Time of the Season

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” ~Oscar Wilde

“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Life…

When we’re young, it stretches out before us almost to eternity. But the clock ticks on.

At ten years old, thirty looks ancient. At twenty, it pushes back to forty; that’s old to us… then forty to sixty and on. As we age, we slide that particular benchmark farther away from our current age because we realize it’s all relative. It’s something we learn along the way in life. We also learn about context and how that plays a larger role in how happy we are or what we become…or fail to become.

As we get older, we often look for things to make our lives better and more meaningful. We prefer a simple formula—a shortcut, an easy recipe; five minutes to a German chocolate cake that feeds a dozen people, just pressing a button to get instant results. We buy cookbooks that support the latest diet fad because we want quick results. We go for the seven-minute workout, pushing a high-burn regimen into the shortest possible time. That’s all good and can work to make select improvements in our lives.

But we want the big picture, widescreen, high-definition life we dreamed of when we were young. And maybe deep inside, we still want this big, colorful life, no matter how old we are.

Unfortunately, there is no seven-minute workout for life, no quick, easy-bake solution.

No simple formula for life.

Life has become more complex and runs faster than ever before, not just for adults but all of society. That means that we need to be purposeful more than ever by consciously planning our lives to include the experiences that give us the most joy.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Life is about form and substance, and in a figurative sense, it is performance art. A life that makes us happy and content can be quantified logically but must be orchestrated and choreographed.

I decided early on in life (and admittedly it was a subconscious one at first) to experience new things, new people and cultures far different than I’d known growing up and make travel a focal point. It led me to an unexpected life-changing choice. Instead of attending the University of Arkansas after high school (I had been accepted, enrolled, and had just returned from Freshman Orientation), I enlisted in the US Navy (and chose sea duty for my first orders).

After my four years in the Navy, I worked to create opportunities for travel in my business and professional career and have been successful in doing so. And, of course, there’s personal travel with my wife and children... a lot of it over 41+ years of marriage.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.” ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

A scene.

A place.

A perfect moment that you felt strongly about deep inside. And it filled you with wonder at how beautiful our world is, how vast its history is, how unique people and places are, and how special it is to be in that moment... in that place.

Some of those places and moments from my experience:

Gibraltar, as I watched the sun ease down, day turn to night, and the moon rise from my hotel room balconies (one faced the straits and Atlantic and the other the Mediterranean).  I thought of all the ships that had transited the straits as I had just done for the third time and felt a sense of appreciation for the history of that unique geographic feature in our world.

Taormina, Sicily, when Etna started to blow ash into a bright cerulean sky as I sat at a seaside cafe drinking wine and eating cheese. Seeing what Virgil described  in the Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BCE), one of Etna’s eruptions:

A spreading bay is there, impregnable
To all invading storms; and Aetna’s throat
With roar of frightful ruin thunders nigh.
Now to the realm of light it lifts a cloud
Of pitch-black, whirling smoke, and fiery dust,
Shooting out globes of flame, with monster tongues
That lick the stars; now huge crags of itself,
Out of the bowels of the mountain torn,
Its maw disgorges, while the molten rock
Rolls screaming skyward; from the nether deep
The fathomless abyss makes ebb and flow.

Stonehenge, on a crystal clear English day—the gray of the stones—the green grass and azure sky. Standing in front of what was formerly just an image to me (albeit an iconic one)... a picture in a magazine or a place seen on TV in a documentary. On-site, in-person, it’s so much more powerful and impressive as I stood in the sun, felt the wind, saw the size of the worn Sarsen stones, and wondered at the people who erected them around 3100 BC, over 5,000 years ago.

With a French diplomat’s lovely daughter in Tunis and at Carthage, I watched from within the ruins as the sun set and the slanting rays turned it into a place of shadows. As the columns’ shade grew, extending like pointing fingers, the crumbling walls cast grimaces of black, jagged, broken teeth stretching across the ground. The wind sighed through the ruins, giving them a voice in the twilight.

Nature’s sculptures and canvas: the red rocks/scenery around Sedona, Arizona; the south and north parts of the Grand Canyon (especially the less frequented north rim); and Zion National Park in southern Utah. Moab, The Arches, Canyonland, and Dead Horse Point in eastern Utah. Monument Valley… Such splendor wrought by wind and water on a scale difficult to comprehend unless you’ve stood at the edge, or among the rocks, arroyos, and heights to see and feel them for yourself.

Places like Montezuma’s Castle near Camp Verde, Arizona, and the cliff dwellings in different areas in the American Southwest. The Balah Fort (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) just west of Nizwa in Oman and other older structures in the region believed to predate Islam. As I stood before them, the questions ran through my mind on what it was like to live there—in those times—in their way.

Washington DC (over a dozen times over 22+ years): A breakfast meeting in the Capitol and the many man-made memorials to Americans and their accomplishments. Young on the scale of time but just as moving to me as a city of antiquity. The Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian... the National Air & Space Museum... Arlington Cemetery, the Vietnam, Korean, and World War II Veterans memorials. Tales of and tributes to the men and women of our nation who accomplished great things and did their duty at a high cost. They often carried burdens so heavy—so very, very heavy—yet shouldered the load and met their responsibility to the nation and those with whom they served. The museums and National Gallery… all favorites.

San Francisco. Chinatown shopping, Pier 39 breakfast at Boudin’s (the sourdough!), Fisherman’s Wharf and dinner one foggy evening at the iconic Cliff House restaurant (sadly now out of business but there is a promise of a new restaurant on the site), perched on the headland above Ocean Beach. From our table, an unobstructed view of the rugged coastline, the pounding surf, the vast expanse of the ocean beneath the shreds and wads of fog, and the Seal Rocks formations just offshore

New York City, several times over 45 years. The first in February 1979, where I enjoyed Saturday Night Live (with Kate Jackson as the guest house), seeing all the original cast members. More recently, I was invited to the Page One news meeting at The New York Times in midtown Manhattan, where, in my brief introduction, I mentioned that the first time I’d read the Times was in the American embassy in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1981. That day, I saw some of the building and their operations. Seeing it in workday real-time was great, but there’s some wonderful history there, too, especially in their newspaper morgue in the sub-basement of the nearby old Herald-Tribune building.

‘Three levels below ground, in a nondescript building beside The New York Times’s headquarters--and hardly a stone’s throw from Times Square, one of the most frenetic intersections on the planet--lies an unexpected and strangely quiet repository.’ –Stephen Hiltner, The New York Times

After the door was unlocked, I entered a wonderfully wild paper and steel warren. A not always orderly space of rows upon rows, racks upon racks, old-heavy-thick-steel filing cabinets (the kind they have not made in decades), and stacks of storage boxes. Jeff Roth, the caretaker/archivist, locked the door behind us. Then I was introduced to Darcy Eveleigh, a New York Times photo editor and the creator and editor of The Lively Morgue (a Tumbler site for the morgue’s historical photos) and author of ‘UNSEEN - Unpublished Black History from The New York Times Photo Archives.’

Just past Darcy’s desk was one of those steel cabinets I mentioned above. This one had a security bar down its length that closed with a padlock. The label, affixed with tape peeling at the edges, read ADVANCED OBITS: the repository for the nearly 1,800 obituaries of the still-living notable and notorious, whose death would (or could) be deemed newsworthy.

I was surrounded by chronicled events—millions of articles and photos—from the 1870s to the 21st century... and standing next to a cabinet that contained death notices of people who had yet to die. I was there with ‘what was’...  in ‘what is’... and next to ‘what will be.’

Being both a writer and a history buff, it was one of the most fascinating places I’ve visited.

Around the world, in other places, too, I’ve experienced: Six Atlantic crossings, London... Mombasa, Kenya... Barcelona... Cadiz... Cartagena... Naples... Rome... La Spezia, Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman... the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, four Suez Canal transits, Picasso’s birth home in Malaga, Hemingway’s home in Key West, other moments and events, cities, and locales, large and small, in the US and abroad. Some known by many... many known by just a relative few. So many sights and experiences that profoundly touched me.

People and cultures, some lost in antiquity, and the places that remain where you can stand, and sometimes, if the moment is right and you’re receptive, you can feel it—feel the world. A tingle through the soles of your feet, in your bones, dances up your spine. The sound of laughter, all the same, no matter the language, the taste of the food and drink, a scent on the wind—perhaps a trace memory or some buried part of the subconscious—resonates and triggers feeling and emotion.

Our world is alive.

So much beauty and meaning in our world if we let it into our soul so we can feel it. Whether big or small, it is those moments when we feel alive.

My life experiences help me with my writing, which—as a profession—has created opportunities to visit more eras (in my writing) and places, some familiar, some unforeseen and never before visited. And with my stories and vignettes, I get to invite my readers to join me. I hope you’ll come along.