For some reason, the television screen is showing entertainment and sports news from sometime in 2016. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 has just come out, and Stan Lee is still working hard. This is jarring and I just had to ask the bartender to make sure I'd not gone back in time.
Everyone still has the latest cell phone, and my news feed tells me there will be a national emergency, so I'm in the now, I suppose. I'm sitting here, waiting for the time I can go through security, prepare to wait for the plan. In years past, on trips past, I would be writing in a paper journal rather than typing in this blog. But I am at the point now where I have boxes and boxes of handwritten journals and perhaps it would be better to commit words to this box.
I worry one day this box will go away, and disappear into corporate non-existence. There's no sch thing as Google + anymore, and this may not be important. Perhaps it would be better to scrawl my thoughts using pen and paper. That will likely wait until I'm on board the flight in a few hours.
This is the second time in a year I've been here, at Dulles, about to go on a trip to see my family in the United Kingdom. In six weeks from now, that country is set to exit the European Union, and that sounds more like a national emergency. I am at a point where I'm tired of the drama and emotions that comes from politics, at all levels. Yet, it's part of the way humans move around the stage.
The airport does not seem to be crowded. It's the middle of winter and the sky over Loudoun County is gray and dreary. A man about my age who was just sitting next to me at the bar has now gone out. He raced up here from Fredericksburg to drop his girlfriend off, and apparently, there was a lot of stress. It's Valentine's Day, but the first words I heard from him were not kind to her. I could feel the tension of him not feeling like he was being thanked enough for speeding through traffic so she could catch her flight. I remember that feeling of fighting inside of a relationship, and I always found it so uncomfortable that I'm in no hurry to ever be in a relationship again. And it's been long enough now that I don't know how to do any of that anyway.
I'm traveling to see my son Henry and this will be my 26th or 27th or 28th trip to England in my 45 years of life. It feels ridiculously indulgent, but what's the point of being alive if you're not going to live?
This is a trip in which I need to think about the rest of my life. We're in an era where it seems there are more and more emergencies in our future. I feel this tremendous urgency to write what I can, and to share it where I can, and to try to explain things the way I see them. That's all I've ever wanted to do. I want to share my curiosity and try to make things better. This also seems ridiculously indulgent.
I accept that. And I accept that I am here, about to begin a journey to my other home. In the meantime, I sit here watching the bartender talk to a couple, telling them his observations about Americans. He appears to be from southeast Asia. He's been incredibly friendly. Earlier he pushed Valentine's Day candy, and the man from Fredericksburg got ticked off a little. He sat here and drank a couple of shots and pounded a couple beers before heading out into the world, into the long line of traffic heading south the Fredericksburg.
Another member of this wilderness ensemble is a woman about my age who is eating a salad, while drinking a Blue Moon. She's talking to someone on the phone and I flash back to my trip from 1995 when almost no one would have had a cell phone. That trip was my longest ever as an adult, 21 days or so traveling around just after graduation. I can barely remember what that was like, or how I awkward I felt. I weigh now about what I weighed then, as I've gained back all the weight I lost after my second divorce. I don't have nearly the same motivation as I used to have to be in shape. I only seem motivated to have a stream of consciousness, constantly gurgling out the textual equivalent of smooth jazz, words that seem to have a rhythm, seem to have a point, but does anyone need to read this, or even know it exists?
I'm about to enter the international world, about to disappear from one place to another. Would it were I could be back in time and remake all the decisions. Would it were that all of this added up to something. Would it were that I was something different...
The older I get, the more I just want to release out whatever it is inside of me. And you can either choose to read or not read. It's going to come out anyway, I suspect. I have to pass the time, somehow. I have to document what I can, somehow. Isn't that what I'm here for? Isn't that why you're here?
The airport does not seem to be crowded. It's the middle of winter and the sky over Loudoun County is gray and dreary. A man about my age who was just sitting next to me at the bar has now gone out. He raced up here from Fredericksburg to drop his girlfriend off, and apparently, there was a lot of stress. It's Valentine's Day, but the first words I heard from him were not kind to her. I could feel the tension of him not feeling like he was being thanked enough for speeding through traffic so she could catch her flight. I remember that feeling of fighting inside of a relationship, and I always found it so uncomfortable that I'm in no hurry to ever be in a relationship again. And it's been long enough now that I don't know how to do any of that anyway.
I'm traveling to see my son Henry and this will be my 26th or 27th or 28th trip to England in my 45 years of life. It feels ridiculously indulgent, but what's the point of being alive if you're not going to live?
This is a trip in which I need to think about the rest of my life. We're in an era where it seems there are more and more emergencies in our future. I feel this tremendous urgency to write what I can, and to share it where I can, and to try to explain things the way I see them. That's all I've ever wanted to do. I want to share my curiosity and try to make things better. This also seems ridiculously indulgent.
I accept that. And I accept that I am here, about to begin a journey to my other home. In the meantime, I sit here watching the bartender talk to a couple, telling them his observations about Americans. He appears to be from southeast Asia. He's been incredibly friendly. Earlier he pushed Valentine's Day candy, and the man from Fredericksburg got ticked off a little. He sat here and drank a couple of shots and pounded a couple beers before heading out into the world, into the long line of traffic heading south the Fredericksburg.
Another member of this wilderness ensemble is a woman about my age who is eating a salad, while drinking a Blue Moon. She's talking to someone on the phone and I flash back to my trip from 1995 when almost no one would have had a cell phone. That trip was my longest ever as an adult, 21 days or so traveling around just after graduation. I can barely remember what that was like, or how I awkward I felt. I weigh now about what I weighed then, as I've gained back all the weight I lost after my second divorce. I don't have nearly the same motivation as I used to have to be in shape. I only seem motivated to have a stream of consciousness, constantly gurgling out the textual equivalent of smooth jazz, words that seem to have a rhythm, seem to have a point, but does anyone need to read this, or even know it exists?
I'm about to enter the international world, about to disappear from one place to another. Would it were I could be back in time and remake all the decisions. Would it were that all of this added up to something. Would it were that I was something different...
The older I get, the more I just want to release out whatever it is inside of me. And you can either choose to read or not read. It's going to come out anyway, I suspect. I have to pass the time, somehow. I have to document what I can, somehow. Isn't that what I'm here for? Isn't that why you're here?
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