Around the World

Another travel adventure is right around the corner for me. I can barely wait for sand between my toes, sun on my skin, and the sound of the ocean roaring like a jet engine. As I was busying myself with preparations recently, which amounts to doing laundry and checking my airline reservation online a hundred times over, I saw that I have 119, 625 lifetime miles flown on United Airlines alone. I've had a frequent flier account with them since I was a wee baby, you see. Curious, I googled how many miles the circumference of the Earth is at the Equator. It's information like that, that I think I should somehow know, but the internet had my back on this one. Approximately 25,000 miles around the Earth. I've flown enough, on one airline alone, to have made nearly 5 journeys around the world! Then I think about adding Delta, Lufthansa, US Airways, Continental, Ryanair, Air France, Southwest... you name it, and all of a sudden I am stunned. And so grateful. There is no gift in the world that is more valuable than experiencing the world around us, and it's a gift that not many people get to have. I feel rich.

iPhone note, on saying goodbye

Do you ever have moments when your mind is processing the world poetically? When every movement, word, feeling around you might as well be in iambic pentameter. Sometimes I get like this, and I always think to myself, "I need to be writing down my thoughts." But then I rarely do. And the moment is passed. It's good to do something. To bake, to sing, to dance, to write, to draw... no matter if the product is terrible. I think practicing creativity helps to nurture the human condition, even if no one sees it and no money is made from it. Actually, especially if that's so. A start and a finish. Movement. Feeling. Expression.

Tuesday night a few of us said "see ya later" to a friend who is moving to the other side of the world. Goodbye's are always strange. I found myself walking home in a whirlwind of poetry. Laying in bed later on, determined to write something-- anything-- down, but too tired to turn on the lights and take to paper, I grabbed my iPhone and started typ-typing away. This is the result.

Bittersweet because had you all not said your goodbyes to other people in far off places, you'd have never met each other. The conversation over pizza and the beer and wine, which has to be drunken or tossed before tomorrow morning, seems to flow the best it's ever flowed. You learn more about one another, and becoming acquainted was never so effortless. No one wants to be the one to finally get up to go, because she knows the others will follow suit. First throwing out the paper plates, then accepting your offer of taking the tiki torches home, and finally slipping the shoes on and exchanging hugs. That hug means goodbye for an indefinite amount of time, but definitely a long amount of time. You give me your blue colander. It's my favorite color. I give you a five dollar bill. Thanks for the pizza. We all gradually migrate into the hallway and wish you safe travels, and then it's out into the warm, spring night. Each our own direction. And life's carrying on just as it was in this place.

I didn't say it was good. I said it was important. <3 br="">