Traveler of Subdued Excitement

My home town of Bellingham, WA is called the city of subdued excitement. This describes my pre-trip musings because I'm busy doing more than planning a "return to my roots" trip. 

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I'm also care-giving for my 89 year old mother, sorting through belongings, figuring out what to ship to FL, shopping, planning, and fixing our daily meals, managing meds (pharmacists earn their pay), running stuff to the nearest Goodwill, bringing her to and from doctors and ER visits, managing her finances, Visiting Angels, eye drops, and planning a red carpet flight from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale for her doted over cat. 

I'm on another learning curve transferring important data/apps/books to my new tablet. I look at my mom's ancient typewriter and get nostalgic for the low-tech good old days! 

And I'm also catching up on my long overlooked health needs with multiple visits to the doctor, dentist, and optometrist (everything is ship shape for those taking notes). In between these tasks I'm mourning the loss of my wife, looking wistfully at all my artistic/literary projects on hold, and trying to get in a daily walk. Gabbing in this blog helps me clear my psychic decks.

All this to say, I don't have a lot of time to anticipate my trip to NYC. Isn't anticipation supposed to be part of the fun? I am a traveler of subdued excitement. When we hit Florida tarmac in nineteen days I'll sigh a big sigh of relief. Stay tuned. 

I like our Planet

Today I am struck by the immensity of this universe. In looking over NYC museum catalogs I'm in awe of human achievement. People invented pottery, sculpted marble, explored the planets, wrote great works of literature, created amazing machines, and painted masterpieces. It is beyond what any one person can fathom. From the vastness of space to the vastness of subatomic particles, history, the future, it is all rather intimidating. Makes one feel rather insignificant. And then one thinks about death, religion, faith, purpose, psychology, quantum mechanics, cosmology, astronomy, and a hand held device on which I doodle faces with electrons. This really is a cool planet! (My first blog post and drawing on my new Samsung tablet).

Why Travel?

People per square mile in my birth town of NY: 27,550.
People per square mile in my home town of Ferndale, WA: 95.

Population of Whatcom County, WA: 205,000. 
Foot traffic every day in Grand Central Station: 750,000.  

Rural values: silence, space, serenity, Growth Management Act, and neighborliness. I see deer on my daily walk and pause often to appreciate trees, fields, sky, and the Nooksack River. Loud motorcycles, diesel trucks, and blaring car stereos are intrusive. 

Urban values? I'll soon find out.

What prompts a ruralite to want temporarily to leave their small provincial town and see the big city? The same reason we change TV channels, download new songs, or shift our weight on a seat: variety. Sameness breeds boredom. My cat eats the same food every day and rarely laments the meaningless of life. She doesn't know the words existential angst. I however, need an occasional change.

Even Proverbs says, "The eyes of a person are never satisfied."

Why is this? What neurological fluke makes us (me) crave contrasts, juxtapositions, and change? I think everyone suffers to some degree from Attention Deficit Disorder. Even the best meal, movie, or musical number would drive us crazy if that were our steady diet.

Traveling also addresses the curious notion of adaptability. Residents in NYC might wonder how anyone could live without the noise, excitement, and stimulation of urban life. I'm curious to learn how people adapt to living congested lives. I wonder who I can ask. We'll see. 

Compensations for Lack of Travel

When a person does not travel much one must come up with other ways to entertain, stimulate, distract, learn, and enjoy life. 

For some it's food and cooking. These never had much appeal to me since I have no sense of smell and have an underdeveloped sense of taste. Therefore one of my compensations for lack of travel is collecting mouth feels. I can't judge food for its flavor so I judge it by its stringiness, density, bounce, creep, breaking point, crunchiness, chewiness, gumminess, lumpiness, rubberiness, springiness, slipperiness, smoothness, softness, wetness, juiciness, spreadability, spring back, and tackiness. I can't wait to experience the texture of food in Manhattan.

For others it's sports and exercise. These never had much appeal to me since I suffer from innumeracy. I don't have a head for numbers and my introduction to baseball was a neighbor kid who tried and failed to teach me a baseball statistics game called Strat-O-Matic. I also suffer from a deplorable lack of coordination. I was a dismal failure in pee-wee baseball, PE in school, and anything that required exertion. My hobbies were sedentary and cerebral. I can't wait to stand in silent reverence before the world's greatest art (MET & MOMA), the world's greatest archaeological discoveries (Museum of Natural History), the world's greatest invitation ("Give me your tired your poor your huddled masses"), and the world's greatest hospital (Staten Island General, the place of my complicated yet successful birth).

For others it's building successful businesses, amassing large portfolios, and playing the stock market. These folks would certainly visit Wall Street during a trip to NYC but alas, I have zero interest in doing so. My lifelong ambivalence about money was influenced by the early issues of The Mother Earth News, the counter culture ideals of simplicity and downward mobility, and the Christian virtues of contentment and frugality. I can't wait to pay homage to the United Nations, an organization whose goal, World Peace and Justice, resonates with me more than Macy's, SAKS, and Bloomingdales.  

My dad's 1963 beaver pelts
curing on our patio

And for others like my dad who spent more time in the woods than in airports, his compensation was trail blazing, hunting, fishing, clamming, and trapping. Growing up I heard tales of clams pulled off the shore of Staten Island and sold to the Campbell's Soup Company, muskrat pelts trapped on Staten Island wetlands and sold in the garment district in NYC, and a home made diving bell with hand pump he and his buddies used to walk on the ocean floor (more about this later). I did not inherit his Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, or Captain Nemo genes. Instead, I got into theology and philosophy and spent my adult years as a rural parson in a dinky town in the Pacific Northwest. I can't wait to expose my faith to the world's greatest city and see how it holds up. 

Pre-Trip Musings

While walking today I met a neighbor on the next block who asked, "Hey, I haven't seen your wife in ages. How is she?" I had to break the news to him that she passed away 7 weeks ago. While hoofing around Manhattan I will not be asked such questions.

Perusing websites for visitors to New York gives me the distinct impression tourists are not welcome. New Yorkers posted rules such as, "Do not stop to look up at the tall buildings; we're trying to get from point A to point B so don't slow us down." "Do not wear sneakers; only tourists and dorks wear sneakers." "Do not under any circumstances take pictures of, or walk up to, any famous people you happen to see." Nuts. I was hoping to accost Woody Allen while wearing my Nikes between gawks of sky scrapers.

A book about travel in New York suggested I ride the bus rather than the subway since I won't see much of the city when underground.

My mother told me about seeing this 1853 painting by Ingres at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during one of her trips back east in the '80's. She was so enthralled by it she purchased a small copy to hang on her wall. The MET will be my primary destination (along with MOMA, Museum of Natural History, Algonquin Hotel where Perelman, Parker, Benchley and Ross cracked wise, Statue of Liberty, Harlem, Birdland, The Carlyle where Woody plays clarinet, Greenwich Village, the offices of the New Yorker, take a tour of the NY Harbor where my maritime dad used to work on tugboats, and my old neighborhood on Staten Island).

I recently watched Anything Else by Woody Allen wherein a character accidentally left a manuscript on a taxi. Loosing anything on a taxi would be a nightmare for this northwestern boy who has never ridden in a NYC taxi. 

From time to time I day dream about my chances of surviving in The Big Apple if, for some odd reason, I was abandoned there with nothing but a pencil. No cash, no credit card, just a pencil. And my wits. In this fantasy I play the "bigger and better" game where I draw a caricature in a bar on a napkin and trade it up for drawing paper. Then I leverage drawings on real paper for a Design Marker LLF 225 and glossy paper. Then I really crank 'em out at $10 per nose. I eat and sleep in a Gospel Mission. I keep this up for a number of weeks (finding the touristy places to snag the impulse buyers) and stash my cash in my socks while frequenting second hand clothing stores, cheapo diners, and soup kitchens. This madcap frenzy continues until I can rent my own room. Once my hygiene and wardrobe needs are met, I draw 10-15 magazine gag cartoons and make the rounds to the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Colliers, and the New Yorker hawking drawings on "look day" to the cartoon editors (in my day dream it's still the 50's, the golden era for gag cartoonists). At the same time I build relationships with attorneys, pastors and local therapists (I'm still working out these details) who learn of my knack for conflict mediation and they put me to work (between caricature gigs) helping parties in conflict reach negotiated settlements. This generates enough income allowing me to upgrade to Park Avenue. All the while I'm keeping a journal in the S. J. Perelman vein with drawings in a Hirschfeld style and I call my book STATEN ISLAND HA! which sells like hotcakes and I get invited to the Algonquin Round Table to schmooze with Dorothy Parker, et al. and I, the amateur theologian, sneak in a couple of witty existential zingers that keep the crowd in stitches and Martinis squirt out Harold Ross's nose. This probably isn't going to happen on this trip, but I do hope to visit the Algonquin and day dream.

The Plot

"In an essay, the track of a person's thoughts struggling to achieve 

some understanding of a problem is the plot, is the adventure." 

Michel de Montaigne.

During this trip I hope to gain greater understanding of several problems:

1. The meaning of life (in general).
2. The meaning of my life (specifically).
3. Pondering the great what if: "What if my dad hadn't uprooted our east coast family of four when I was seven and drove us to the west coast (Bellevue, WA to be precise)?"
4. How should I live, how should I invest my remaining days as a widower (my dear wife of 36 years passed away 7 weeks ago).
5. Navigating another major life transition: moving my 89 year old mother to Florida (to live near my sister).
6. Testing the philosophy of life I've embraced for 40 years, namely Christianity. 

A Travel Memoir

I'm going to visit New York in one month. I was born there 61 years ago and have lived in Washington State since I was 7. It is time to revisit the place of my birth. This blog will be a memoir of my trip.

Still to do: 

buy tablet with keyboard so I can blog as I go.
pack my sketch book and fountain pens so I can doodle as I go.
figure out how to get there, where to stay, and what my budget is.