Coming Home

The problem with traveling is the coming home.

My fellow victims of wanderlust, we must return home sometime. It can't be a coincidence that some of the world's most inveterate travelers are based in New York, a wonderful city whose housing facilities are usually less than commendable. As one gets older and accumulates more stuff, one notices that other people getting older with them are schlepping that stuff out of the city. Is it that the crowds have worn upon them? Or that they are just sick of moving everything around merely to unpack their suitcases. Maybe Hong Kong is full of addicted frequent flyers as well.

Home is where the heart is, or the heartbreak. We've been afflicted by construction issues in a new apartment. That makes for some very concrete housing pain. Unfortunately, some people probably need to avoid their families for one reason or another. I find the realities of "home" to be infected with tensions explored in many a Feminist academic polemic. Housework now saddens me, rather than enraging me with righteous fury. One must cook and clean, does it really need to be a political, demographical, anthropological struggle (in my head, mostly)? God is it endless, the cleaning I mean. And I even own a dishwasher. It would be nice to somehow enjoy it more, but it sure as hell doesn't pay much.

Home is also the place of bills, endless credit card offers even when you're on "that" list, advertisements for burial plots for Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Cooley (not sure who the second person is and why their mail comes here), grocery store coupons and take-out menus jammed in the doorway, forgotten coffee grinds, cords that somehow escape their pens and get into death matches with dust bunnies, leaks and the same view every single morning. Like the Little Prince I love to watch the sunset. At home, the sunset stars the same exact vine-covered telephone pole every single day. It's almost as bad as eating in most of small town America.

Even an American landscape dotted by drearily endless franchise signs at least changes as you venture through it. But home does not. Some people find this comforting. Why do I find it frightening?

flying in february

travel secrets exposed

Why has the New York Times gone everywhere and how do I get that job?

Lessons From the Icelandic Volcano Eruption
By SUSAN STELLIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/travel/02prac.html?ref=travel

Makes one daydream... I think they have an article about every single place Kevin and I have talked about traveling to as of late. Save one, and I am not telling.

After writing such a paean to air travel, I was at the airport the next day, flying to Buffalo. The plane was a tiny one, and it was early on a Sunday morning, yet the flight was completely full.

The Delta line was terribly slow, blockaded by a woman who not only couldn't manage enough English to say "Hello" but also had apparently never seen a line before, and two "real American" firefighters who thought they shouldn't have to pay checked baggage fees. But even when those barriers were removed, the other customers took just as long to sort out the fact that their bags needed sticky tags to get to Omaha. I know, we are experienced travelers, but isn't everyone in a hurry at the airport?

Perhaps my anxiety comes from years of perilous near misses at the jetway. At age 19, I did actually miss a flight from London to Paris. Even though it was my final night of a semester spent studying in London, I was out too late the night before and had not finished packing my belongings. The next flight over the Channel did a fine job of delivering me and those belongings. Another time, I waltzed into JFK 15 minutes before my flight took off for Miami, where I was to meet my mother and sister. This was after 9-11. I have no idea why they let me on the plane. My mother would have been so angry at me.

Behavior like that now would probably lead to a divorce, an option unavailable to my mom. These days I pretend I am more responsible.

I often work as a photo assistant, for my husband. This is an interesting thing to do. When we first met, in a color darkroom, not on a job, I had freelanced as a photographer's assistant for a couple years. He begged me to work for him but I refused. I do not know how well most photo assistants get along with the photographers they slave for, but I do know that I resent authority and a photo shoot is a dictatorship.

But Kevin gets jobs in Miami, South Africa, Copenhagen... it's hard to say no to that. This job, in Niagara Falls, maybe wasn't quite so glamorous. But three days outside in the mist at the honeymoon capital of the world with my new husband couldn't be so bad. As it turns out, the working relationship is 60% brilliant, 20% quite good and 20% profoundly annoying. I keep taking the 4 out of 5. On the morning of our departure, our only skirmish involved bringing (or not bringing) a small trolley for the heavy equipment carry-ons. I wanted to save my back. He insisted it wouldn't work. Not such a bad skirmish. Oh well, lifting heavy things gave me a nice, muscular back for my wedding gown. And he's the boss. He's not always a dictator though. I get to play around a little on these jobs....


Niagara Falls, from our hotel room

Why travel?

Why this human need for travel? Does it relate to a need for novelty? Why the restless, haunting desire to be a vagabond, to wander? Is it hard-wired? A legacy from our hunter-gatherer days? Let's ask Jared Diamond.

Tourism is now one of the world's number one industries. It is yet another lopsided economic construct. Poor countries, rather than merely selling out their land, now mine their cultural heritages, or less-spoiled landscapes. Well, despite all that jet exhaust fueling climate change, I don't think we should all be staying home.

I love traveling. Even the concomitant hassles, fights err, relationship struggles, the lines, baggage dragging, relentless solicitations, and jet lag. I love jet lag. I love waking up too early, surreal, dreamy, potent and startling. I love airports. Being at an airport means I am going somewhere. I don't care about the pain of security, it's gone, forgotten within mere minutes. The adrenaline surge of worrying that I will miss my flight is addictive. I love take-off most of all. The moment the plane skips off of the ground, an overgrown child throwing itself into space, I feel freedom. I am afraid of heights, but not in airplanes.

And then you arrive. Even someplace I've been before will have changed since my last visit. If you are assiduous in your gaze, boredom will not plague you. I am many things, including overwhelmed, but I am not bored. Not allowing yourself to become overwhelmed is important. But why are we even here, or there, or en route to, in the first place?

photographs