It’s about 6:40 AM and I am looking out from the 10th floor window at a world lit only by the south-bound headlights of a densely packed freeway.
I am suited up and ready to go to work.
I’ve been in this hotel more times than I can count over the last decade. A decade is a long time you know.
When I pull up to this is the hotel, I feel like I’m at home.
The bellman always calls me by name when I arrive. I’m a sucker for that.
The restaurant is magnificent. They make the best food in the area. I do wish they still served that Ahi Salad that I have been know to eat for both lunch and dinner.
The beds here are amazingly comfortable.
My bags are packed and now it’s time to go over to the concierge lounge and have breakfast. I am sad that I may not come back to this hotel ever again.
Decisions are forcing a change in direction. That change results in some good things happening at the cost of other good things. Although I am indifferent to most the changes, I will miss this place.
I regret that in 10 years, I have never gotten to the hotel gym or the pool/jacuzzi. I brought my workout clothes and my bathing suit this trip and as it always happens, I just ran out of time.
So here it begins, the big journey.
The first leg is a bit if a cheat. I am flying from Orange County to San Francisco. From there, I fly to JFK for a half-day layover.
I could have flown out of LAX to get to JFK, but I i) hate LAX and ii) was not having my ladies drive to LA and back on a Friday night.
I could have flown into Newark directly as I usually do, but then I would have wasted time getting to Long Island. This semi-circuitous route to JFK gets me 12 hours on the island and maximum face time with my dad.
I walked home from work today through a mostly-empty park. I was struck by the peacefulness and simplicity of the lake. That peace was disrupted a bit later as a couple drove up the isolated road. The windows of their minivan were closed but the ugliness of their screaming spilled out all over the neighborhood.
The driver slowed as he approached a stop sign. The female in the car had her door open, presumably to get out of the passenger seat once the minivan stopped.
With a big “WELL FUCK YOU” the driver make a right-hand turn from the center lane and they sped out of sight, obscenities blasting.
Where there are minivans, there are probably kids. I had this feeling of sadness for that couple. I thought about calling the police, but I know what a waste of time it would be.
I felt grateful that what I witnessed wasn’t anything like my life.
Today marks 20 years since I married my wife. My days are quiet and boring. There is no screaming there’s no crazy driving there’s no public scenes, no guns, drugs, police, hospitals or psychiatric holds. All THOSE people are dead; they burned themselves out completely decades ago.
There’s just quiet now.
Don’t under-estimate the power of quiet. Never underestimate the value of peaceful. You can’t buy peaceful when you don’t have it.
I rode my bike to today for the first time in a what seems like forever.
Back in the saddle again
Last summer, my bike was the unfortunate victim of my busy life. If you read my post, A Day in the Life you may recall that I keep a pair of black dress shoes at my desk so that when I ride to work, I can change from my riding boots to dress shoes. Stuck between busy and hating to go shopping, I never replaced those work shoes when the leather wore out last spring. My bike was then relinquished to only coming out on casual Fridays.
Bikes are made for riding, more than once a week and more than 2 miles to and from work. Mechanical problems started setting in, including the old battery dying. Even though it was on a battery charger all week, it wouldn’t keep a charge. I had to push start it a few times last summer and after it died in the middle of the street late last summer, I got frustrated and decided to park the bike until I time magically freed itself up.
I only needed to go out, jack up the bike and replace the battery with a new one, but I never made time. Maybe I just didn’t want to. Eventually, Like the guy in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I gave in and had my neighbor trailer the bike down to my mechanic. I disappointed myself in that I didn’t make time to take care of something that so enriches my life.
When I picked up the bike at the shop, the curmudgeonly mechanic had a few words for me. He told me that he had a conversation with my bike and that it wanted to be taken on long rides. I acknowledged that I understood and that I would take care of it. I didn’t tell him that I would soon be on the road again, but in an airplane.
It felt good to be riding again. I took the long way to work in the morning and again after lunch. I missed being undistracted and alone with my thoughts. I remembered how riding shakes up my creative juices and fills my spirit up. I feel like I have gotten a dimension of my life back that I abandoned in the garage.
I realized that there was this cascade of seemingly unrelated events: shoes wore out lead to the bike breaking down, lead to a loss of creativity which lead to a low-level of dissatisfaction with several aspects of life. All of which started with me being just too busy. It brought a new take to the Socratic warning: “Beware of the barrenness of a busy Life.”
For now I just need to find a second pair of black shoes to keep at work. Maybe when I get back from my travels?
Betwixt and between the first and second dinner seatings, the atrium, the elevators and the stairs of the Disney Fantasy are packed with people in formal dress seeking the creation of mementos.
Families huddle together in one of several lines, waiting for professional portraits.
A very little boy wearing a tuxedo face-plants, but immediately bounces up unharmed.
Two singers by the staircase perform a Marvin Gaye classic accompanied by a Mac.
At the top of the staircase, after a very long wait, a Chinese family delight in taking a picture with Captain Mickey.
Servers hand out free wine, mojitos, and juice.
Before mom can snap the shutter, one of her two handsome and carefully-posed boys bolts towards Aladdin, who has just arrived on the scene.
A teenage girl is looking for wi-fi in the middle of the ocean.
A Romanian drink server claps his hands to the music as he heads backstage to reload his empty tray.
A middle-aged couple disagree about buying pictures.
The lady who was wearing huge sunglasses when she fell asleep in the Caribbean sun turns from the front desk and I force down a chuckle after the word “raccoon” came to mind.
A man in a gold-buttoned blazer walks by holding a glass of Shiraz by the base of glass.
An older couple somehow manage to take a beautiful picture together in front of the busy staircase.
A tall and husky corn-fed family of six walk by with a swagger and presence reminiscent of that scene from “The Right Stuff“.
An adorable 5-year-old princess poses in front of a paintings of Sleeping Beauties Castle.
A guy in a monkey suit watches people, jots notes and takes pictures all the while his stomach rumbles for dinner.
Sleep was abbreviated by a recurring dream. The clock read 5am and as I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon I rolled out of bed. I sat on the couch for a while thinking. After failing to find any deep meaning in this incarnation of the dream, I set it aside.
Bird songs rang through the living room windows drawing me into the chilly early morning air of my back yard. I took my seat my skychair and listened to the birds open for the morning sun. It was both peaceful and simple.
It felt good to sit and do nothing for a long while. I sent a short piece of morning video to my sister in London and then later Facetimed with my dad in New York.
My father and I chatted about the events in Boston. After we hung up, I thought about the polarity of opinions about whether the bomber should be read his Miranda rights or not. I found the matter to be much adu about nothing and like my dream, I put it aside.
As the sun moved higher in the sky, my feet started to warmup. It was good to feel the chill being driven out. If only it were always that easy. Eventually, I started to feel like I might need sunscreen.
After I uploaded the video of the sunrise, Youtube presented me of another video called Daybreak. This one referenced the song by Barry Manilow. I smiled as the feelings associated with this late 70′s old feel-good song washed over me and I felt inclined to include it in this post. In case your don’t remember, the chorus goes:
Yes, and it’s daybreak
If you wanna believe, it can be daybreak
Ain’t no time to grieve
Said it’s daybreak, if you’ll only believe
And let it shine, shine, shine
All around the world (let’s sing, sing it to the world)
C’mon and let it shine, shine, shine
All around the world
Eventually, the real world caught up to me. Laura came outside to tell me it was 8:19am and remind me that I had to be out the door at 8:30am. Time to go.
On this second day of the cruise aboard the Disney Fantasy, we were scheduled to have Cuba on the port side of the ship for most of the afternoon. I went a bit geeky.
At 11am, I went to the front desk to ask them what time we would be closest to Havana. The best they could do was to tell me what time we would see the island.
As the day progressed, I kept checking and eventually, there it was, veiled behind the low clouds, Cuba. That island where in the 1950s TV’s Ricky Ricardo took Lucy and in movies, Sky Masterson took Miss Sarah Brown.
It is that island the US State Department says we Americans cannot go without special permission. It is that island of Fidel, Raul and Guantanimo Bay.
I made a special point to get The Child and explain to her the significance of this island. The stories of the Bay of Pigs and the nuclear arms crisis of John Kennedy were met with maximum “I don’t care” face that a teenager is capable. I dismissed The Child and let her go back to having fun.
I wanted a momento, something to prove that I was in this place. So like that geeky, techo, runner nerd that I am, I rushed down to my cabin and got my Garmin (yes, I brought my Garmin on a cruise, what of it?). I let the satellites mark the position of The Disney Fantasy and I let that be my souvenir of my time near Cuba.
I Was There!
After I got my bearings, I pulled up a deck chair, ordered a beverage, put my Ibrahim Ferer music on my iPod and watched the island pass by. I saw Ibrahim and some of his Buena Vista Social club friends at UCLA a decade plus ago. It was as a fantastic night of music and merriment.
As the island drifted by, so did my mind drift to the politics of the US and Cuba. Our 50 year old-economic sanctions haven’t done the Castros in yet. Granted, Castro has done horrible things and the imposed sanctions were a reasonable response, but maybe it’s time to do some type of fence-mending, some type of normalization of relations?
But was it arrogant of us to ask Mr. Gorbachev to tear his wall down before we tore down ours with Cuba? Would any American politician risk raising the ire of the Cuban-Americans population by reaching out to Cuba? Probably someone who doesn’t meed to carry Florida. Do we need another Richard Nixon? Will there be a person with such clout in our lifetime?
“Remember the Maine!”
I vividly remember that paper that I did for Mrs. Rizzo on the Spanish-American War back in High School. I see the New York Times microfiche at the UNLV library where I did most of my research. I remember taking notes and inserting dimes into the microfiche viewer to get copies of the ancient paper.I think about the 252 men killed aboard the USS Maine. That ship was the first US Warship commissioned. It took 9 years to build, and was in service for 3 years before being struck by a mine in the harbor of Havana. I was really proud of that paper. I think about Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. I imagine them taking the hills I see in the distance.
Ibrahim begins to sing Silencio on my iPod and I stop thinking so hard. The song is quiet and as peaceful as I wish to be on this vacation.
The second day of the cruise aboard the Disney Fantasy happened to fall on Easter Sunday. I was happy to see a mass scheduled at 8am. Me being me, I set a reminder alarm for all the days activities in my phone. I hadn’t expected that the 15 minute reminder to be my wake up call. I jumped out of bed, threw on my workout clothes and left my jet-lagged, sleep-deprived wife and daughter to the nondenominational services later on in the day.
As I made my way through the ship, I joined other mass-goers who clearly had woken up in time to dress for Easter. I found myself struggling again with the idea of dressing up for church. On one hand there is the simplicity of, “where two or more are gathered” and then there is the social aspect of putting on one’s best to worship. I often wonder how much of the dressing up is for show and how much is for respect. That useless mental struggle faded away when I entered the Walt Disney Theater and was surrounded by other worSHIPer, many of which were dressed for Easter, many of which were dressed to go work out afterward.
Easter in the Walt Disney Theater
I wasn’t sure what to expect for a mass held in a the Walt Disney movie theater. Father Emil from New York presided over the mass. We sang hymns accompanied by a very cheesy Yamaha piano. It was odd to see Disney-garbed staff reading from the bible, as normally church and the symbols of the mouse are not commonly seen together.
Father’s homily for this Easter day focused on the transformation of Peter from the man who on denied Jesus on Good Friday into to a man who had the strength to go out and preach the in Corigma, the gospel as told by the Apostles. Father didn’t say that it was essential at this point in history that the Apostles have that strength, but where would Christianity be if they hadn’t?
This mass had all the elements of a good service. There were engaged worshipers, crying children, thought providing messages and of course, Catholics leaving immediately after Eucharist. It brought a smile to my face to see that even aboard ship, people make the decision to leave before the final prayers.
One unusual element of this ship-board service was that the motion of the ship resulted in the congregation swaying when we stood. You may not know this, but Catholics don’t sway in church. Heck, it’s tough enough to get them to clap. In North America anyway, I have always suspected that we don’t clap for fear of letting God see that he forgot to give us rhythm.
With mass ending, I found myself some coffee and made my way to the forward observation deck, half-way between the Florida and Cuba on open water. I sat down and thought about the message of Easter and this story of Peter that the priest brought me today. I thought my family’s about Easter traditions and how they all went out the window this year. I thought about how traditions can complicate holidays. For example Christmas is about he birth of Jesus, but we complicate it so much more and in doing so we lose focus. Same is true with Easter. It gets to be about rabbits and chocolates and clothing and hats and things that are off-point and certainly off-message. Maybe we need, occasionally to simplify our holidays and get back to what they are really about.
One thing I do enjoy about the Catholic church is that we celebrate Easter for 8 full weeks, up until Pentecost Sunday. Every week, we stay glued to the stories of Jesus from rebirth to his ascension and the blessing of the apostles with the holy spirit. I say this because it may take me a while until this post up. Regardless of when you see this, I hope that you have a happy Easter season. If Easter is like so last week to you, take a moment to reconnect to the message.
I was drinking tea from my beer mug as I worked late into this evening.
It’s a mug that I purchased when I spent a January session at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter Minnesota back in 1986. That was the January the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off. “Life in a Northern Town” was the popular song of that time.
Over the years, that mug has been filled with Diet Coke, water, coffee, tea and even, on occasion beer. It’s an excellent device for mikifying Nilla Wafers. Lots and lots of Nilla Wafers. When I had next to nothing, I had that mug.
That mug finished college with me and moved to Boston. It came back to California and lived in apartments, condos and houses with me. It was a constant companion each night and weekend that I worked on my MBA.
Over the years, there has always been that fear that one day it would break.
My thing. My precious old thing.
As I rinsed by tea-bearing beer mug in the sink tonight I wondered what I would do if I lost it or it broke. What if they all broke. One good earthquake, it could happen.
What would I do? Answer: I would buy a replacement. Would I order a new one from Gustavus? Probably not.
But if all the coffee cups and glasses in the cupboard, there would be so much room. There would be so much room for new stuff. Or maybe there would just be a void.
The things we hold on to take up space. They diminish our capacity. People, resentments and memories diminish our capacity too. They take their place on the shelves our minds and sometimes they suck up the real estate in our hearts, limiting us.
So break all the glasses and the coffee and beer mugs. Consider retaining the ones most dear and them smash them to pieces…
And be free. Be free for anything else that comes along.
