Dreams, Moments, Travels
In the ongoing saga of pandemic isolation, today marks the moment when I’ve walked over 2,000 miles in circles around our neighborhood. Having such a glorious sunrise for the occasion created a sense of celebration. Walking over 4 million steps since last March needed to be equated to something, so I checked the handy-dandy online maps and saw that I’ve walked the equivalent of the distance from Phoenix, Arizona, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now, that feels like I’ve accomplished something.
Do you ever participate in national polls? I have and still do, but which ones will remain unknown, although it’s one of the largest agencies. Who it is isn’t the point, though; that I take the 10 to 45 minutes to fill them out is what’s important and I do answer as truthfully as possible. Recently, I completed three polls that asked about couples’ relationships, how I spend my time, and the impact of COVID-19 on various aspects of my life. The first one took about 45 minutes to complete, while the questionnaire about time spent took a complete 24-hour cycle to look precisely at how I spend a random day; in my case, they chose Saturday. Finally, yesterday, I filled out a poll about getting through the pandemic.
You might infer from the title of this blog post that there’s some relevance to it here and there. This is the amount of time Caroline and I have been self-isolating. I should qualify that self-isolating for us has meant a certain amount of inability to act spontaneously in any direction we might want to go, such as traveling. During the first weeks, the pandemic, while stressful, felt as though it was offering us the chance to camp out. Over time, I certainly felt moments of anxiousness in wanting to get out and go somewhere, but the actions of pandemic deniers quickly squashed those feelings, and I was just as quickly content again to be at home. As we approach a year of reduced activity, this recent poll had me assessing where we are in the scheme of things, and I think I need to admit that I’ll miss aspects of self-isolation when it comes to an end.
We’ve learned to enjoy waking up, taking walks, cooking at home, being at home together during working hours, not needing to drive somewhere literally every day, and not being bored because we are mostly at home. The first poll about our relationship dug into happiness and questioned if we are moving apart and looking forward to splitting up after the pandemic passes. I could easily answer that we are likely happier together now than ever before if that’s even possible. On Saturday, when I detailed each segment of the day, the survey made me focus on our routine: wake, snuggle, go for a walk, make breakfast, read, do a chore, go for a walk, make lunch, play at a hobby, read, go for a walk, make dinner, do dishes, go for a walk, watch stupid stuff, play at a hobby, read, snuggle, sleep. Finally, the third poll asked, “Are you doing more exercise, less, or about the same as before the pandemic?” Then it asked, “Are you eating healthier before, now, or about the same during the pandemic?” Another question was about sleep, “Are you sleeping better, worse, or about the same during the pandemic?” To all of them, I had to answer better.
If leaving the pandemic means we have to bolt out of bed, race out on a walk so we can try to wolf down some breakfast before jumping in the car to deal with the slog of driving in traffic to go to the office with a plastic container that will be microwaved for lunch before dealing with the traffic on the way home and finally cooking at 6:00 p.m., I can honestly say that this doesn’t sound remotely appealing.
Work still starts at 8:00 a.m. Monday through Friday and doesn’t end until between 5:00 and 6:30 p.m.; such is the life of an I.T. worker. Heck, it even intrudes into weekends, but the job pays well, and it is always challenging in good ways. While it’s winter and the days are shorter, we afford ourselves the luxury of waking at 5:30, sometimes 6:00 unless it’s the weekend and we feel lazy, and then we might sleep until 7:30. We have this flexibility as we can choose to walk 1, 2, or 3 miles in the morning, where before we had to contend with traffic and being fully ready for everything else in the day as there’d be no going home to grab what was forgotten or meeting up 2 hours later for another walk because we were short on time and only walked a mile before heading to the shower.
Meals are exquisite even when they are simple, as they are made fresh. We eat less because we no longer feel compelled to eat restaurant-sized portions, trying to avoid leftovers that too often end up in the bin. When Caroline takes a break from working at midday, her lunch is being brought to her, and she doesn’t have anything to clean. Instead of reading Reddit during her break or jumping back into work, we go out for a one-mile walk around our neighborhood. During the in-between moments, we are near one another and can share an exclamation of love or run over to offer the other one a hug.
This is how we’ve been living the past 318 days, and by now, this is our cozy routine. Besides the loss of spontaneity of being able to go sit in a coffee shop and write or head out for the weekend on an adventure, life is seriously great. The thing is, we needed this complete stop of the treadmill to force the change. By now, I no longer want to return to eating out the majority of our meals. I don’t want to feel compelled to be away from home as much as possible as though somehow being home is boring. I don’t want to be so busy that walking 5 miles a day is nearly impossible, and most importantly, I always want to know that a hug is nearby.
I’m holding my breath in anticipation that it’s a new day with an expectation I’ll turn blue and pass out. Today, the United States inaugurates a new president, which also means the news cycle will change unless it doesn’t. For the very same things, a segment of the media gave the outgoing president a pass on, they’ll switch on their righteous indignation that our new U.S. leader should be so lax in his commitment to do the right thing. After four years of telling audiences that their messiah figure was walking on water, they’ll ensure that the very same segment of our population knows that the new leadership is going down the path of destruction.
In four hours from when I first started writing this, the honeymoon that never began will be over. We are no longer the “United” States; we are simply a country of other people loaded into a catapult pointed at a massif, about to be splattered into the wall of propaganda. The clown act we are performing is tiresome, and I would simply like to turn the channel away from this slapstick folly of bad actors, but the truth is that I’m not really holding my breath; I’m breathing and thus still a witness to this cruel theater of the radically absurd.
This last year, Caroline read SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard to me as our audiobook in the car. With the pandemic curtailing most of our driving because she was working from home, we had to make efforts to get out and drive or bring the book into the house so she could read to me while we pretended to drive. Along the way, I would often think of the Roman Circus and its parallels with the media landscape we are trying to live with, but my sense has been that we are being thrown into the arena of mental warfare, like the Christians to the lions.
I come back to this later in the day with a new president and a return to the America I grew up in, one of diversity. I have no insight if anything will fundamentally change as I’ve grown cynical over my years of witnessing promises that have amounted to much about nothing. Celebrating a woman as vice president is great, but that it’s taken us this long is indicative of the glacial pace of our progress. The president that just left is evidence that just below the surface lies lingering hate and intolerance. I, for one, obviously do not have the patience to see my lifetime pass by with only incremental change having been gained, but then again, I grew up in the firestorm of a cultural revolution back in the 1970s.
Maybe this next bit of time on our journey will be another cultural revolution, but one that captures the masses and not just the fringe. The mainstream of America is lost in the morass of mediocrity, afraid of dramatic change. The comfort found in benign realities where banality and obedience to dogma are had is a complaisance that shelters people from needing to make changes, not systemic change alone but personal change.
I suppose I should explain my interpretation of just what change is. For me, change is the ability to go with the flow of what we don’t know as it comes to light. From Korean popstars singing about Gangnam style, stupid cat memes, immigrant neighbors, trying foods we’ve never had before, or wearing a mask until everyone is safe from needing to die prematurely due to an ugly virus. If your job disappears, you might have to retrain, but you should have been expanding your skillset the entire time, as who knows how markets evolve? Anticipate that the status quo is elusive at best and is subject to be different tomorrow than it was today.
Twenty-seven years married and 32 years together, we are still holding hands. We’d like to still be holding hands 20 years from now and maybe even a bit longer than that, but time being what it is, we also find that we need to discuss the point on the horizon where we’ll be denied the other’s hand. Our ultimate demise is a difficult subject to tackle, as even speaking of it could hasten its arrival. Silly, these archaic superstitions, but as much as we desire to consider ourselves reasonable, we still run afoul of such illogical sentiments. Even with this knowledge, we push out the day further and further certain we will soon address things and finally put that looming issue behind us. Until then, we live in the delight of being together and happy for so long.
Another subject with a due date in the future is our retirement, and regarding this, we not only talk but make plenty of plans. I suppose saving money is a lot easier than caring for a will. At the top of our list as we move closer to retirement is to get ourselves back into Europe. We’ve looked at our options here in the United States and for a long time considered Oregon as a sure bet, but subsequent visits to Europe proved to us that we could have much cheaper rent over there with far better public transportation along with proximity to international airports, a wide variety of foodstuffs, and cultural amenities that far exceed what we’d be able to travel to in the U.S. on a limited budget.
So, what do retirement and death have to do with celebrating an anniversary? This is one more of the many days we consider our future and note the cycling of another year shared in love. As we reflect on the incredible nature of having spent so many moments of the previous years side-by-side, we dream of what the next ones can have in store for us. We are certain, as certain as fickle humans can be, that we’ll be spending the rest of our lives together, and with that sense of surety, we want to best organize our limited time remaining. The sooner we can reach retirement, the better. We find that we are well suited to not needing a career to entertain ourselves and would rather read, create, weave, play, cook, explore, and discover things we don’t know. To honor those aspects of our personalities, we need the time to get out and walk, walk for days across the landscape. We need time to revel in our fortunate lives that brought us into contact with one another, and that means we need to spend even more time together.
By the way, while I was writing this, Caroline came up behind me and said she thought we’d posted a similar photo in the past. I was already ahead of her and had this link from 2005 ready to share.
Fresh from Canadian, Texas, this burlap bag containing over 10 pounds (4.5kg) of ribeye steaks just arrived at our front door. Steak season is a short one only running from October 15th through December 31st. Our first order of six steaks arrived back in October and I grilled our first 21-ounce (0.6kg) slab of cow b during our road trip up to Oregon in November. Since then, two more steaks have joined their brethren in the afterlife. It must have been their ghosts talking to me because at the last minute on the 31st of December, while most people were considering what level of inebriation they’d attempt to forget 2020 with, I sprung into action, deftly pulling the trigger on my big steak purchase. Now our freezer glows brightly with the treasures of beef that are typically only enjoyed at the Cattle Exchange up in the Texas Panhandle.
So are these steaks really worth the expense? That’s hard to say as I’m inclined to romanticize things and these particular steaks are associated with one of the most spectacular 4th of July celebrations Caroline and I have ever enjoyed. Back in 2006, we booked ourselves into the Arrington Ranch BnB that was featured in the movie Castaway; dinner was had at the Cattle Exchange. This wasn’t my first time there; the year before, traveling cross country with my mother, she and I happened to stop in while passing through Canadian, Texas. Seeing a brochure about town, I decided after my amazing meal that Caroline and I would return, and that’s just what we did. It’s kind of sad to think we’ve not been back in the intervening 15 years, but at least we can order steaks from them for 10 weeks at the end of the year.
Tragically, I won’t be having a steak tonight as I’m in the middle of a 5-day fast. Come Tuesday though, I’m fantasizing about some chanterelles served up with a flame-broiled steak. By the way, I’m well aware of just how indulgently fortunate I am. Not a bite of one of these steaks is eaten without some profound gratitude that luxuries like these are able to be had. Rest assured, I feel the exact same way about the nearly dozen different dried Korean plants we’ve had delivered recently that will be accompanying our upcoming bibimbap.
What does existence mean in a pandemic? Aside from the obvious of staying alive and free of the virus, it feels like a long pause to me. Obviously, nothing really serious is paused at all unless you consider travel, restaurants, live music, and social gatherings to have particular relevance. The absence of those things does not shut down our minds, cancel our imaginations, or otherwise truly hinder our ability to create. We can use their temporary hibernation as an excuse for our inability to focus should we need a crutch to demonstrate to others why we are languishing if, in fact, we are. The truth is that this should be a tremendous opportunity to recharge our batteries, explore new inspirations, cultivate plans for the future, and refine our focus. But still, I feel like things are on pause, and maybe I know why.
I have been living in a dream. Since the late 1980’s, I’ve mostly done whatever I wanted and the older I’ve grown, the more fortunate things became. I tried bohemian hedonism in Europe for a good stretch until Caroline and I moved to the United States to try our hand at life as adults. Okay, that was a rocky trail, but along the way, we never slowed down our travels, exploration, or learning. The turn of the century brought an incredible focus on our own evolution as we ventured further into the mindscape as our own horizons grew expansively. A year did not go by that we failed to count our good fortune, pinching ourselves at the opportunities unfolding before us. We were well aware that we were living the proverbial dream.
When I stop to seriously evaluate my statement about being on a pause, I have to admit that it’s a bit hyperbolic. Caroline and I often wished to have more time together; that’s just what we’ve had this past year. Caroline claims to love my cooking; well, we’ve certainly had plenty of that. If I wanted to replenish our pantry or my personal bookshelf, there was no need to hold back; what I wanted I added. The only thing really on pause has been our travel plans, but then again, we did manage to venture out for a total of 31 days away from home during 2020. But still, something feels amiss, and that some aspects of life are on hold.
When it comes down to it, the best explanation I can muster is that some small part of the reoccurring dream from the past 30-odd years is that the relative certainty of explorable options is now clouded by uncertainty. I cannot count on making hotel reservations in the distant future, and I’m extremely reluctant to even consider booking a flight. Back in August, we ventured out for three days to Duncan, Arizona, which paved the way with some tiny bit of confidence that we could travel, even if only by car and with a ton of caution regarding how others were treating the pandemic. This opened the door to us working on plans to head up to Oregon in November. Now, we are in the earliest days of 2021 and vaccines are starting to be distributed; hope is returning.
So, while we still go forward, albeit in the void of what had been normal, it is time to rev up our dreams. First up for Caroline and me is the wish to return to Europe. Sure, we have some whitewater rafting on the docket for the summer, but our heart is really in the formidable history splayed across the European landscape. Neither Caroline nor I have been to Florence, Italy, and we’ve been reluctant to do so due to the overwhelmingly large crowds over the past years, but as Europe reopens its gates to international travel, we could be in the first wave before tourism numbers are catapulted back to where they’d been.
What might this next visit look like for us? After some quick study of a map, my first inclination is the following: land in Paris, France, and take a couple of nights to recover. Board a train and head down to Grenoble, it only takes 4 hours to get there, enjoy an overnight here. Up to Geneva, Switzerland, on a 2-hour train ride before catching a ferry the next day to Lausanne for a night. On the next day, we are back on the lake to Montreux. Then the big one, a 7-hour train ride over to Florence, Italy, where we will stay for 4 or 5 days. We’ve always wanted to visit the home of the Renaissance. After that, we’ll board a train for a 6-hour ride to Innsbruck, Austria, with a couple of days there in the Alps before the 6-hour journey to Frankfurt, Germany, to visit with family. If time allows, I just noticed that we would be close to Livorno while in Italy, and from there, it’s only about 4 hours via ferry to jump over to Corsica. That would be a nice trip, and while so many others would be great too, Florence is our main draw, but only if we could go while it’s quiet, so a winter visit is also not out of the question.
Of course, Europe may not be in the cards this year, so travel alternatives have to be considered; time to start exploring the map of America.