Diary

As I write this I am about as high in the alps as one can get without mountaineering. I am at Gornergrat, the end of the cog railway going up, up, up from Zermatt, already high in the alps. 

I have been brought to tears twice already since arriving in Zermatt yesterday. The first time was when I saw the Matterhorn for the first time. Am I the only one who sometimes has to look away because the sight is just too much? Too beautiful, too powerful, too much of a bucket list suddenly fulfilled? That’s what it was like. I walked through Zermatt to a lovely park, just as the setting sun created a halo around the crooked shape of the mountain. And that’s when I choked up. “I did it,” I told myself. “I’m here!” It wasn’t just the mountain. It was the me that brought me to the mountain. The me that has made this whole trip happen. 

This morning I took the cog railway from Zermatt to Gornergrat. Old Laurel realized about halfway up, as my breath got shorter, that i really am “ not supposed to” go much above 6000 feet because of borderline asthma. (Did I give this a thought when settling on Switzerland for a week? No.) I thought about whether i should just enjoy the ride up to 10000 feet and right back down and call it a day, and decided wisely against a hike between two stations. But in one of those allegorical journeys over the course of about ten minutes, I went in my head from Old Laurel to New. From “I can’t” to “I can.” Heroine sets out on a journey. Heroine faces obstacle. Heroine conquers obstacle. Heroine returns in triumph. I am stronger than I think. 

I was a downright mountain goat about climbing even higher than the terminal  to the 360-degree viewpoint. The only people higher than I went were on the rocks behind me in this photo.

It was on the way up those last steps that I choked up again. Here is how my inner dialogue went:

“Here you are, doing this. You made it happen. You are on top of the world in more ways than one. You remember those days when you struggled just to keep on living. When not turning the wheel of the car on a curve would have put an end to your problems. When you felt so small and invisible that you thought you might disappear altogether. And sometimes you wanted to. More than once you hid in a corner of your closet because the toxic air was just too much. And now, look at you, here on this mountain. You endured. You prevailed. And the life you have made now is your reward for it.”

I mean, who wouldn’t choke up?

I felt utterly restored and renewed, as fresh as the snow that had recently dusted the peak I was standing on. I have a new appreciation of the present, and a new perspective on my past. My story is not that of a victim but a persister. A winner. I was winning the battle even when I doubted it, because I was enough. I am more than up to whatever challenges this latest travel adventure brings.  After all, I am five weeks in and still thriving, still learning, still growing. And the journey will continue.

In the course of a few  days I have gone from being underwhelmed (commercialized, homogenized Italy) to speechless. In two more weeks I will be at sea level, switching into my cruising world.  I have a feeling what happened to me here on this mountain will stay with me in ways I have yet to discover. For now the air is crisp, the sun is bright, the colors are brilliant, and I am present in it.  Here is  a photo I took right after i finished drafting this post. Can you tell I am having a very, very good day? 

Before I took the train back, I stopped in a little chapel to light a candle. I love the idea of candles sending prayers heavenward, even if I am not a believer.  I prayed for everyone I love who is facing challeges, then expanded the prayer to everyone who is not at peace, realizing how astoundingly blessed I am to be exactly where I am right now. . 

I visited Verona for the first time about thirty years ago and fell in love with everything about it. I went in November, when the residents had reclaimed the city, and saw for myself the rhythms of life there—the children  walking home from school, the passegiata, the cafes, the storefront displays magical in the golden light of evening.

Verona was the first place I truly appreciated the incredible creativity of Italy’s artisans—how shop after shop had unique designs for everything from handbags to kitchenware. I learned quickly that if you wanted something you needed to buy it right then because you wouldn’t see it anywhere else and you might not ever find the store again. I learned not to navigate by what was in the store window at the corner where I needed to turn, because the love of creative display meant that in the interim the window display quite possibly would have changed. 

This is my first time back in Verona, and I have been —sad to say—quite disappointed. The main shopping street is lined with the same stores you see everywhere—Stefanel, Luisa Spagnoli, Benetton, et. al.—displaying the same clothes on the same blasé looking mannequins I’ve seen everywhere. Not until I got to Bolzano yesterday on an overnight side trip did I see in a scattered handful of stores the kind of originality ( like the yellow boots in the photo below) that once was common everywhere in Italy.

While I was coming back on the train for one final day in Verona, I had a long talk with myself in which I pointed out how, when I was here before, everything was new to me. Even products I wasn’t remotely interested in fascinated me, and every street held new things to get excited about. I told myself if I judged Verona today only by stores on the main tourist streets , or by whether I had ever seen anything similar in the years since, it was my own fault if I didn’t enjoy myself. 

So, this afternoon I set off to wander off the tourist path, and lo and behold, it’s still a great little city! I found quiet neighborhoods, beautiful viewpoints, and every three or four blocks, a proprietor still selling original things from his or her own quirky shop. 

Forget Juliet’s (fake) balcony. There are streets with overhanging timbers and exposed stone walls that look as if they haven’t changed much in centuries.  There are places where the cobblestones are worn with age. Walking these streets in a light drizzle in late afternoon added to the sense that I was in another time, far removed from Hugo Boss and the Nike Store. 

I had a rejuvenating day when I least expected it. I am off to a bucket list destination tomorrow—Bergamo, a medieval town perched on a cliff, loaded with history, and ( based on descriptions) charm. Yesterday I was wondering whether it too would have become so homogenized it would engender boredom more than the wonder and newness I seek from travel. But I know now it doesn’t really matter. Though the Italy of artisan entrepreneurs may be harder to find these days, there are always back streets where surprises await. 

I woke up this morning thinking, “Wow! I am in Venice!” I hope I never lose the wow factor about travel, but I must admit that after a month on the road in unfamiliar places, in languages without cognates and with spellings that look like a tossed salad of letters, it is very, very nice to be back in more familiar territory.

Venice has been a complicated city for me. It was the scene of some of my toxic first husband’s most atrocious behavior and thus remained a bleak memory for me for a long time. It was also—and this is still so hard to say—the place I was again a few years later, when I still had not learned that my son Adriano had taken his life. That day I had been in an art glass shop chatting in Italian with the owner, a young man whose family had run the business for several generations. He told me a story about breaking something as a child, and how over time one comes to understand that “Niente e per sempre,” nothing is forever. I agreed, bought a pretty little glass dish for Adriano and caught the train back to Florence, where I was living.

This was in the days when you had to go to an Internet cafe to get email. I got home late that night to several desperate messages. Urgent. Call home immediately. I packed up overnight and was gone the next day. That was when I learned my first huge lesson about nothing lasting forever. I don’t think one ever recovers from a lesson that cruel. I have just moved on, changed into the version of myself that deals with an upended life.

Later visits to Venice have done a lot to soften the feelings of sadness and loss that have overcome me in the past. A wonderful visit with my second husband Jim in a foggy January so cold it snowed a dusting of white onto the sleek black gondolas (see photos). A fantastic night years later with my friend Susan at the Redentore festival, with giant golden fireworks over the lagoon.

And this visit. I walked around last evening and realized after about an hour that I hadn’t raised up the sad memories at all. I hadn’t raised the happy ones either. I simply was in Venice, on these stones, surrounded by these canals, these people. Maybe just being happy in the present is the most profound sign of healing we can possibly hope for.

And then there is the future. Mine feels circumscribed by the fact that I need to be in Barcelona in three weeks to catch my ship. Other than that, it is a beautiful jumble of possibilities. But I remember the moment in that shop, when that young man, who would be more than two decades older now, reminded me that “niente e per sempre.” The best reason of all to rejoice that I am here now.

The most difficult course I ever taught was English 101, recognized by many names and course  numbers as Freshman Composition. At my college, it was a transfer-level course in which the main goal was to take students’ mastery beyond the short personal-opinion essay into the realm of the research-based writing that would be required when they made the transition to four-year institutions.  

Their expressions ranged from disbelief to terror when I told them that they would be writing an 8-10 page paper, properly formatted, with sources properly cited, on a subject they had researched over the course of the semester.  “Oh, hell no,” I could see many of them thinking.  Ten pages???? But you know what?  They did it.  And later, when I would run into them here and there in town, they would comment on how proud and confident it had made them to know that when they handed in their first paper at university they had done it right.

So how do Freshman Comp instructors get them there?  One small step at a time.  I used to tell them that we can always perceive a problem in a way that makes it too big to take on.  We can also break it down into little, solvable ones.  Can they research their whole topic?  Way too scary, but they can research a tiny piece of it, maybe just the answer to one little question they have about it.

Can they write ten pages?  That’s practically a book to some of them. But can they write one paragraph on some part of their subject they are confident they understand? Easy. Then can they write another?  Everyone writes that way—one word, sentence, paragraph, page at a time. The difference as we mature as writers is partly stronger skills but the biggest change is in our confidence that we can handle any writing task put to us. We get to that level of confidence one accomplishment at a time.

This morning I waited for my ferry from Hvar to Split, Croatia next to this sculpture of a contemplative young girl. Maybe she made me a little contemplative too, as I started writing this post on the ferry an hour or so later.

It’s a long way in space and time from here to those Freshman Comp classes I taught, but I realized the process and the lesson are the same.  When I decided to travel on my own for seven weeks, using only public transportation, in places I hadn’t been, where they speak languages I don’t  understand, I’ll admit I was intimidated.  The whole idea of being confronted with an unfamiliar train station or a bus depot or a ferry port, hauling a suitcase that, despite my success in whittling down to one medium sized bag, is still heavy and cumbersome—well, it kind of freaked me out.

And here’s where my past teaching experience came back to help me with a lesson I  had once taught  to others.  I don’t  have to think about everything I will have to do on this journey.  Today, I just had to get on this ferry.  Then when I get to port, I have to find a cab that will take me to my hotel.  Over and done for a few days.  Then I can do something similar when I travel to the next place, and the next. I’ve seen a few spots on my itinerary where I have made it harder on myself than I needed to, so I changed the plan.  I’ve added, subtracted, tweaked, and thoroughly revised at least a dozen times to make this trip something to rejoice in every step of the way. 

 I can do this. And here’s more proof: I am posting this from my bed in my hotel in Split. I did today without a hitch. I will do tomorrow and the next day too. Call me Travelwoman!

There are lefties and righties, innies and outies, conservatives and liberals, introverts and extroverts—all sorts of ways we seem to divide into either/or.  Sure, it’s not totally true—we are all unique amalgams—but nevertheless it seems there are ways we naturally divide.

I’ve noticed one of these divisions between what I call nesters and perchers.  Nesters are those who thrive by creating a comfort zone they either are in or know they are returning to. Their home is a place that reflects who they are and where they have been, and makes them feel centered and most comfortably themselves.  They often put a lot of time, energy, and money into improving their nest, and once settled in, they tend to stay for a long time.

Then there are perchers.  Perchers get antsy in one place. They thrive on change and the stimulation of new environments.  They believe they may be missing something if they stick around one place too long.  They invest less in where they live because it’s little more than a necessity and convenience. Perchers are pretty much okay wherever they are.  That is, until they aren’t anymore. Then they go someplace else.

My guess is if there were a graph with Extreme Percher and Extreme Nester at opposite ends, most people would be able to point to where they fall on the continuum.  Some perchers might even have a place that’s very much  like a nest, but feel rather non-committal about it. Some nesters enjoy travel or other time away, but it is very important to them that home is waiting for them. My guess is few would place themselves at either extreme.

Where we are changes over the course of our lives as well.  Maybe we lose our nest, and realize we don’t really need another.  Or maybe the opposite—a vagabond who says “ Enough. I’m sticking around.”  Maybe what makes us happy, what makes us authentic, should be in flux as we move through life.

I think I have always been a percher.  Even in the years when I was raising my children, I never felt anything about the house we lived in.  When I was in a new place I always wondered what it would be like to live there. I often fantasized about other cities and countries I might live in. (I still do.) I had a house in the San Bernardino mountains that I did indeed care deeply about, but when it became impractical and I decided to sell, I was surprised at how easy it was to leave it behind.

I am writing about this today because this  travel experience has clarified something about perching.  Picture a bird on a twig.  It knows it is just there for a second.  It is waiting for what’s next. I feel that way every day.  I love living in the present, but I am excited about the opportunity for something different tomorrow. My center of gravity is constantly shifting just as that little bird’s is. There are only two states of being for me—balancing on the twig or flight to what’s next. Together they are my comfort zone.

I loved this Victor Hugo poem as a child. I guess I was a percher even then.

Be like the bird, who 

Halting in his flight 

On limb too slight 

Feels it give way beneath him, 

Yet sings 

Knowing he has wings.

A place to perch and wings. That’s all I need. At least for now.  But isn’t now what perching’s all about?

I am sitting in bed in my Barcelona hotel, at the crack of dawn, having arrived last night.  As usual, my first night’s sleep was fas shorter than it needed to be, but no worse than any restless night.  One of the things about traveling a lot is that I just let jet lag be what it is going to be and last as long as it’s going to last.  Sorry, body—I’ve done it to you again. Just go with the flow and we’ll be fine.

That’s easier to do now that my approach to travel has been revolutionized.  Now that I don’t have any fixed expenses for housing, I can choose to be wherever I want to be. I could still be in Victoria, but I was ready for something new.  I have no agenda here, no need to make the most of limited vacation time and money. In fact, I suspect i may even hang out in the hotel a fair amount.  I’m not racing around to see, buy, or eat this or that (although pinchos and wine are calling to me already). 

I’m in Barcelona because I will be embarking from here on Seabourn Ovation in October, and my hotel has graciously agreed to keep my cruise suitcase for me for seven weeks so I can travel until then with only one smaller bag..  Seven weeks! Free! Now that is hospitality! 

 I decided to stay in Barcelona for three days before going to Montenegro, my first real destination, because I always worry about my luggage arriving when I do. It’s a habit I got in with the cruising, because if your bags don’t come to the ship when you do, well, you’ll get pretty tired of wearing whatever you traveled in until you arrive at the next port with an airport. It’s a experience I hope I never have. 

Observations come hot and heavy when I am in a new environment, and one of my first ones this time is that I really like hotels. It is so cool that a room is clean without any effort on my part, that the towels are fluffy and white, and that everything for coffee is sitting there waiting for me. Need anything? Someone brings it.  What’s not to like, except the occasional incomprehensible shower?

But my biggest surprise is really the main reason I am writing this morning. I tend to be so involved with whatever i am doing, or planning the next thing, that I have little time for nostalgia. I was surprised, therefore, at the wave of emotion I felt about leaving Victoria. By the time I left San Diego last year I was so ready for change that I barely gave the city I had lived in for over fifty years a thought.  

As I looked out the window of the bus taking me from Victoria to Vancouver, I passed Elk/Beaver Lake, one of my favorite places for a long, peaceful amble.  It is still green with summer, and I thought how much I will miss seeing it this fall, and how when I return in February, the bare trees will give it a different kind of beauty I also love. I was struck by how unusual it was for me to react so strongly about how much I would miss something and how much I look forward to coming back.

Could it be that I really have found a place I want to call home? And what does that mean to someone like me, who equates being home with just being authentically myself?  Does this mean I am in the first stages of another sea change, in which I get tired of being a vagabond and  put down some new roots? I have no idea. That’s the best part about being open to anything. I can just wait and see.

I am a hopeless word nerd. Maybe I my brain was subconsciously tracking the fact that I am about to uproot myself and resume the vagabond life I had before Covid, but I found myself thinking about all the words we have for going off to see the world.

Where did the word “trip” come from, I wondered. Here’s what I found out from my best friends Merriam and Webster:

From Middle English trippen (“tread or step lightly and nimbly, skip, dance”), perhaps from Old French triper (“to hop or dance around, strike with the feet”), from a Frankish source; or alternatively from Middle Dutch trippen(“to skip, trip, hop, stamp, trample”) (> Modern Dutch trippelen (“to toddle, patter, trip”)). Akin to Middle Low German trippen ( > Danish trippe (“to trip”), Swedish trippa (“to mince, trip”)), West Frisian tripje (“to toddle, trip”), German trippeln (“to scurry”), Old English treppan (“to trample, tread”). Related also to trap, tramp.

Okay. Sort of.

Somehow when I think of the word “trip,” I am more likely picturing myself sprawled on a sidewalk than “stepping lightly and nimbly,” “trampling,” or “toddling.”

And then there is the way I have used it since my rather checkered college days, when a trip involved hallucinogens, and then later evolved into a term used for anybody who seemed out of touch with reality. They were, well, trippin’, and never with a final “g.” And anything out of the ordinary, unbelievable, or even mildly interesting was “a trip.” A trip to where? Nowhere except those fun spins the mind takes us on.

And how about the use of the word for the annoying experience of being tripped up by something. I guess that’s the closest we get to the original meanings of the word. We refer to these situations sometimes as stumbling blocks, which is a vivid, although a bit redundant, image for anything that gets in our way.

And then there’s the most a propos usage today for me. I am going on a trip. A long enough one that maybe another word is better. This is not a trip to the store or the dry cleaners. This is a travel challenge, a reawakening, and so much more.

Something else springs to mind. Trip the light fantastic. Dancing with a big grin. Unable to keep the dance out of my step. That’s about right. See you later, average, normal, typical. I’m light, and headed for fantastic. Me and Mamie O’Rourke.

I have had an interesting couple of days. I was all set for my travels beginning in ten days, when I got an email from Viking asking me to fill in for a cancelation, two weeks going from Venice to Istanbul in early October. They’ve been interested since before Covid in having me lecture for their line, and indeed my first assignment was cancelled when the industry shut down in 2020. Since a number of places new to me were on the itinerary, I said yes, then began scrambling to redo all my travel plans, dust off and rework eight lectures I haven’t given for several years, and complete the paperwork for the assignment, all in ten days.

The pressure to add this to all the other prep associated with going away for an extended period was stressing me out, but I knew I could do it. My interchanges with Viking over whether one of their Covid-related rules for speaker travel could be waived since I couldn’t meet it, and how the financial impact to me of changed plans would be addressed, led them to understand that this was not a simple matter of flying me from home to the ship and back. They were more than willing to accommodate me, but in the midst of all that I got another email asking if I really wanted the assignment or would prefer to do something different at a later date that I (and they) would have more time and less hassle to prepare for. They said if I wanted to back out, they had another speaker who could step in.

For maybe five minutes I considered saying that I indeed wanted the assignment, but that little voice that helps me make the right decisions began whispering and I decided to back out. I am feeling such a flood of relief right now, but of course I have flickers of regret that I won’t have the experiences the assignment would have provided. No Istanbul, no Troy, not yet.

I will have other experiences instead, though, and I am soooo ready to begin the adventure. I am all set for travel in Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia, plus the northernmost points in Italy that despite the times I lived in northern Italy in the past, I have yet to see. A week in the Dolomites, plus visits to Bergamo and Locarno—all things I would have given up for this assignment.

This was already the biggest stretch of my life travel-wise (7 weeks on land, solo, one small suitcase, using public transportation almost exclusively). Funny how adding an assignment on a cruise line I haven’t worked with before, solo on a ship bigger than I’m used to, seemed more daunting to me than figuring out how to get a bus from point A to point B in a country where I don’t speak the language. Still, psychologically, that’s the way it felt.

Maybe it’s the greater opportunity for growth that that little voice is guiding me toward, some insight or experience I would have missed. The only way to find out is to go and discover what awaits.

For now, I have deleted all the things I needed to do that got added to my calendar. Today will be a normal day—a walk, a “swim and gym,” and a few little errands. No crazy. I like that.

I ran across this wonderful poem today. Mary Oliver left a few months back to see what lies beyond life in this world but she has left me s wth so much wisdom and beauty in her writing.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot,
or a few small stones; just
pay attention, and then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate; this isn’t
a contest, but the doorway

into thanks and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

–Mary Oliver

It’s a mixed bag having a blog. It makes me feel obligated to have something to say, and often I don’t. And then again, when I ask myself “don’t you have something to say about all this?” often I discover that I do. This poem reminds me that I am not entered into some significance contest with myself. I have nothing to try to top, no reason to judge whether my insights or experiences are worthy of words, no need to set a mental timer on how long it has been since I last wrote.

Mary Oliver thinks of her poems as prayers. Maybe that is the special nature of poetry, but even words far more prosaic, like mine here, are also doorways to gratitude. They take me to unintended places, they burnish rough thoughts, they tell me to pause for a moment before moving on. The thoughts I write down become smarter than I think I am. I thank my blog for that, and for the inner voice that it nurtures and challenges to speak.

It is significant to me that I ran across this poem today, on the first anniversary of the day I left San Diego to relocate to Canada. I had a conscious goal of reinvention, and I wanted my blog to reflect that. I have gone back through my entries for this year and I am overwhelmed by the words I did indeed find for the myriad kinds of growth I was undertaking. And here I am, ready to move on to the flurry of travel that will be my next adventure, but right now, I want to sit here and think about the fallen leaves underfoot, the snowflakes, the waterfalls, the sunrises and sunsets, the living water and all the other things that have been part of my growth and sustenance this year. I offer up my gratitude, which indeed is beyond words.

I dont know why, but I hate getting wet. I dont mind being wet; I just hate the experience of getting there Sure, I’ll wade ankle deep on a beach, or dangle my hand from the side of a sailboat, but immersion is something I avoid, and do not—I repeat NOT!—splash me, squirt me, or even drizzle me just because you think its fun. I may politely pretend I’m okay, but secretly I want to strangle you.

I have often wondered if I may have had a near-drowning incident that I was too young to remember, or—when I let my thoughts go this direction—whether something awful involving water happened to me in a past life. All I know is that most of my life—in Southern California, no less!—I have had to overcome reluctance to get into a pool (even a jacuzzi), or dash into the surf.

The weirdest part is that I even feel this way about taking showers. I work up a full sweat exercising and a few hours later I am still in my gym clothes. Then, even when the shower is nice and warm, I enter with a bit of a grimace. Then I am fine and enjoy the loveliness of it as much as anyone else. I have lived alone for most of Covid, and—-well maybe stories about personal grooming should remain secret.

In the past I was willing to get wet when it would lead to something I wanted. When I had a high school boyfriend who wanted to frolic in the surf , I would do it. When my children were young, I got in pools with them. For a while I even took up scuba diving, because I loved the otherworldliness of it. It’s not like getting wet was ever a phobia, it was a low drone that I could handle.

Around the time my first marriage was getting too toxic to endure, I also disliked my job immensely. The end result was that when I drove to and from work, I was miserable about where I was headed both coming and going. I took up lap swimming (yes, I hated getting in the pool) because the calming and meditative quality of it soothed my spirit and caressed my body in ways I was starved for. Besides, it was the only therapy I could afford.

I don’t remember why and when I stopped. All I know is that it was sometime between 25 and 30 years ago. Recently, here in my new life in Victoria, I got this urge out of the blue to start swimming again. I think it was because I have tried, as Thoreau put it, to live deliberately here, not to settle for sameness, and routines with mediocre returns. I joined an athletic club that has a lap pool,. I had to go buy a bathing suit because even with all my cruising, I didn’t have one. Then with a fair amount of anxiety, I went out and stood by my lane for the first time, looking at the water in this pool

I remember saying under my breath, “Okay, Laurel, only have real problems.” To view getting in that pool as a problem was utterly optional. There was no threat. There was no down side. Normally reason doesn’t work on anything irrational, but it did this time, I guess because I was ready for it. In I went.

The first day I could barely swim 3 laps because that visceral part of me that wasnt happy about what I was doing was making it hard to relax and just breath and feel my body move. That was about 6 weeks ago, and I am up to 15 laps in half an hour now, which is enough of a goal for me. It’s been a while since I gave any thought at all to getting in. I just do it. Just like in the past, I want something from getting wet. I want fitness, I want the full presentness of swimming, i want to feel my body working as a whole, I want the utter change from everything else I do, and I want the wonderful way I feel afterwards. What a loss it would be to let the nonsense about getting wet take all that from me.

My life is pretty carefree these days, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have tons of boring and frustrating must-dos, time sucks, and petty aggravations.There are phone calls to make, mistakes to rectify, appointments to keep, business to attend to. Even though each is small individually, they are real problems. And that pile is big enough. I’m going to do my best only to have real problems from now on.

Next up, that thing I have with heights….