Happy Holidays
zudini and I just got back home last night around midnight. It was a journey of opposites: both hot and cold, overcast and sunny, relaxing and stressful, full of family but also strangers, and both too long and too short. We even had two suitcases to check (for the first time in a long time): one outrageously large, the other ridiculously small.
SFO -> JFK -> LHR
We spent Christmas in London with my Mom and her husband. It was even colder than usual for London, though I suppose it's a bit unfair for me to call it cold when it rarely got down to freezing. Still, sitting on the top of a double-decker open-air bus when it's only 2-5 degrees Celsius makes for cold fingers and noses.
We skyped with my sister and her family several times; slept in most days but stayed up late to compensate; went to the theatre twice; toured the city by tube, by foot, by bus and by boat; and indulged in delicious food: I believe there was even one day where almost every meal involved chocolate. The architecture in London still captivates me after all these years, and I spent far too much time trying to capture it adequately in photos. There's something about the "Victorian Gothic" that I just love.
And the colors and lights of London at night, especially when reflected in the Thames, are breathtaking. Mom and I had a grand time cooking a proper Christmas feast, redolent of all the traditional flavors of Thanksgiving. We also wandered through Hampstead Heath to Highgate where we discovered a fabulous (and fabulously hidden) little gem of a French restaurant and we warmed our bodies and souls there with hot chocolate, cappuccinos and an absolutely divine chocolate lava cake with Crème Anglaise while French songs mingled freely with American classics in the background.
Mom and I exchanged texts of some of our favorite plays (I bought her Pillowman, she got me Arts), zudini wore a bag as a hat to great effect,
and our time there was marked in general with the absurdities that make life fun and interesting: people playing in a life-sized snow globe,
the squirrel with white ears that comes to the door for peanuts every day, the Sherlock Holmes Pub on a street called Craven Passage, the sloper-mantle climbing move required to shimmy your way onto the backs of the lions in Trafalgar Square, the funny signs that are only funny to an outsider's eye,
the dash through Greenwich along the wrong roads so we could "see the sights" there before our boat returned to the Houses of Parliament, the binary watches and LED tees under the blacklights in Camden Market. But mostly, for me, it was a trip to spend time with my Mom, to catch up on her daily life and routines, her goals and desires for the future.
As you well know, I'm useless at keeping in touch over long distances. Which, mind you, doesn't mean I'm not thinking of you or loving you from afar, but it does leave a lot of room for catching up.
For the last several days, even though we knew it was unlikely to ever happen, we all joked about Mom and David coming to live in California some day. A little wistful, a little hopeful. And yet, there's still a hell of a lot to be said for London; I can't really blame her for staying.
LHR -> JFK -> ATL -> SJU
One hot night in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with just enough time for almost 8 hours of sleep in a cheap but serviceable hotel before we had to get up for our flight the next morning, a quick little hop on one of these over a beautiful little island to another beautiful little island called St. Croix.
SJU -> STX
We stepped out onto the tarmac and headed toward an airport that seemed to have no walls, nor any need of them. shotcable's brother came to pick us up before we managed to procure free rum from the tourist agency near the baggage carousels. He wasn't wearing four hats, but he did look remarkably like shotcable considering how different their features are. (I wonder now if other people see this kind of similarity between my sister and me, or between me and each of my parents.) Instead of the turkey we made for Christmas dinner, we all (two of our non-LJ housemates were there, too, and shotcable's immediate family) colluded to roast a small pig on a spit in the backyard. (Photo omitted for the sake of the vegans and vegetarians.) Instead of long underwear, hats, and scarves, we wore bathing suits with tees and sandals, and I got to make good use of my new Utilikilt as a simple and well-ventilated piece of clothing. There were wild chickens and roosters, beaches, turquoise waters we cut through in kayaks or explored while snorkeling or SCUBA diving.
Lots of beer to cut the heat, Cruzan rum in the evenings, quick showers, conch, fresh lobster, smoked salmon, escargot, wine sniffing, slow parades, cool tile beneath our feet, waves rolling in upon the shore, and sunshine almost every day.
Add a touch of humidity, plenty of salt water and a few biting bugs and after 6 or 7 days you've got tanned bodies, lightened hair, a history of games outside on the patio and a few itches and abrasions to remind you of the whirlwind of adventures. Catching sunrise at Point Udall, the Eastern-most tip of the US (not counting the Western bits that slide over into east). Parrot fish, barracudas, angelfish, scorpion fish, trunk fish. Blue skies, white clouds, every so often a slight threat of rain. Learning to use new gear, hiking to the top of Buck Island, winding through the reef trail. Flippers, masks, sunscreen. The smell of Off in the evenings, tropical scented. More sunscreen, borrowed hats. The first panic of breathing while underwater. The second panic of accidentally inhaling a mouthful of sea water. Then all that's left is sea urchins, arrow crabs, fire coral.
Anchors abandoned at the bottom of the sea, old bits of long-forgotten constructions, a sting ray that disappears, a giant bowl made out of coral, schools of fish moving here and there. It's silent, and time is measured only in oxygen or fatigue. There's pointing, a limited field of view, a small vocabulary of signs.
On top of the water, we fight against waves and current and sometimes each other to move in a straight line, or a zig-zag path to stay above the sandy bottom instead of bottoming out on the coral. You can feel the sun beating down, the spray of the water, but never realize the speed with which you are moving until it's your turn to be dragged: to hold onto the line on the aft end of the kayak and float along, feeling the water flowing around you, the current pulling gently in another direction, the eddies in the flow around your hips and legs. Sometimes there are sea turtles who stop to look at you as you stop to look at them, or flying fish on the horizon. Near the island we see pelicans diving for their food. We scan the water for the buoys that guide us safely over the reefs, slide out of the kayaks and into the cool water, encourage and guide the brave swimmers, are swept to and fro by the water as we put the kayaks out to sea or bring them back in again.
Outside of the water was a legal BAC of up to .24 for driving on the left side of the road (in American cars) (not that we partook of that particular opportunity), windy streets, beer-drinking pigs, a shot of moonshine, lunch at Turtles Deli, the rainforest, the largest oil refinery in the Western hemisphere lit up at night like a cityscape from Bladerunner, buying 12 bottles of rum to take home, and finally, sitting next to the pilot on the first leg of the way home with a short delay for more fuel during which he explained what each of the controls and dials did and signified. Soon, over that beautiful little island (Vieques), he tells me about the wonderful, empty beaches and gives me a magazine where I read about the wild horses that live there, roaming free on the sparsely-populated island.
STX -> SJU -> ATL -> SFO
Like time underwater, time spent on planes seems to not count as part of real life, to not move like real time. It's another world, a small world with a limited field of view, a limited vocabulary, limited communication. Distance is measured by flight time and fuel levels. Airports are surreal, with vending machines that dispense iPods and MyVues with a swipe of a credit card. By the end of our journey, each one is familiar and we find ourselves at gates we've been to before, traveling walkways we've traveled previously, recognizing shops and places to eat. It's as if time stands still here, as if life was on pause, waiting for us to come home before it moved on.
SFO -> JFK -> LHR
We spent Christmas in London with my Mom and her husband. It was even colder than usual for London, though I suppose it's a bit unfair for me to call it cold when it rarely got down to freezing. Still, sitting on the top of a double-decker open-air bus when it's only 2-5 degrees Celsius makes for cold fingers and noses.
We skyped with my sister and her family several times; slept in most days but stayed up late to compensate; went to the theatre twice; toured the city by tube, by foot, by bus and by boat; and indulged in delicious food: I believe there was even one day where almost every meal involved chocolate. The architecture in London still captivates me after all these years, and I spent far too much time trying to capture it adequately in photos. There's something about the "Victorian Gothic" that I just love.
And the colors and lights of London at night, especially when reflected in the Thames, are breathtaking. Mom and I had a grand time cooking a proper Christmas feast, redolent of all the traditional flavors of Thanksgiving. We also wandered through Hampstead Heath to Highgate where we discovered a fabulous (and fabulously hidden) little gem of a French restaurant and we warmed our bodies and souls there with hot chocolate, cappuccinos and an absolutely divine chocolate lava cake with Crème Anglaise while French songs mingled freely with American classics in the background.
Mom and I exchanged texts of some of our favorite plays (I bought her Pillowman, she got me Arts), zudini wore a bag as a hat to great effect,
and our time there was marked in general with the absurdities that make life fun and interesting: people playing in a life-sized snow globe,
the squirrel with white ears that comes to the door for peanuts every day, the Sherlock Holmes Pub on a street called Craven Passage, the sloper-mantle climbing move required to shimmy your way onto the backs of the lions in Trafalgar Square, the funny signs that are only funny to an outsider's eye,
the dash through Greenwich along the wrong roads so we could "see the sights" there before our boat returned to the Houses of Parliament, the binary watches and LED tees under the blacklights in Camden Market. But mostly, for me, it was a trip to spend time with my Mom, to catch up on her daily life and routines, her goals and desires for the future.
As you well know, I'm useless at keeping in touch over long distances. Which, mind you, doesn't mean I'm not thinking of you or loving you from afar, but it does leave a lot of room for catching up.
For the last several days, even though we knew it was unlikely to ever happen, we all joked about Mom and David coming to live in California some day. A little wistful, a little hopeful. And yet, there's still a hell of a lot to be said for London; I can't really blame her for staying.
LHR -> JFK -> ATL -> SJU
One hot night in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with just enough time for almost 8 hours of sleep in a cheap but serviceable hotel before we had to get up for our flight the next morning, a quick little hop on one of these over a beautiful little island to another beautiful little island called St. Croix.
SJU -> STX
We stepped out onto the tarmac and headed toward an airport that seemed to have no walls, nor any need of them. shotcable's brother came to pick us up before we managed to procure free rum from the tourist agency near the baggage carousels. He wasn't wearing four hats, but he did look remarkably like shotcable considering how different their features are. (I wonder now if other people see this kind of similarity between my sister and me, or between me and each of my parents.) Instead of the turkey we made for Christmas dinner, we all (two of our non-LJ housemates were there, too, and shotcable's immediate family) colluded to roast a small pig on a spit in the backyard. (Photo omitted for the sake of the vegans and vegetarians.) Instead of long underwear, hats, and scarves, we wore bathing suits with tees and sandals, and I got to make good use of my new Utilikilt as a simple and well-ventilated piece of clothing. There were wild chickens and roosters, beaches, turquoise waters we cut through in kayaks or explored while snorkeling or SCUBA diving.
Lots of beer to cut the heat, Cruzan rum in the evenings, quick showers, conch, fresh lobster, smoked salmon, escargot, wine sniffing, slow parades, cool tile beneath our feet, waves rolling in upon the shore, and sunshine almost every day.
Add a touch of humidity, plenty of salt water and a few biting bugs and after 6 or 7 days you've got tanned bodies, lightened hair, a history of games outside on the patio and a few itches and abrasions to remind you of the whirlwind of adventures. Catching sunrise at Point Udall, the Eastern-most tip of the US (not counting the Western bits that slide over into east). Parrot fish, barracudas, angelfish, scorpion fish, trunk fish. Blue skies, white clouds, every so often a slight threat of rain. Learning to use new gear, hiking to the top of Buck Island, winding through the reef trail. Flippers, masks, sunscreen. The smell of Off in the evenings, tropical scented. More sunscreen, borrowed hats. The first panic of breathing while underwater. The second panic of accidentally inhaling a mouthful of sea water. Then all that's left is sea urchins, arrow crabs, fire coral.
Anchors abandoned at the bottom of the sea, old bits of long-forgotten constructions, a sting ray that disappears, a giant bowl made out of coral, schools of fish moving here and there. It's silent, and time is measured only in oxygen or fatigue. There's pointing, a limited field of view, a small vocabulary of signs.
On top of the water, we fight against waves and current and sometimes each other to move in a straight line, or a zig-zag path to stay above the sandy bottom instead of bottoming out on the coral. You can feel the sun beating down, the spray of the water, but never realize the speed with which you are moving until it's your turn to be dragged: to hold onto the line on the aft end of the kayak and float along, feeling the water flowing around you, the current pulling gently in another direction, the eddies in the flow around your hips and legs. Sometimes there are sea turtles who stop to look at you as you stop to look at them, or flying fish on the horizon. Near the island we see pelicans diving for their food. We scan the water for the buoys that guide us safely over the reefs, slide out of the kayaks and into the cool water, encourage and guide the brave swimmers, are swept to and fro by the water as we put the kayaks out to sea or bring them back in again.
Outside of the water was a legal BAC of up to .24 for driving on the left side of the road (in American cars) (not that we partook of that particular opportunity), windy streets, beer-drinking pigs, a shot of moonshine, lunch at Turtles Deli, the rainforest, the largest oil refinery in the Western hemisphere lit up at night like a cityscape from Bladerunner, buying 12 bottles of rum to take home, and finally, sitting next to the pilot on the first leg of the way home with a short delay for more fuel during which he explained what each of the controls and dials did and signified. Soon, over that beautiful little island (Vieques), he tells me about the wonderful, empty beaches and gives me a magazine where I read about the wild horses that live there, roaming free on the sparsely-populated island.
STX -> SJU -> ATL -> SFO
Like time underwater, time spent on planes seems to not count as part of real life, to not move like real time. It's another world, a small world with a limited field of view, a limited vocabulary, limited communication. Distance is measured by flight time and fuel levels. Airports are surreal, with vending machines that dispense iPods and MyVues with a swipe of a credit card. By the end of our journey, each one is familiar and we find ourselves at gates we've been to before, traveling walkways we've traveled previously, recognizing shops and places to eat. It's as if time stands still here, as if life was on pause, waiting for us to come home before it moved on.