on traveling

I have been completely obsessed with a television program called Long Way Down, and the first one of its like, Long Way Round. It’s a documentary series following Ewan MacGregor and his friend Charlie Boorman on their motorbike trips around the world. They travel from London to New York going east one trip, and from Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa going south in another.

My son doesn’t nap, well, he does, but only if I’m holding him. And if he doesn’t sleep he’s able to summon a mood cantankerous enough to cause a cosmic shift. So I hold him in the glider we thankfully bought while he eats, and while he sleeps. At three months old this is probably eighty percent of our day. So I sit in this chair, unable to move or get up most of the time.

The irony of my newfound video obsession is not lost on me, nor is the reason I enjoy it so much right now. While sitting in my chair it gives me a way of dreaming about travel, and remembering that there is indeed a whole world out there, with people who are so similar, even if in completely different circumstances. This gives me perspective, something that’s hard to maintain when your world consists entirely of conversations with an infant, a coffee table piled with various magazines or books, laundry undone and a pile of yarn.

I went on my first road trip when I was 20, traveling away from college and the state I grew up in to live in a place I’d never seen or really heard much about. Traveling from Colorado east and north until I arrived in Maine, I hardly left the highways. Yet even that kind of uneventful travel was meaningful to me. There’s something about traveling on the ground, seeing the earth move by you as you move towards a destination, that allows you to place yourself, distinguish your new place on the conceptual map we all carry in our minds of the world.



It’s the conceptual that this kind of travel breaks down, and that’s what I love about it. Seeing places and moving yourself through them breaks down the concept that this place is apart from you. Even on my uneventful trip, the east coast was a conceptual “other” place for me. It was something I imagined in my mind and heard people talk about, but saw as “other”, something that was not a part of my life. Like someone who thinks a certain illness or tragedy will never happen to them, and then it does. Finding yourself standing in a place, smelling, hearing, feeling the world around you in that place makes the realness of it, the biology of it, a part of your life, memory and body. It completely breaks down your preconceived notions of it, and you will never think of it the same way. The same thing happens in a place like Europe, Africa, India, Iraq. I don’t think it matters how foreign or different the place is. Inevitably it becomes a real place with real people.

So events, news, wars and stories that you hear about that happen in a place that you’ve stood take on a new meaning. I think we could all stand to see how small the world is, and how alike we all are. But I think we can also stand to see our differences and learn from them. I want to travel more, and more importantly to me I want my son to be able to travel if he wants. Because I want him to have the perspective it can bring. From the little bit of travel I’ve done, and from doing my chair travel that I do now, by watching this program, reading as much as I can, and purposely remembering that there’s a whole world out there, it helps me feel grateful for all that I do have. I think for a person living in American culture there’s no better medicine than seeing how most of the world lives, with little to no material possessions, but often still great joy.

I spend hours now dreaming what feels like opposing dreams. I dream of building roots, no longer just for me but my son. I dream of giving him the feeling that I never had, of really coming from some place. But I also dream of visiting places, seeing new places, smelling the earth on other parts of the globe. Even deeper than that I dream of feeling a deep connection to both here and there, and how my life might be lived with that connection. Maybe a sustainable farm here, and volunteer projects or connections with children there. I don’t know, I don’t even know where “there” is yet. But just the thinking of it is good for me and hopefully good for my son.

i take it personally

I’ve always found it hard to ignore things. I remember being very little, still a child, watching television one morning. A commercial came on for some charity, probably save the children or something. It came on in between other commercials, probably for cheerios or shaving cream. I remember how I couldn’t forget about it, felt an impulse to help, and felt somehow horrified that the commercial for these children, just like me only suffering, had been sandwiched between mundane ads. I think it was one of the first moments that I realized that bad things can happen, people can know about them, but they happen anyway and nobody stops them. When I became a vegetarian, and especially when I stayed one, it was because of this same impulse. I could not ignore the suffering I knew happens so that I could eat a food I didn’t truly need. No more than I can now ignore the cries of my child when he believes, in his brand new brain that he needs me, even if I know he’s all right. I’ve always taken things personally, in that I’ve always felt responsible to live my life in a way that doesn’t contribute to the suffering that I can’t justify and don’t see a reason for.

But now I find it even more difficult. Before when I thought of war, an image was brought to my mind of a young man in fatigues, wearing a helmet above his dirty face. Now I think of my son, and the other mothers out there whose boys are grown and wearing the fatigues. And similarly, I sometimes can’t help but take some politics personally. You see I want more than anything else to help fight for a world that will be kind to my son, even as my greatest desire is to raise a boy that is kind to the world. Maine right now is voting on a motion to repeal a law allowing same-sex couples to marry. I believe these campaigns are fostered because of people’s religious views about marriage. And this is what I don’t understand and have a hard time not taking personally. I want my son to grow up in a state where people love each other, are committed to each other, and raise their children with intention, stability and creativity. I don’t think it matters how old they are, what religion they are, what color they are or what gender.


I want my son to grow up in a state that in many ways is “old-fashioned”, where he will learn to help a neighbor, grow some food, save a dollar, be happy with less, practice gratitude and get to know the place around him. I want him to grow up in a place welcoming of others, compassionate to all and in this way moral, where he will learn to do the right thing. I don’t understand how judgment and a lack of compassion are moral, and if there is one thing I hope to teach him, it is to embrace diversity.

So when I see political signs up all over, the one’s that give an outcry of peace, love and acceptance give me hope. When I see the ones that imply judgment, what I perceive as warped stodgy morality, and views of a world that I don’t understand, they would depress me, but I don’t have that luxury now. For I think it is my responsibility to do my best to create a world I hope some day my son is proud to live in, where he feels safe not just in body, but in spirit.

just worth watching again, and the inspiration i needed

Morning Mist

I'm living in the land of Sebastien Schuller's morning mist, and almost ready to speak again.