Departing the Pattern
I’m three weeks into a six-week trip. 32 hours of flying time so far.
Writing to you from Gate 4 of Kochi airport. Waiting.
Waiting for flight 6E6922 to Bengaluru.
Waiting to clear the tangled strands of words clogging a drain in my mind. The same way my hair clogs the drain in my shower. Some water gets through, but the experience is not optimal. You’ve got to clear it out or pay the price for a plumber. I don’t have that kind of mental cash.
On the long flight to Tokyo, I sat in the economy cabin with a row of three seats to myself. I sprawled across them for a nap. I paid $6 USD for seat 2A from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh and landed another row to myself. Then, on the flight to Kochi, same situation. I marvel at the luck.
Still, my body aches. I’m visiting four countries and multiple climates in six weeks’ time with only a carry-on and a backpack. Some clothes and toiletries. And two small pillows. Two. They take up the whole backpack. Because I'm 40 and the right pillows have become essential travel companions.
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The venture capital firm I work for hosts the team for an “onsite” a few days each quarter. This time, it was in Tokyo. The catalyst for this journey. We’re a team of 12, we live in various locations around the US, we work remotely. The onsites provide time for us to connect. To have fun.
Before Tokyo, I traveled to the south of the archipelago that is Japan and met up with my coworker, Brett. This was our third trip together. We’re a good pair. Brett is a planner, and I’m happy to show up with a toothbrush and my laptop and go with the flow.
Brett prepared in advance with an impressive level of research and detail. It's nice to have a full itinerary planned. No need to think about what to do or how to do it. Turns out I'll wander happily behind whoever is leading me. I was able to be present in the experiences without the burden of figuring out the next bus to take, the next bed to sleep in, the next sight to see. A nice departure from my modus operandi.
I’ve traveled to unfamiliar destinations enough to know that I derive a great sense of pride, or something, from figuring it all out. I plan enough to know where I'm landing, where I'm sleeping (maybe), and a few places I'd like to eat. The rest a surprise.
Even when many aspects of life might have been easier if I had stayed put, I’ve traveled. Cultural enrichment!
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I spent May-August this year in Berkeley, California. I stayed in a beautiful house in a picturesque neighborhood. And I did almost nothing in the Bay Area despite the long list of wonders it offers. A few quick trips to Point Reyes Station. Plenty of visits to the local library. Lots of sleep. Time with Toby while he visited in June and July. A twice-daily 30-minute walk with Oreo the dog. Peaceful.
While there, I quit Instagram. I stopped scrolling and posting photos and snippets from daily life. I moved on immediately and without a second thought. Dead to me. I even surprised myself, considering I spent a rather decent amount of time on the app for almost a decade.
The California trip felt different than all the others before it. So does this one.
Something’s shifted. I thought travel might be less interesting without an audience to share it with. Every trip I’ve taken has included sharing photos and stories through social media with friends and family. An online scrapbook. Which I loved.
So, I decided I would share this trip this way.
One problem.
I can’t seem to sum it up or write it down. I’ve tried at least a dozen times in the past three weeks. Start, stop, edit, erase.
The problem isn’t that everything is so new and interesting. The problem is that it's not.
Two countries I have never been to before. Each on the opposite end of whatever spectrum countries are on. Japan organized. India chaotic. Japan quiet. India loud. Japan industrial. India domestic. Etc.
I feel like I’ve seen it all before. Somehow Japan and India feel just like home. Familiar, not much to tell.
How can this be? Has every city become, to me, just another city with ugly skyscrapers and too much noise? Has every island become just another island; smaller, simpler, slower, with plenty of water’s edge to walk along?
Why am I not mouth agape at every new sight, taking photos and excitedly sharing them? Why won’t the words flow? I don’t have answers, only suspicions.
I suspect this has to do with a childhood spent in rural Ohio and a subsequent twenty-plus years of interest in anywhere that isn’t there. Maybe, finally, I am less interested in where I’m going and more interested in where I came from?
I suspect, too, that this shift is a result of five years of analysis. Traveling inward through some of the innumerable island shores and city coffee houses in my own psyche. Traveling through pain and darkness. Into the depths that grief has to offer. Knowing the peace available only after grief has retreated, no doubt temporarily, to low tide.
Maybe this summer in Berkeley and these past few weeks in Japan and India have catapulted me face-to-face with a simple yet unignorable conclusion: that the most important things to be understood and traveled into are not places, but people.
I suspect I have been unable to write down and share my experiences on this trip because there are other places I long to travel to that I have not been to before. Not really.
To the planets of other people’s minds.
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Probably, and for many years, traveling aided my delusion that I could collect a list of states and countries I have been to and prove who I was, or who I was not. Fearless, intelligent, open-minded, capable. The list goes on.
Turns out I am fearless, intelligent, open-minded, and capable. I am also fearful, stupid, set in my ways, and often debilitated. Duh.
As a young person, it never occurred to me that I had the right to pick out a life of my own. Instead, I waded through the muddy waters of adulthood, watching other people doing life in ways that seemed interesting, and I followed suit. I have spent years trying to figure it all out. The vastness of Earth provides endless opportunities to search for what I had yet to find in the only place it could be found.
But now I have a much better handle on what belies the endless searching. And I know where I want to visit.
So here I am. Very much enjoying India without much to say about India. Yet.
But. Now that I have unclogged this drain, I just might write soon about the actual trip.
In the meantime, you can see some photos from my journey here.
