I bought myself a plane ticket to Spain for my birthday. I leave tomorrow. I intend to spend the dawn of my 28th year on earth in misty mountain solitude, listening to medieval chants and wandering around the oldest still-functioning monastery in Europe.
After that, I'm going to Barcelona to party.
I am refusing to take a suitcase on this trip (not such a strange thing, for me) but I am also resistant to even taking a backpacking pack. It's too big. I'm packing a duffel bag for this trip, the kind of bag one takes on a long weekend. A "weekender," the fashion people would call it. It's fake red leather, and my mother spotted it on the free table at Value Village Thrift Store two months ago and brought it home for me. It has no rips and no holes and the strap is still attached and the stitches are firm and the zipper works, so I'm not sure why it was on the free table, but it has a good home, now. This is a bag I will love.
I have my little duffel loaded up with clothes: underwear, cardigans, a cocktail dress. A toiletry bag. A current converter. I'll add a pair of fancy flats later tonight.
I have a backpack, too, a carry on, the backpack that has been on every single trip I've taken since I was fourteen and went to Oceania for three weeks. This backpack has been around the world. It's been to Australia and New Zealand, it's been to Spain before, it was with me when I got stranded in Morocco, it's been to Paris and seen the Mona Lisa, and it's held water and sandwiches while I hiked in the Schwarzwald. It's met my daughter's father. It's climbed Mayan ruins on the Yucatan, seen waterfalls in the Andes, gone to street parties outside of Santo Domingo. This backpack has been to New York City more times than I can count, seen the redwoods of Big Basin State Park in California, wandered around downtown Detroit. It's been to St. Louis and Indianapolis.
Into this backpack I will put my camera bag, laden with camera and lenses and lens filters and cleaning cloths and memory cards and a battery charger and a card reader. I will put my tiny pink computer, and its charger. I'll put my phone and its charger. I'll put in two books and a wallet and a passport and three packs of American Spirit cigarettes, in the yellow box, and a lighter. The lighter will also be yellow.
I've had butterflies in my stomach for days now, anticipating this trip. My insides are quivering in anticipation of being unattached for seven entire, glorious days. My wanderlust is ferocious, voracious, and stems primarily from a desire to have no attachments at all. My daydreams are always about taking off into the sunset and leaving everything behind. My fondest, most impossible wish is to start over, completely, from scratch. I want to disappear with my duffel and my backpack and never come back, never look back, reinvent everything about myself.
I can't do that. Having babies really puts a damper on your ability to disappear without a trace. Well, unless you're my baby's father.
(Heh.)
So, I take the next best thing: Whenever I can, I go somehwere alone. Like tomorrow.
I have many vices. Cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, pretty dresses, vintage hats, ridiculous high-heeled shoes, loud music, driving too fast. Some of these are probably even full-blown addictions. But of all my vices, and all my addictions, this is most certainly the worst. This is the one that could cause me to abandon everything, hit rock bottom, sever every tie. It would be so easy since the addiction is to rootlessness, restlessness, the ability to move on whenever the urge hits, to put one's life in two small bags and go, onward, forward, sideways, backwards, it doesn't matter as long as you're moving.
The addiction, you see, is to this fluttery feeling I get before stepping off into the unknown. I am addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the limitless vistas of possibility. This feeling is better than any drug, than any drink, than any touch. This feeling is better than any love. This combination of knowing everything theoretically and nothing concretely and being able to see everything and nothing all at once is better than anything else you can name. I would chase this feeling endlessly if I could. I would step off every cliff, climb every mountain, turn down every blind alley to find it again.
If I could. If only I could.
Showing posts with label irresponsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label irresponsibility. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Monday, October 10, 2011
Playground Revenge
A few weeks ago, I took my daughter to the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Honestly, it was a truly gorgeous day and the Packers weren't playing until later and my mom needed some quiet house time, so I tossed her in the stroller (ok, ok, she climbed in herself) and off we went.
A few disclaimers, before I go further. I was probably dressed like a celebrity trying to hide from photographers, complete with inappropriate dress, oversized sweater, scarf and hat. G was probably also inappropriately dressed, and by that I mean barefoot and not wearing her own sweater. And I am known to be pretty sensitive to condescending and/or patronizing behavior. I have been since I was a wee bairn. And I may have been moderately hungover. Hangovers make me cranky.
But it was a beautiful day! Check it:
So there we were, happily at Lake Park playground. G is running about like a mad thing, sliding on slides and digging in sand and climbing on dangerously unstable chain ladders and I am happily parked on a bench in the sunshine, checking twitter and occcasionally snapping a picture of her and often letting my head fall back to rest oh-so-gently on the back of the bench while I try to banish the throbbing knot of having drank too much last night from my temples.
I turn my head to the right. And there I see them, a group of parents from G's school. including the principal and his wife, sitting on a picnic blanket together and talking loudly and raucously as they share organic snack cakes and keep vulture eyes on their various children.
Oh shit, I think. At least they are over by the little kids area and we're over here on the other side of the playground.
FYI, NEVER think that. Because your toddler will immediately run over to you, dump her shoes in your lap and tear off barefoot toward the people you are happy not to be interacting with. She got to the swing set and called me over at the top of her lungs to push her. But she said "please" so I didn't really have grounds for refusal.
I get there and realize that my fear of being forced to interact with these people is completely unfounded, as they all ignore me. Completely. Even after the kids make the connection that some of them are in the same kindergarten class and some of them are in the class next door.
Whatever, I'm cool with that. All these parents are between fifteen and twenty years older than me, and I guarantee you that none of them were out drinking too much the night before. Also that none of them finished their evening at three ante-meridian with take-out nachos from the delightful Mexican-Californian biker* on their front porch. Interacting with them would probably be painfully awkward for everyone involved, so I'm quite happy to be spared the increase in my head pains.
But then things start to happen. A group of boys (dark skinned, which I must point out since I live in the whitest-white-bread neighborhood ever) with toy guns appear as if by magic and start pretending to shoot each other as they chase all over the playground area. A grizzled, old white man in a USMC baseball cap sits in a camo-print camp chair on the very far edge of the playground and doesn't really watch them.
Ok, now, yeah, a bunch of eight- to fourteen-year-olds running over the toddler play area is a recipe for disaster. Some eighteen-month-old will get run over, or some four-year-old will try to climb and jump like the big kids are and break something. I get it. So the principal of my kids' school asking the boys to go play somewhere else is not really out of line.
BUT THEN. HIS WIFE. This woman has got to be the most loud-mouthed, judgmental, politically correct, condescending thing in the ENTIRE WORLD. Before the boys leave, she starts talking (at the top of her considerable voice) about the inappropriateness of guns as toys. She bullies all the other parents in her little picnic into acquiescing to her superior viewpoint. And she openly (and still loudly) wonders at parents who "dump" their kids at a playground "with weapons."
First of all, the kids can hear you, lady, and you're not exactly showing them any kind of respect. Second, the other parents in your little clique are aware of how disrespectful you're being but you've got them cowed because you treat life like middle-school and you have to be the Queen Fucking Bee. Third, the guardian of these kids, probably a foster parent or grandparent, can hear you, and I guarantee you he doesn't need your moralizing from the high-and-mighty throne of your affluence. Being well off and liberal doesn't give you the right to passive-aggressively tell everyone else in the world how to live.
It took most of my self-control not to whirl around and tell her off. But I do try not to swear in front of my own kid, and I don't think I could have accomplished the verbal tonge-lashing this woman needed without dropping at least two f-bombs. Also, yelling at people is no way to solve anything, and berating this woman loudly for berating the state of these kids loudly would have been ineffective at best. So I held my tongue. It was hard.
But then I got my sweet revenge. You see, by this time, I had tamed the hangover (we'd been at the park for close to two hours) enough to be playing with my sweet little girl. We were sitting in the sand, raking it into a pile and smoothing the sides, digging a circular hole around it, placing rocks and sticks. The whole thing was actually quite soothing, building this mountainous castle, and the feel of the sand slipping over and through our fingers was delightful. I started making a rock garden outside the castle as she kept working on the walls, and suddenly other children were there to help us.
First, the daughter and son of Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth. Then another boy from the playgroup.
AND THEN: the youngest three boys of the gun-toting group came to see what we were up to. Two were six-year-old twins; one was an eight year old. They came and sat down with us, wondered what we were doing. I told them. They asked if they could help. I asked them to please put the guns down somewhere else and join us.
And they did. We spent a solid forty minutes, the group of us, coming sand into a pile and then another pile and building a bridge between them. We put flags on top and dug a ditch around. We created an entire rock and stick garden around the exterior, and raked the sand in into patterns that included the first letter of each kids' name.
And Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth sat on her fat ass on a camp chair not five feet away from me, and looked slightly aghast the entire time I played with her children and the gun boys and my kid. And she couldn't say a word. Because we were all quite happy together.
When her husband came to collect the kids into the minivan to drive home, he smiled at me and said hello and thank you and I smiled back and said hello and then I turned to her and with all the courtesy I could muster I sat up straight like a steel ramrod and looked her dead in the eye and gave her my most mega-watt smile ever and doffed my cloche to her. I totally saw her teeth clench. It was a beautiful moment.
(I'm totally a bad person and I'm going to hell but what the fuck ever.)
*I am going to get that awesome old biker hippie to teach me how to make tortillas if it's the last thing I do. Serious.
A few disclaimers, before I go further. I was probably dressed like a celebrity trying to hide from photographers, complete with inappropriate dress, oversized sweater, scarf and hat. G was probably also inappropriately dressed, and by that I mean barefoot and not wearing her own sweater. And I am known to be pretty sensitive to condescending and/or patronizing behavior. I have been since I was a wee bairn. And I may have been moderately hungover. Hangovers make me cranky.
But it was a beautiful day! Check it:
I turn my head to the right. And there I see them, a group of parents from G's school. including the principal and his wife, sitting on a picnic blanket together and talking loudly and raucously as they share organic snack cakes and keep vulture eyes on their various children.
Oh shit, I think. At least they are over by the little kids area and we're over here on the other side of the playground.
FYI, NEVER think that. Because your toddler will immediately run over to you, dump her shoes in your lap and tear off barefoot toward the people you are happy not to be interacting with. She got to the swing set and called me over at the top of her lungs to push her. But she said "please" so I didn't really have grounds for refusal.
I get there and realize that my fear of being forced to interact with these people is completely unfounded, as they all ignore me. Completely. Even after the kids make the connection that some of them are in the same kindergarten class and some of them are in the class next door.
Whatever, I'm cool with that. All these parents are between fifteen and twenty years older than me, and I guarantee you that none of them were out drinking too much the night before. Also that none of them finished their evening at three ante-meridian with take-out nachos from the delightful Mexican-Californian biker* on their front porch. Interacting with them would probably be painfully awkward for everyone involved, so I'm quite happy to be spared the increase in my head pains.
But then things start to happen. A group of boys (dark skinned, which I must point out since I live in the whitest-white-bread neighborhood ever) with toy guns appear as if by magic and start pretending to shoot each other as they chase all over the playground area. A grizzled, old white man in a USMC baseball cap sits in a camo-print camp chair on the very far edge of the playground and doesn't really watch them.
Ok, now, yeah, a bunch of eight- to fourteen-year-olds running over the toddler play area is a recipe for disaster. Some eighteen-month-old will get run over, or some four-year-old will try to climb and jump like the big kids are and break something. I get it. So the principal of my kids' school asking the boys to go play somewhere else is not really out of line.
BUT THEN. HIS WIFE. This woman has got to be the most loud-mouthed, judgmental, politically correct, condescending thing in the ENTIRE WORLD. Before the boys leave, she starts talking (at the top of her considerable voice) about the inappropriateness of guns as toys. She bullies all the other parents in her little picnic into acquiescing to her superior viewpoint. And she openly (and still loudly) wonders at parents who "dump" their kids at a playground "with weapons."
First of all, the kids can hear you, lady, and you're not exactly showing them any kind of respect. Second, the other parents in your little clique are aware of how disrespectful you're being but you've got them cowed because you treat life like middle-school and you have to be the Queen Fucking Bee. Third, the guardian of these kids, probably a foster parent or grandparent, can hear you, and I guarantee you he doesn't need your moralizing from the high-and-mighty throne of your affluence. Being well off and liberal doesn't give you the right to passive-aggressively tell everyone else in the world how to live.
It took most of my self-control not to whirl around and tell her off. But I do try not to swear in front of my own kid, and I don't think I could have accomplished the verbal tonge-lashing this woman needed without dropping at least two f-bombs. Also, yelling at people is no way to solve anything, and berating this woman loudly for berating the state of these kids loudly would have been ineffective at best. So I held my tongue. It was hard.
But then I got my sweet revenge. You see, by this time, I had tamed the hangover (we'd been at the park for close to two hours) enough to be playing with my sweet little girl. We were sitting in the sand, raking it into a pile and smoothing the sides, digging a circular hole around it, placing rocks and sticks. The whole thing was actually quite soothing, building this mountainous castle, and the feel of the sand slipping over and through our fingers was delightful. I started making a rock garden outside the castle as she kept working on the walls, and suddenly other children were there to help us.
First, the daughter and son of Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth. Then another boy from the playgroup.
AND THEN: the youngest three boys of the gun-toting group came to see what we were up to. Two were six-year-old twins; one was an eight year old. They came and sat down with us, wondered what we were doing. I told them. They asked if they could help. I asked them to please put the guns down somewhere else and join us.
And they did. We spent a solid forty minutes, the group of us, coming sand into a pile and then another pile and building a bridge between them. We put flags on top and dug a ditch around. We created an entire rock and stick garden around the exterior, and raked the sand in into patterns that included the first letter of each kids' name.
And Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth sat on her fat ass on a camp chair not five feet away from me, and looked slightly aghast the entire time I played with her children and the gun boys and my kid. And she couldn't say a word. Because we were all quite happy together.
When her husband came to collect the kids into the minivan to drive home, he smiled at me and said hello and thank you and I smiled back and said hello and then I turned to her and with all the courtesy I could muster I sat up straight like a steel ramrod and looked her dead in the eye and gave her my most mega-watt smile ever and doffed my cloche to her. I totally saw her teeth clench. It was a beautiful moment.
(I'm totally a bad person and I'm going to hell but what the fuck ever.)
*I am going to get that awesome old biker hippie to teach me how to make tortillas if it's the last thing I do. Serious.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wanderlust.
I have persistent, pernicious, well-documented and terribly inconvenient wanderlust. It started when I was 12. I begged and begged my parents to take me somewhere, or (better yet) send me somewhere.
My mother understood. I get this from her, after all. We think it's genetic.
They sent me to Australia and New Zealand. Since that trip in the summer of 2008, I have proceeded to visit Spain, Morocco, the Bahamas, Paris, Germany, Luxembourg, London, Mexico and Colombia.
In the last 9 months alone I've been to Mexico and Colombia, after having not left the country since my daughter's conception in the fall of 2007. I have laughingly nicknamed 2010 "The Year of the Return of the World Traveller."
I want to run away. Right now.
I want to buy a plane ticket, any plane ticket, the cheapest plane ticket I can find, and hop aboard and not look back. At least not for awhile. At least not until the wandering beast inside that seems to be insatiable is temporarily tamed.
I want to climb Kilimanjaroo and see Baku. I want to wander Copenhagen and Amsterdam, learn to dance cumbia on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, visit the jungles of Ecuador. I want to see Johannesburg and return to Tangiers. I want to sit on the sea steps of Barcelona and go dancing in Munich. I want to ride a scooter through the streets of Taipei and walk along the Great Wall.
And I want to do it all right now. The effort involved in keeping myself seated in this desk chair is superhuman. I squirm, I dance, I do anything and everything that makes me look ridiculous because if I don't, I will get up and run away. RUN. AWAY.
I want to see the world. I want to drink it in and love every dirty, shining, beautiful piece of it.
And right now, I want to do it right now. Who's in?
My mother understood. I get this from her, after all. We think it's genetic.
They sent me to Australia and New Zealand. Since that trip in the summer of 2008, I have proceeded to visit Spain, Morocco, the Bahamas, Paris, Germany, Luxembourg, London, Mexico and Colombia.
In the last 9 months alone I've been to Mexico and Colombia, after having not left the country since my daughter's conception in the fall of 2007. I have laughingly nicknamed 2010 "The Year of the Return of the World Traveller."
I want to run away. Right now.
I want to buy a plane ticket, any plane ticket, the cheapest plane ticket I can find, and hop aboard and not look back. At least not for awhile. At least not until the wandering beast inside that seems to be insatiable is temporarily tamed.
I want to climb Kilimanjaroo and see Baku. I want to wander Copenhagen and Amsterdam, learn to dance cumbia on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, visit the jungles of Ecuador. I want to see Johannesburg and return to Tangiers. I want to sit on the sea steps of Barcelona and go dancing in Munich. I want to ride a scooter through the streets of Taipei and walk along the Great Wall.
And I want to do it all right now. The effort involved in keeping myself seated in this desk chair is superhuman. I squirm, I dance, I do anything and everything that makes me look ridiculous because if I don't, I will get up and run away. RUN. AWAY.
I want to see the world. I want to drink it in and love every dirty, shining, beautiful piece of it.
And right now, I want to do it right now. Who's in?
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