wanderlusting

i opened the fire door 

to four lips 

none of which 

were mine kissing 

tightened my belt 

around my hips where 

your hands were missing 

and stepped out 

into the cold 

collar high 

under the slate gray sky 

the air was smoking 

and the streets were dry 

and i wasn't joking 

when i said good bye

[ani difranco]

having a pensive night, thinking about issues that i care about, thinking about ways to live more authentically, mulling my thoughts over the brilliant sounds of ani difranco. remembering this song and how i turned it on my mp3 player as i first stepped into an overcast madrid morning to catch the train to the university, years ago now. tightening my clothes around the loneliness i felt and how it was somehow exhilarating. having the world at my fingertips and yet feeling lost and alone and small. so very small in such a big world.

the thing about great artists is that, if you catch them at the right time, they provide a soundtrack to your life, a backdrop to the memories of both painful and passionate moments. ani comforted me in a time when the world seemed to be falling apart. she always does.

"i guess everything is timing, i guess everything's been said, so i'm coming home to an empty head."

it surprises me that there is still closure to be found in my experiences abroad. in a lot of ways, i recognize that i was not ready for what i was to encounter there. that i was not primed to take advantage of all the experiences that were available to me. and yet i don't know that i ever would have been ready. it truly turned my life upside down, and i think that is the strange nature of travel. it unearths an unsettling feeling that may never get resolved, even after years of returning to "normalcy." i am forever changed, in the proverbial cliche way. 

"how can i go home with nothing to say 

i know you're going to look at me that way 

and say what did you do out there and 

what did you decide 

you said you needed time and 

you had time"

i spoke to a very respected co-worker today about my love of travel, and how she despises it. she refuses to go somewhere where should could get a parasite, or worse, abducted. i suppose we are mad to take those risks for the intoxicating feeling of that first espresso in a cafe where everyone is foreign. that rush of adrenaline when the immigration officer slams his fist into a stamp which makes real and tangible the fact that you are a stranger in a new place.

i like just about everything about traveling. i like packing black & neutral clothes and colorful scarves, phone chargers and travel-size toiletries. i like that nervous feeling in my gut when i wake up too early to catch a train or flight. i like that soy latte in the airport, even if it's awful. i like remembering, every time i take off in an airplane, the puerto rican boy who shouted with glee "we are going to the planets! to the sky!" as we took off from detroit and then landed in the middle of the caribbean.

i like getting my bearings in a new airport and then a city. i like the smells and the change in faces. i even like the lonelines. i never feel more like the protagonist of my own story than when i travel. it's the ultimate out-of-body experience. funny that i feel more myself when i'm out of my element than when i'm in it.

there are a million other reasons why i like to throw a suitcase together and jet around the world, but mostly, i think it's because i am fulfilling a promise i made to a bewildered young girl who got a taste of the great big world out there and i couldn't bear to let her down. as a teenager wandering the streets of cuernavaca, i made a promise to myself that i would travel. that i would defy the status quo of my perceived destiny, a girl from a small town in midwestern america. i would see the world, i would be open to it, and i would embrace the parasites and the dangers and the loneliness to get a whiff of that inebriating moroccan incense while the muezzin call the faithful to prayer, the crackling pine wood of a campfire in the sierras, the eerie aroma of a spanish eucalyptus forest in the fog, the crisp, salty spray of the pacific ocean, and the circling gulls.

the sky is grey

 the sand is grey 

and the ocean is grey 

 and i feel right at home 

in this stunning monochrome 

alone in my way 

 i smoke and i drink 

and every time i blink 

i have a tiny dream 

 but as bad as i am 

i'm proud of the fact 

that i'm worse than i seem 

 what kind of paradise 

am i looking for? 

i've got everything i want 

and still i want more 

maybe some tiny 

shiny key will 

wash up on the shore

it is inevitable. at least once a year, i have an uncontrollable itch to board a plane and discover a new place. in the past 6 years, i have been to dozens of places in spain, to morocco, to paris, to california, to scotland, montana and oregon, seattle/tacoma and rochester, washington dc, san francisco, new york city, the adirondacks, chicago, toronto and all over the dominican republic. and it is nowhere near enough. around february i start packing my suitcase just to practice. i scour rei.com for gear that i might need. i search ticket prices online and flip through my passport. i think of the people i love and the wonderful places they live and watch my bank account for a direct deposit to arrive that will allow me to live the life i have imagined. the life i choose. the life that makes me feel both empty and full, happy and sad, alone and united with humanity. the life where i get to sit at a table on a sidewalk cafe, sip wine and dip bread in oil and pretend that my life is an ever-unfolding story of a girl who took a chance and braved those awful parasites to see the sun set over sacre coeur. and that mesmerizing eiffel tower.