Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • London Eye

      I’m reflecting on the places I’ve been to instead of the ones I can’t get to at the moment. One place that every tourist seems to go to is the London Eye. And so too I made my way into one of the pods last November for my own check on the tourist checklist. Opened to the public in 2000 to coincide with the new millennium, it also goes by the name Millennium Eye. According to Wikipedia, it’s “the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.75 million visitors annually”. It was once the tallest Ferris Wheel in the world but has fallen to fourth place on the list. That might be true, but I don’t have a burning desire to go on the other three ahead of it. The London Eye has a certain charm the others haven’t earned. Location helps, of course, but there’s also a level of cultural history the London Eye has spun through that makes it feel more timeless than its twenty years.

      It takes 30 minutes to make the trip around, and that feels about right to me. It’s slow enough that you can take your time getting a picture but fast enough that you aren’t getting restless. I took the ride with some random strangers and some close family. It’s interesting to experience the trip through other’s eyes, one very uncomfortable with heights who chose to stay right on the bench in the middle, the rest of us walking about to the edges of the glass pod looking around at seemingly all of London. Circling slowly to the highest point, you’re struck by the magnificence of the city around you, and the beauty of the Thames River as it flows below. It’s worth the money to experience this, and I’m grateful that I went.

      March was the 20th birthday for the London Eye. It sits empty for the first time since it opened. Tough way to celebrate your birthday, I’d say. By my math, there have been roughly 75 million passengers in that time. That’s a lot of souls spinning around in that bit of sky. Mine amongst them. It’s a staggering statistic, and one the architects and engineers who built this magnificent machine can point to with pride. The experience was just as amazing for me in year 19 1/2 as it was for the first passengers in 2000. A chance to fly above the city, marveling at it all. But I took some of that time in our glass pod in the sky to examine this extraordinary structure supporting us on our slow turn. This amazing time machine of glass and steel and wondering, wandering souls collectively awestruck for two decades and counting. Surely a generous share of awe must be given to the London Eye?

    • For My Next Trip Around The Sun

      For my next trip around the sun, if I may be so presumptuous, I’ll try harder to meet the Aurora Borealis on its terms. Maybe finally catch those evasive Northern Lights, I really do need to meet up with them this time around.  I’ll travel again to faraway places.  Places previously unknown to me that caught my imagination in a travel article or a book.  Places that Google street view hasn’t posted online.  I know these places are out there, I’ve tried in vain to reach them with a mouse before.

      For my next trip around the sun, if good fortune should shine upon me, I’ll rest a hand on the trunk of a Sequoioideae, but first I’ll learn how to spell it without copy and paste.  I once spent a week within an hour’s drive of Redwood National Forest and never bothered to go visit.  Some excuse about work, I suppose.  I don’t recall that mattering in the end anyway.  Touching a redwood tree and looking up to the sky would have mattered far more.

      For my next trip around the sun, if the stars align and I make the full trip, I’m going to celebrate the graduation of my first born and prepare for the graduation of my second born.  The world has changed in ways that seemed fictional not too long ago, and presents challenges that you and your generation will rise up to meet.  I hope my generation and my parents generation does the same and you have something to build on.  The world isn’t fair, we all know that, but a few generations collaborating on solutions to the world’s problems seems a logical next step.  The world is ready for non-violent transformation.  Will it begin with now?

      For my next trip around the sun, should I be so bold, I’ll strive more.  Strive for more meaningful contributions, strive for more engagement in conversation, strive to be more disciplined in the food and drink I take in, strive to be more consistent with the daily habits that make a difference today and for however many trips around the sun you have left.  We all know what we should do, how many do it?  I strive to do it this time around the sun.   You know I’ll write about it, so feel free to poke and prod me should I fall behind.

      For my next trip around the sun, if it should come to pass, I’ll savor more.  Savor the sounds and sights and smells that make up the moments of the day.  Sip a little slower, chew a little more, slow down just enough, look up from the phone and see what’s happening around you.  Savor the time passing by instead of grabbing it tighter and watching it escape anyway, like beach sand in a tight fist.  Savor the long walks and the long talks and the short moments that catch your breath.

      For my next trip around the sun, should the gods look down upon my favorably, I’ll look up more.  Look up at the sky to track our progress over the next year.  Look up old friends you don’t talk to nearly enough.  Look up at the stars and learn to identify them by the way they align with other stars from our unique perspective in the universe.  Look  out, up and out again as the sun rises, warms the skin and the earth around you and drops down again below the horizon, as we all must do eventually.  And so you begin another trip around the sun.  Where will it take you?

    • In Spite of It All

      “Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

      Change is constant, and so must we be constantly embracing change. I’m grateful for the places I’ve been, for the things I’ve done, because if I hadn’t done them I might never have gotten to them. The pandemic has highlighted this for many people, I suppose. The world has changed massively in a short amount of time. Can we ever go back to what we were before? God, I hope not. So many sleepwalking through life, so much apathy. We have to live with urgency before we run out of our aliveness.

      I have friends currently anchored off a small island in Puerto Rico weighing their next move. They would tell you everything they initially planned has been upended by circumstances. They started later than they wanted because some critical work on their boat took longer than anticipated. They spent unexpected time in Bermuda because of weather. And now a combination of timing a weather window and global reaction to a pandemic has them waiting to finally weigh anchor and move again. But despite the strange twists of fate, to have begun when they did meant everything. Had they waited just one more year they might never have started. Might never have seen all they’ve seen. Learned all that they’ve learned about themselves and the world. To have started made all the difference.

      There are days when the writing is a struggle, when I want to just take one day off, but I write anyway and get something out of it. It’s hard to write about travel and my experiences in the world when I’m not traveling and experiencing the world. But you know that too. We all do now. These are my own plans upended by circumstances, and I’ve embraced the changes and learned more about myself along the way. I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be at this point in my writing, but I’m much farther along than I might have been had I not started, and had I not kept going despite it all.

      This pandemic will end at some point. We’ll all be transformed by it. But it will end and the world will shift into some state of new normal. That will be our own weather window to weigh anchor and get on with the business of living. Will we sail for new harbors, embracing the changes in our lives, or will we cling to the safe and familiar? There’s only one path to growth, to being alive, and our weather window is all too brief. Clearly we must weigh anchor, in spite of it all.

    • Spring Fever and Old Graveyards

      Today the feeling stirred up and washed over me in a wave.  An eagerness to explore old places, brought on by reading about historic events 350 years ago.  I get like this.  Really, that’s where this blog started, and will return again when the world returns to normal and I’m up to the task.  Anyway, I was sparked with inspiration and wanted to jump in my car and drive immediately to old battle sites and places of significance that I’ve largely ignored until this feeling flushed the indifference away.  I’m eager to get to it already.  Damn you COVID-19.

      This is my history geek version of spring fever, this stirring, this desire to get out and see things with my own eyes rather than rely on history books and Wikipedia.  It makes me appreciate the freedom of movement I’ve had for most of my life.  For many people around the world this freedom of movement isn’t available.  I’m grateful for the odd assortment of ancestors and events that plopped me down in this place, in this time, with relative good health and a small dose of usable intelligence to productively exist and to peacefully coexist with others.

      I can’t responsibly travel far, but I can travel locally and maintain appropriate social distancing.  And I know the perfect places to visit – those nearby graveyards and old burial grounds.  Those who came before aren’t carrying COVID-19, and they’re safely maintaining a six foot boundary from me anyway.  There are lessons in graveyards, some of which I’ve explored before on this blog.  Graveyards offer their own version of travel in the form of time travel. There are plenty of stories close to home engraved on those headstones, and the land itself is largely the way it’s been for as long as the graveyard has existed.  I need to be outside more, and those permanent residents need a few more respectful visitors. A win-win it seems to me. And a sure cure for spring fever.

      So with that in mind I took a walk in the light, cold rain half a mile down the road to a graveyard occupied by people buried here during the early 1800’s to about 1885 or so, or put another way, roughly during the lifetime of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he knew someone buried here, but the 27 miles between that graveyard and Concord, Massachusetts might as well have been a thousand miles back then. These were farmers, blacksmiths and sawmill workers around here, they weren’t making the trek to Concord or Boston for Emerson lectures. They’d marvel at my quick ’round trips to places that they’d walk all day to get to. And mock me my complaints about not being able to roam freely in these times. They knew far worse than this. I can’t argue that point, thinking to myself as I took my iPhone out to snap a picture I’d upload with this post. Technological leaps they never could have imagined in their time on our side of the turf. Maybe I needed that reminder today. It’s always good to get the neighbor’s perspective on things.

    • There But For The Grace Of You Go I

      “And as I watch the drops of rain
      Weave their weary paths and die
      I know that I am like the rain
      There but for the grace of you go I”
      – Simon & Garfunkel, Kathy’s Song

      These lyrics were highlighted for me by a young lady I met when I was 19 and figuring things out.  I’ve never forgotten them, though I haven’t spoke to her in years.  She married a friend of mine.  I don’t recall being invited to their wedding.  So it goes.  The lyrics remain with me, even if the person that brought them to me is a distant memory.  But isn’t that the way with so many moments in our lives?  People punctuate the moment, and then they’re on to other things, or maybe you are.  Life is a series of such moments built on one another.  I have the entire soundtrack of Simon & Garfunkel’s greatest hits permanently engrained in my brain from a constant cycle of flipping the cassette tape back when people bought cassette tapes.  Sure, everyone knows Mrs. Robinson and Bridge Over Troubled Water and The Sounds of Silence.  All classics.  but deep into the night when everyone else was sleeping I carried on with The Boxer, America and Kathy’s Song.  Years later, they remain my highlights in the Simon & Garfunkel catalog.

      Kathy’s Song was the one that seized my attention and truthfully hasn’t let go, beginning with the lyrics:

      “And a song I was writing is left undone
      I don’t know why I spend my time
      Writing songs I can’t believe
      With words that tear and strain to rhyme”

      Damn it Paul, I know how you feel.  We all work on things we can’t believe, that tear us apart inside.  I’m with you now…  and he doubles down with with the next verse:

      “And so you see I have come to doubt
      All that I once held as true
      I stand alone without beliefs
      The only truth I know is you”

      Followed by “And as I watch the drops of rain” and the rest, ending in perfection with There but for the grace of you go I... And I’ve been trying to write a line as beautiful as that ever since.  I was a teenager when the song was brought to my attention by an old soul in a young body passing through my life.  People come and go in our lives, but sometimes as they pass through they plant a little seed that takes root in our soul.

    • Return to Normal

      I know they’re up there, just not as many. I’m sure the flight paths from Europe to America or Boston to Chicago are still traveled by some planes, but they aren’t flying over my home anymore. Chances are they aren’t over your home either. Like many businesses the airlines have furloughed thousands of employees and planes around the globe are getting an extended break from the constant flights that make up their existence. The highways and roads of the world are getting a similar respite from the constant flow of vehicles. Factories are shuttered while the curve flattens. And the planet gasps the cleaner air. The people in India see the Himalayas for the first time in a generation. People in Los Angeles see blue sky. Even here in relatively rural New Hampshire the stars seem clearer.

      No, the sky isn’t empty at all. It’s as full as it ever was, we’ve just finally cleaned the windows enough to see outside. The universe pirouettes above and around us, and collectively we finally see it. Perhaps we’ll remember it when things return to abnormal. For isn’t this far closer to the planet’s normal state than the constant buzz of machinery spewing emissions into the air? Billions of years of normal versus a century or two of abnormal. We just don’t see the forest for the trees.

      Too many act like temporary renters of the space we occupy. Having experienced the attitudes of renters versus homeowners, I know not all renters feel enough of a sense of ownership over where they reside to treat the place well. There are plenty of people roaming the planet with a renter’s mentality. Use it up, discard, get another one. But there are too many of us for that to go on indefinitely. There’s nothing good about COVID-19 for humanity, but the planet might feebly raise a hand to express gratitude. We’re too deep in it to know the long-term impact, but maybe we needed the pandemic to shake us all awake from the drunken stupor we’ve been in. The planet gets a much-needed breather while humans focus on something besides themselves for a bit. The return to abnormal will come, will it be enough of a jolt to reset our worldview? It seems to me that Earth could use more homeowners and fewer renters. What will the new normal be?

    • A Trip Back to the Old City

      I visited the Old City in Jerusalem four years ago. Today is Easter, and I reflect back on my time in the holiest site in Christianity somewhat humbled by the opportunity I had then. I’m not the most religious man you’ll ever meet, but I’m highly spiritual and know a place of significance when I see it. The Old City is the most significant place in Western Civilization.  Divided into quarters that betray the historical importance: The Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish Quarters.  

      I walked the Old City with a guide who brought me into places I would never have seen otherwise, and of course a couple of jewelry stores for his cousins to hard sell me. I felt perfectly safe while there, and found people respectful of each other no matter their beliefs. Based on my experience, be prepared for guides and merchants to sell you hard on their services and wares. It’s all part of being a tourist, and that’s what I was that day. I never saw them disrupting pilgrims, so they know their audience and no matter how much I thought I was fitting in I stood out as the American tourist I was.

      Today Jerusalem is under the same quarantine that the rest of the world is under. Residents are not allowed to move more than 100 meters from their homes except to get food and essential items. Businesses like those jewelry stores are shuttered and the Old City must feel surreally still at a time – Passover and Easter – when it’s normally packed with pilgrims and tourists. Since the world can’t be there this weekend, I’m sharing some pictures from my visit in 2016. May the Old City, and the world, return to better times soon.  

      The Church of the Holy Sepulcher
      Ancient stairs with ramps for carts
      Who paved these ancient market streets? How many have walked upon them in that time?

      Tower of David
      The Western Wall

      Damascus Gate

    • Horses and Butterflies and Viruses

      “For years and years I struggled
      just to love my life. And then

      the butterfly
      rose, weightless, in the wind.
      “Don’t love your life
      too much,” it said,

      and vanished
      into the world.”
      – Mary Oliver, One or Two Things

      I woke up restless. It builds rather than dissipates as I go through my morning ritual of hydration and caffeine and reading. I recognize it immediately. The writing will be more difficult today, I thought, and surely it has been. I struggle at times with structure: chafing at rigidity and schedules and routine. But I chase these things anyway, thinking a proper to-do list brings order to life. My morning routine saves me more than it imposes on me, and today will be no different.

      Yesterday I walked four miles at lunchtime to shake off the feeling. In the last mile of the walk I saw the horses by the fence and eagerly anticipated saying hello to them when I reached the bottom of the hill. As I was thinking this another walker came into my vision, marched purposefully to the fence with his camera phone rising above his head and spooked the horses away. Resentment at this intrusion boiled in me until I realized it would have been reversed had I been in his shoes and he mine. The horses didn’t care which of us intruded first, only that they wanted no intruders. They stood at the edge of the fence because they’d found their end point of freedom. Yet rebelliously snuck their heads through the slats for a nibble of grass on the other side. I finished my walk with mixed feelings.

      Like most of the world I need to fly away from the cage; to weightlessly catch the wind and let it carry me away. To vanish into the world and return again someday, maybe. Such is life in the cage, it seizes the restlessness inside you and amplifies it. Serving the greater good staying in place offers mixed feelings as well. The virus doesn’t care who it intrudes upon, only that it has room to grow, and careless or prudent hosts alike offer that given the opportunity. The virus is restless too. Who’s patience will run out first?

    • Rest In Peace, Happy Enchilada

      And then COVID-19 took John Prine…  I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to him.  Surely losing Bill Withers to heart disease last week was tough enough, but now another voice from my private stock is gone too soon.  I share the Withers tunes with the world, and the world embraces them.  But honestly most of John Prine’s songs I listened to on my own.  It’s not that he didn’t speak for most of us in his charmingly self-effacing, folksy way, it’s that you don’t roll out Prine songs at parties.  It’s thinking music, sung in a gravely voice that warmed the soul.  His most famous song was Angel of Montgomery, which Bonnie Raitt covered and made it a hit.  Enough people know that one that I’ll leave it to fly on its own.  Here are a few of my favorites.

      All The Best
      “I wish you love – and happiness
      I guess I wish – you all the best
      I wish you don’t – do like I do
      And never fall in love with someone like you
      Cause if you fell – just like I did
      You’d probably walk around the block like a little kid
      But kids don’t know – they can only guess
      How hard it is – to wish you happiness”

      All the best John, you’ll be missed…

      Glory of True Love
      “No, the glory of true love
      Is it will last your whole life through
      Never will go out of fashion
      Always will look good on you”

      Jesus the Missing Years
      The video on this one isn’t great, but John Prine is, and that makes this version worth listening to.

      That’s The Way That The World Goes Round
      “That’s the way that the world goes ’round.
      You’re up one day and the next you’re down.
      It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.
      That’s the way that the world goes ’round.”

      I love the live version of this John sings where he talks about the woman who confused the lyrics “inch of water” as “happy enchilada” , but this version with Stephen Colbert is new to me and put a smile on my face when I watched it.  We all need to smile more nowadays, don’t we?  Rest in peace, Happy Enchilada.

       

    • No Regrets

      “One regret, dear world,
      That I am determined not to have
      When I am lying on my deathbed
      Is that
      I did not kiss you enough.”
      – Hafiz, I Am Determined

      I read this Hafiz poem two ways. On the one hand is traditional love between two people and the lovely sentiment of wishing we’d had more time, love and kisses together. Invest in those you love now for its all impossibly brief. Time is relentlessly pulling us away from one another. What will you wish you’d done or said with your loved ones? There’s only today…

      Another way to read this poem is through the eyes of a traveler. Wanderlust draws me to faraway places. Will the world return to a state of relative normalcy that allows free travel? Will our lives as built offer future opportunities to explore the world? Will I lose the vigor necessary for the travel I seek before I’ve seen the world and all it offers? Time – again – is relentlessly pulling us away from one another. What will you wish you’d done or seen? Perhaps we don’t have today for travel but use this pandemic as a reminder that you may not get another chance and seize the opportunities that come your way.

      If we’re lucky we are sharing this time with our loved ones, if we invest it in them in between Zoom webinars and Microsoft Teams collaborations. Why waste this unique shared experience worrying about places you aren’t seeing in the world? Every day together is a gift, even when we’re all bursting to get outside again. Someday, maybe, we’ll be marveling at these days and how we got through it despite everything. Let us be in some faraway place together, laughing at the wonder of it all, and perhaps steal a kiss. Or maybe two?