Month: December 2016

Between the Lines

Descending into Dallas, I expected to pierce the clouds to find myself in the gloom that typically follows. Instead, after a second or two of wispy gray, I was bathed in soft light – blues, golds and pinks – and far, far below, stretching as far as I could see, was another layer of flat cotton.

Pleasantly surprise, I thought back on the couple at the LaGuardia terminal I had left hours earlier who were somewhere on this plane.

The gentleman, sitting in a tan trench coat over his suit, wearing soft suede shoes and an eye-catching tie, a field of yellow upon which arabesque patterns contorted in reds and blues, sported a mustache that said it all. It put Geraldo Rivera to shame. I imaged the colonel giving away his fried chicken recipe for those curled edges anchored by a soul patch from heaven.

The woman next to him, I presumed his wife, had her half-calf boots (also appearing to be suede) and orange pants swung confidently over the back of her carry-on while she ticked away at her phone. Her leather jacket exuded rambling-roads cool. Her suitcase tag was a striking rectangular yellow-tanned hide, below which another layer of brightly-colored leather was firmly affixed so that a magenta “D” was created by the cutting away of the top layer of leather.

Between them, alone on a chair, reclined a bottle of rum.

Just as I sat in front of them near the gate, a woman approached asking if I would fill an airport survey. I respectfully declined. Moments later, I overheard the following:

Mustache: “Did you put down Texas as your nation of origin?”

D: “Not until we secede.”

After which they moved on to small talk – family, the holidays; you know how it is.

Recently, for a variety of reasons, I have been thinking a lot about separation, stratification. About lines and layers that divide. It invariably reminds me of one of my favorite Quranic verses: “We … have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another” (49:13).

Continuing our controlled fall back to terra firma, the layer of clouds overhead dissipated into a blue sky. Along the horizon, the sun set a burnishing gold into the lower layer of clouds upon which it seemed we were now gliding.

That is until we fell, finally, through that bottom layer, into the gloomy brown-gray I had expected the first time around. Which altogether reminds me of another great bit of poetry: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”

Why I Travel

As far back as I can remember, I have been compelled to travel. I do not know where or when this started – I have theories – but by my teenage years, this restless urge settled into axiomatic dogma. Uncritically, I assumed if you did not like/want/constantly feel the need to travel, there was something wrong with you – obviously.

And so, I took every and any excuse to explore. Over the years, I have crisscrossed Europe, eaten street food in Tokyo, bummed around Thailand, traversed South America, and rambled through Morocco, often alone. I was invited to the weekly Friday beheading in Saudi (RSVP: respectfully decline) on the same day I boarded a yacht on the Red Sea. I remember Damascus before the bloodshed.

To afford the unaffordable, I became adept at credit card sign-up bonuses and points and miles hacks. Finally, I was flying international first class on Asian carriers. I was staying at some of the world’s best hotels, the same hotels I longingly looked upon just a few years prior.

That led to this year. In 2016, I found myself in Portugal, Lake Como, San Sebastian, Bordeaux, Cap-Ferret, and (for the sixth time) Paris. Each an incredibly journey, and, yet, for the first time ever, I felt discontent. A bit of the magic that travel had always held had faded. It began to feel too touristic, and a tad bit manic.

As I traveled more, and more luxuriously, a strange alchemy diminished the sum of the parts. Spontaneity and adventure, cheap money-wise, became ironically difficult to experience staying in a five star property. I became sensitive, in a way I had never been before, to the endless lines, the traffic, the obsessive compulsive review of points and miles blogs – a death by thousands of logistical paper cuts.

I would be okay, I began to think romantically, in a barge sailing across the sea, working hard, eating poorly, breathing in the salty breeze daily. I would like to take a month or so, I fantasized as I cruised (relatively speaking) through TSA Pre, to work the rural French countryside in exchange for lodging and the chance to practice français.

But I still eye the Maldives – a private hut on a turquoise sea. And you better believe I will get there in a fully lie-flat seat, saver award, paying little more than a de minimis fee.

But, let me ask you this, what was I to see my sixth time in Paris? What compelled me to go? What would you do there after dutifully completing – at least once, but maybe twice or thrice – the top twenty recommendations of Fodor’s and Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor?

Why did I travel?

For some, it is all fresh, shiny and new. Adventure is easy if its your first trip to the Continent or you’ve never cliff-dived into a Lebanese lagoon. But for a more experienced peripatetic, that ceases to suffice. Traveling to see and photograph – that’s easy. But when you’ve seen enough of the world, traveling becomes solely about the experience, which begs the question: how much of what?

Why do I travel?

I have come to believe a deep, restless discontent motivates me. Seeing the new, experiencing the strange, interacting with the foreign – especially the uncomfortable, frustrating parts – force an immediacy of action and immersion in the present. I am changed by it, I grow because of it.

The moment my travels began to feel routine, tidy, conventional, something inside me responded. No, not this, it said, don’t let life’s ever-escalating indecencies and complications take away the only thing you’ve never really questioned. Do not let them take from you the thrill of the open road.

There are many places I have yet to go. Perhaps unrealistically, I want to be as enthusiastic to experience them as the first time I boarded a transatlantic flight, naively anticipating their novelty. I want to be excited because they will remind me of something old about this world or myself that I had almost forgotten. Returning to step foot again on home soil, I want to be able to answer the following question: how am I different today than the day I left?

Because I will change. I will grow, which is the flip slide of that discontent. And, the fun part, is I have no idea how I will change, what those experiences will do to me.

That is, really, what makes me curious.