I am writing this post in Richmond, Virginia. I have been here for a week in order to help my sister take care of her husband – he has just had a liver transplant and is having an amazing recovery.
I have traveled more in the past year than at any other time in my life. The cities list reads as follows: Oslo, Copenhagen, Florence, Volda, Copenhagen, Volda, Stockholm, Lillehammer, New Haven, Richmond, Philadelphia, Princeton, Nags Head, and Richmond, again. I have only listed places I spent two or more nights and I may be forgetting someplace.
It has been a brilliant year. One of the side effects of all this travel is an odd sense of dislocation. No longer here or there, but somewhere in between. It’s almost like I could settle down anywhere I stopped along the way. My continuity has been continually broken – just when I get into a schedule and a rhythm – work, research, exercise, daily life – I am uprooted by car, train, plane, boat or bus. I have an eight-hour train ride back to New Haven tomorrow. I generally use this time to think, read, write, and reflect. Eight hours “by myself” – a rare thing, indeed. I will savor the time.
Distance gives an interesting perspective to your life. Though, I think I have had enough perspective and distance for a while and I long for a good six months or so without travel. I dream of an unbroken daily and weekly schedule – which, hopefully, will settle in at the end of this month when classes resume.
Wake, shower, coffee, breakfast, school/work, dinner, family, sleep and repeat. Mmmmm, it sounds lovely.
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