easier.  I am confident I can do this but it’s not—

It’s not comfortable.

But part of the point of Living Travelly is to test boundaries, to learn not just about the world but about myself.  I can’t do that in my comfort zone.  I know that.  So I am ready for the adventure, whatever it ends up being. Monday, I sprout new wings.

 

I’m in  San Diego right now for a little over two weeks.  I am trying to reestablish old routines, but it is really so disorienting at this point.  This is my fourth stop back in San Diego since I began MYOLT (My Year of Living Travelly), and each time it feels a little less like a homecoming and a little more like a visit. Don’t get me wrong—I love the visits!  I just am starting to feel as if the real me is just marking time before the next adventure.

I have to admit, I am tired.   I see this limp blonde in the mirror and wonder who she is.  There’s less spring in my step ( no not cruise weight—my clothes still fit) and  less of a sense of engagement with everything—people, activities, events.  I don’t know what that is about, since I am still loving the adventure and so tapped in  to living on ships.

Maybe it’s because I don’t give myself any down time.  I have been home less than a week and I have already done two lectures for later this spring.  I am looking at something I thought was so far from possible I couldn’t even imagine it: being fully prepared for my five-month stint in Asia before I leave for Singapore on December 3.  I thought I could have as many as ten destination lectures to do while I was on ships and between assignments, staying just ahead of having to give them, but I have driven myself pretty mercilessly, and I now have only three to go.  I can finish all three if I stick to this pace until I leave.

Or I could just breathe, and remind myself that a little work on the ship isn’t so bad….  except it is.  I really don’t want to concentrate. My eyes don’t want to read.  My fingers don’t want to type.  My brain just doesn’t want to figure out a slide show.  I want to do things like team trivia and  putting on the carpet.  I want to work the daily NYT crossword puzzle.  I want to take delicious naps. I want to have a glass of wine with lunch without worrying about it making me sleepy and cutting into time I need to work.   I want to listen to my audiobook by the pool.  I want to go to the gym ( well, not really, but I need to).  I want to do girly stuff like take time getting ready for dinner. Between cruises I want to be fully where I am instead of  dividing my consciousness between the place I am and the place I am researching,

I can’t think of anything more wonderful than to go off with nothing hanging over my head except revisions (constant, even for old lectures) and practice.

It’s worth it to push myself so hard. But I do worry a little that I am too unkind to myself with demands to work, work, work.  When I was compulsively writing novels I had to make a deal with myself to “waste” one hour a day.  It was hard.  That’s just who I am.  My biggest worry is that when I stop I won’t know what to do.   I guess I will just have to wait to see what relaxing feels like.  I bet it’s fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It!s been a good thing to be in Boston and New York in the days after the midterm elections.  Yesterday I went to Lexington and Concord, and was inspired by the colonists who examined their ethics and sense of integrity, conquered their fears, and stepped up when the times demanded it.  Then, today in New York, it was my honor and privilege to gaze on a sculpture that more than any, ever, resonates in my core—the Statue of Liberty.

I sent a message to the universe as we sailed by, that I reaffirm everything she stands for, most particularly those huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Today,  some of them made their way a little farther across Mexico.  Vaya con Dios, fellow human beings.  Many of us here await you with open hearts.

Though we dodged the abyss on Election Day, the future still looks pretty scary. May we find within us the spirit that animated  those who stood up and won us our country, and may we fight without ceasing to win it back.

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day, as we call it in the United States.  One hundred years ago, to the day, World War  I ended.  I honor here all those who  fought for the reality I so often take for granted —the Doughboys, the Suffragists, the Civil Rights Workers. May I live in a way that is worthy of their sacrifices.  May we all do the same.

 

Ants in my pants. Pins and needles. Spilkes.   Whatever you want to call it, in English, Yiddish, or some other language altogether, I’ve got it bad.

I told myself not to obsess about the election today, but I have already turned the TV on once, knowing full well everybody would just be yammering away to fill empty air before any results are known.  At least I managed to make myself turn it off. But it is going to be a tough stretch of hours ahead.

It’s rather fitting, I think, that I am spending the day in Halifax, Nova Scotia,  and  sometime tonight the ship will cross the border between Canada and the United States.  Tomorrow I will be in Portland, Maine.  Whatever happens with the election,  I will be deposited back in the United States tomorrow to participate somehow in the consequences of today.

On this cruise, I have used the days in Canada to think through the prospects of living here. It isn’t idle fantasy.  I could do it as a Canadian citizen and that’s a big deal. But other than that I now have a Canadian passport that could prove handy in some parts of the world, it seems pretty clear  there is little point to citizenship unless I actually live in Canada.

I would have to establish residency in one of the provinces, and then stay put for six months,  to become eligible for Canadian health care, which is one of my main worries in my own country. After that initial residency, one  maintains health care coverage by actual physical residency in Canada half the year from then on.  It varies a little by province, and I haven’t actually asked any government authorities how they would handle the fact that my work as a cruise lecturer often  takes me away for longer than that.  Only Quebec Province, that I can see so far, doesn’t count absences of 21 days or less against the residency requirement.  Quebec, therefore would seem to be the answer to the question of where to live, but their winters are harsh, harsh, harsh, and I am a wimp from Southern  California.

The upshot is that I would have to be all in if I moved, because I would really be leaving the US behind. Since my country has become unrecognizable to me, and not in a good way,  I don’t think that would be terribly hard.   In some respects I would mind that less than leaving San Diego, since it is an awfully nice place to live and my roots are there.

I wonder if I would find myself taken  in by people in Canada if I left my network of friends  and started again alone in a new country.  When I interact with people I ask myself if it would be pleasant to have this person or that person in my neighborhood, and the answer has always been yes.  Nothing has been off-putting at all, and I have even gotten some tips about places with shorter and less horrendous  winters.

So here I sit, poised in Canada, on the verge of entering the US, wondering which one will feel like they foreign country in a day or two.  My most fervent wish is to get my country back.  I can only hope that starts to happen today. Then, all this wondering will be for nothing.

 

 

I am drafting this post as I  fly over the Rockies on my way once again to Montreal for the last of three fall foliage cruises. Each has been a little different, one going up to Noofin Land ( which  I am told by Newfoundlanders is how the word is pronounced), one going down the eastern seaboard to Boston,  and this one continuing further to Fort Lauderdale.  The fall foliage  is fading, winter is coming, and Canada cruising will be over for the year with this voyage.  

I started my North America part of My Year of Living Travelly with a few weeks in Alaska, going between Canada and the US and now I am ending it on the other coast doing the same.  When I started, the first leaves were starting to yellow, and now the last will be fluttering to the ground.

In between was the seasonless world of San Diego.  Friends  from Connecticut sent Dan and  me a beautiful foliage photo taken on a walk in their neighborhood, and we responded by sending one of the lone tree in Balboa Park we could find that was losing its leaves, although in more a shrivel of dull rust color  than the loop and swirl of yellows and oranges drifting to the ground 

So now here I am, airborne again, heading out on—what is it?—my eleventh cruise in my fifth part of the world with my seventh travel companion (Dan twice) in my eighth month of Living Travelly.  A good a point as any for a little reflection.

It’s nice to be in San Diego for a while.  I have deep roots here—more than half a century living here makes me just about a native.  But it’s different to come back for a couple of weeks than to come back with no expectation of leaving for a while. There’s the rush to fit in seeing friends, but that is balanced by a feeling that there is hardly any point in picking up activities one is going to stop doing again very soon.  I had a number of great lunches with people I love seeing, but I played tennis only once, and I didn’t  swing a gold club at all.  I see announcements for things the social activist in me would want to participate in, but the reality is that I will be back in my other world before the events take place. Ads for upcoming movies, shows, and events remind me that I won’t be here for any of it.

As I leave once again I can say with even greater certainty that  I am dislodged and displaced, but not at all discombobulated or dismayed.  I belong nowhere in particular which means I belong equally wherever I am.  

Maybe the seasonlessness of Southern California has a little bit to do with the way I am feeling.  People elsewhere are turning their thoughts to preparing for winter.  There’s rarely a “now or never” feel in San Diego.  Tomorrow will be pretty much the same.  It’s okay to leave.  

I will admit that I felt no frisson of excitement heading out to Montreal this time.  This will be my fifth time on the St. Lawrence River and most of my questions have been answered about it, and  desires met.  But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to go.  It doesn’t mean I am getting tired of the life I have chosen.  It just means I am having a bit of a delayed reaction to what the opportunity represents.  

Now that I am actually headed there, I am excited about sleeping in Montreal tonight, excited about walking around the port tomorrow, excited to go back to a couple of great shops I found and a few lovely places to stop, breathe, and look around.  Excited to get back on a ship I haven’t been on in a while, to see who i know on the crew,  and what cabin i will have.  Excited to  unpack all my stuff and start doing the dressing for dinner and the other girly things I love about cruising.  Excited to be sharing the beauty of the  area and the fun of the ship with my friend Annie.  Excited to feel the nip of fall on my cheeks.  Yes,  here I am ready to go again!  Montreal and Silver Wind, here I come!

 

lim·i·nal

/?lim?nl/

adjective

1. relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.
    In anthropology, It can refers to the mid stage in a rite of passage, where one is no longer what one was, but not yet what one will become—the couple standing at the altar, the house in escrow, the hair stylist half done with the makeover.
    
    
   I first ran across the word “liminal” in a great book about American immigrants I read years ago.   I am such a big fan of words in general, especially ones that are fun to say out loud, that I responded to that one right away, even before I knew what it meant. Liminal is rhythmic. It sounds good said slowly or fast. Liminal. Lim-in-al.
    
    
   Liminal as a state of mind is a mixed bag, though.
    
    
     My new normal is living out of a suitcase, or, when staying at Dan’s, out of a cardboard box with the clothes that work for whatever transition I am in.  That kind of liminality I am used to.  But I had a really weird experience yesterday with a different aspect of it.
    A woman came up in the elevator from the garage with Dan and me last night, and we all got off on the third floor.  She went straight to the door of my condo, and I realized she was my tenant, whom I had never met.  We introduced ourselves on the door step, and she invited me in

I saw that what was inside was my furniture, but I couldn’t relate to it at all.  It was like wandering in a dream. Framed  posters of my book covers were on the walls, and throw pillows and other  details I had lovingly chosen were still there, so the place was still marked as mine, I guess you could say. But it didn’t seem to have any connection to me.

I am still trying to make sense of this.  I had zero nostalgia, zero sense of missing my old life, of wanting it back. I have old photos with many times the resonance my own condo had for me.

I know now I won’t be returning to the same place I left because I am already not the same person who lived there. When I come back, it won’t be home in the same way—more, I think, like a place I am staying. Kind of like a ship cabin.  Kind of like a hotel room.  Kind of like a friend’s guest bedroom.

It will be nice some day to have drawers,  to have more choices of clothes,  to have a place to spread out, and maybe some day that will matter to me more than it does at the moment.  Maybe I will settle in, start to clutter my space up, get used to receiving mail and packages the easy way, get into old and some new routines with friends, swing a golf club and a tennis racquet more often, have a car again. But paradoxically, it seems such a limited way to live.  I may only have a couple of pieces of luggage right now, but I have the world. How will I ever be contented to stay put again?

All I know is I absolutely believe, in the words of singer poet Josh Groban’s song “Let Me Fall,”

The one I want

The one I will become

Will catch me.

 

That’s liminality. When I am done with this wandering, the person I have become will welcome me home, whenever and wherever that is.  No, that’s not quite right.  The person I become will be my home, just as the person I am now is all the home  I need.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bought a shirt a few years back that says “Home Is Where the Anchor Drops.” It seems so apt for my life, but I realized tonight as the sun set in Bar Harbor and we headed off to disbark in Boston tomorrow, that for me, home is also where the anchor pulls up.

My cabin is usually on the lowest passenger deck near the bow, so when the windlass starts cranking several hundred meters of chain and an anchor to boot, it makes quite a racket.  Still, it is such a joyous sound.  “Oh boy,” it says in my language, “what’s next?”

For almost every passenger on board, tonight involves the melancholy of packing and saying goodbyes to people who can get surprisingly dear in a short amount of time.  It’s also been a day, I imagine, of savoring that last bit of lox or prosciutto and having that last lunch with free-flowing wine, or that last cocktail by the pool.

For me it’s different.  I basically live in a floating hotel that takes me to a wonderful new adventure every morning.  Getting off and being on land for a while seems less like home than this does now.

Ten days ago, the hall was lined with suitcases, and I enjoyed the great feeling of having the ship almost to myself for a few hours before the new guests began to arrive.  This time, my bags are out too, and the new guests will never know I was there.

What’s next is a couple of days in Boston with friends, then about two weeks in San Diego before I am back on board a different but equally wonderful ship.  No melancholy for me today. No reason for it.  Just my face to the breeze and my hair blowing back, ready for tomorrow and the next day and the next, wherever the now quiet ship slipping through the Bay of Maine is leading me.

Once again, while cruising port-intensive itineraries, I get too distracted to post anything more than a photo or a couple of lines  on Facebook.

i had a wonderful first cruise going north from the St. Lawrence River up into Newfoundland, which I have been told by residents is pronounced  Noofin Land.  I have been practicing, but it doesn’t come easily.

I got a lot of chances to practice my French, but Quebecois was a different story.  Even Nancy, my travel companion, whose French is pretty close to perfect, was perplexed from time to time.  I don’t think I made myself understood once, except maybe Bonjour and Merci.

I had my first chance to try poutine, the famous fill-me-up of Quebec.  It is soft French fries, covered with brown gravy and sprinkled with cheese curds (Nancy added peas—see photo below for the whole glorious mess).  There must have been two dozen variations on the theme (chorizo and guacamole, anyone?), but all I can say about the classic is that it tasted exactly as I thought it would, and that if I had gone to college at McGill I would have lived on it. Now, once was enough.

 

We had one rough day at sea, which seemed monumentally bad to many but about a 7 to me. Waves about  4-5 meters with gale force winds  in the wee hours when we all were trying to be asleep, so we didn’t really know we were actually briefly in a hurricane when the wind peaked. Unless my cabin is underwater briefly as it dives into the waves, I am not impressed.  Thank goodness for scopolamine patches, however.  Slap one on as a neck decoration and  swagger around pretending to be immune.

The fall colors were just starting when I arrived (see picture below taken about a week ago in Montreal) and haven’t totally taken over yet, but on this second cruise we are seeing a lot more. I suspect the full orchestra of colors will play between when I go home on October 14 and return to Montreal on October 30 for the last cruise in the area, repositioning on Silver Wind to Florida, along with the geese and many of the human residents of Canada. I seem always to be told the best is past, or the best is coming when it comes to fall colors, but it looks pretty wonderful to me right now.

Today we are cruising very slowly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, required by maritime law to protect endangered right whales, who can be hit by ships going full speed.  Thus a fairly short journey becomes a sea day, but it is looking like one straight out of fall clothing catalogs—sparkling sunlight,  a little fall breeze to make the cheeks rosy and the scarfs and jackets I rarely get to wear just perfect for the occasion.

All for now…peace, blessings, and a sense of wonder be with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday morning, I went to the Toronto passport office just to make sure all my papers for my Canadian passport were in order before I mailed them. I waited about ten minutes for my number to come up and went to speak with a very pleasant woman behind the counter.  She said they could process it there, without my having to mail it, but I would have to be able to pick it up in person.   I told her that wouldn’t be possible because I was leaving Monday morning for Montreal. She  asked, “can you prove your travel plans ?”  I showed her my flight reservation on my phone calendar, and she said, “Well, I think that qualifies you for urgent processing of your passport. Can you come in tomorrow?”

Well, yes! I was in and out in about 40 minutes that day, with more than I had come for.  With a little bit of scrambling around, and the help of the people who served as my references, 24 hours later, after no wait and another round of pleasant people, one of whom took the photo here,  I have my Canadian passport.

Here’s another story.  When I was pickpocketed in Barcelona this spring,  my driver’s license was in my wallet.  I carry it for ID abroad, so I can leave my passport in the safe.  I tried to submit an application for a duplicate online, assuming that because the license wasn’t near expiring and I had no violations on my record, it would be simple. It wasn’t.  The online site told me I had to go into the DMV in person.  When I got home in July, there were no appointments for the next  two months anywhere in San Diego County.  The first available slot was after I left on another assignment, and the calendar had not yet opened up for any appointments in October, after I returned.

The solution, according to the DMV, was to go in without an appointment and wait in line  Here’s how well that works: Dan tried renewing his license that way last month, only to wait in line more than three hours until he had to leave for another appointment, without ever getting the license. The next time he got there at 6:30 in the morning, two hours before they opened, and there were still three dozen people in line. He waited for two hours then waited another hour inside, but managed to get the license.   That’s what you go through for routine renewal or replacement in the comparatively high-functioning State of California.

The moral here is that bureaucracies can work well.  The passport office in Toronto does.  Everyone smiles, the office is clean and well lit, and the service is quick.  The attitude seemed to be to do all they can for the client.  I got so much more than I came in expecting.

Contrast with the grimy and dilapidated DMV office in San Diego.  So many more services need to be done in person, yet it is in the same cramped space it has been for decades, with people spilling out the doors just to get to the point where they can get a number to begin their wait.  If you are lucky you will get a clerk in a good mood.  If not, be prepared to be treated like just another aggravation in his or her day.  With luck, you will get what you came for, but you will probably not go away feeling the clerk cared much either way.

Okay, maybe it’s a first world problem, compared to what most people have to deal with.  I’ll grant that.  But really, in this and other ways, I feel as if my country is barely clinging to status as a first world country.  We are a threatened democracy, we have crumbling infrastructure, dysfunctional government services,  no universal health care, young adults crippled with debt for schooling, environmental deregulations that are making some places uninhabitable, with many more to come.  Enough yet?  I could go on.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  My experience in Canada is evidence of this.  Yet little by little, Americans have come to expect less and less from their government.  I remember when I first came to work at San Diego City College, I quickly learned not to expect that the drinking fountains would work.  That’s how it starts.  You stop expecting even a basic level of function, then you start assuming things will go badly, then you realize, stunned, what many poor Americans, white or of color, have known forever—that to the powers that be, it is perfectly okay if people (certain kinds of people in particular) don’t get their needs met.  The solution is to adjust one’s expectations.  In other words, the motto for this coming American age may be”Welcome to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  Please bring your own toilet paper.”

 

It’s flattering to be asked with what( I think) is envy more than astonishment how in the world little old me managed to get the retirement gig of the century, traveling the world lecturing on luxury ships.  I always respond by saying how utterly lucky I have been, but I do sense in the asking, at least sometimes, a feeling that behind the question is the perception that it isn’t that hard to do.  “I’ll have to figure out something I can lecture on,” some people say, while others give varying renditions of “not a bad return for a couple of lectures.”

These people (really only a small percentage of an overall appreciative clientele) have no idea what I look like right now, bleary eyed, unwashed, tongue tied, and staggering as I wrap up my work before leaving tomorrow for Montreal.  I am packed, but I don’t really know what my distracted and semi-functioning mind thought I would need.  I have checked the to-do’s off my list, but I have no idea how many things never got  on it that should have.

Since February I have been working with every minute of my time at home, and every chunk of private time on ships, to be ready for the Big One, which here means a five-month stint in Asia.   In the middle I had to take time out to prepare  new talks and revisions for the late-add Baltic assignment I did for Silversea.  Add to that, the prep I did from scratch last fall  for Alaska and several new and revised talks for Montreal, and the destination talks I did in the Med this summer and I am up to about 40 talks, maybe more,  I have developed either from scratch or significantly revised in the last year. That is one every nine days or so but that’s not how it works. It really means none for weeks on end, then a flurry when I have the time and means to work.

This morning I crossed a major hurdle. I finished Asia! For the last few months I had been wondering whether I would be able to get it done before I left for the first foliage cruise to Montreal, especially since my original goal of being done before Alaska had been unfulfilled.

Now I can breathe a sigh of relief because although I will keep revising and improving the talks before I give them, there is no hole in my preparation.  I still need to do a lot of work for the last piece of My Year of Living Travelly, crossing the Indian Ocean from Mumbai to Dubai then on to Athens through the Suez Canal, but that really, truly can wait a while.

Quiet the mind, relax the kinks…trying…..

….maybe ice cream will help.