Adventure Bound

I took this photo in Taos last week, and it speaks more to the beauty of the place than my photographic abilities. The combination of the unguessable time of day, the clouds that look painted on, and the flatness of perspective that evokes a postcard-like feel make this one of the most intriguing pictures I've taken. The lushness of the sagebrush foreground contrasted against the sears portrait studio backdrop-esque mountians almost make it cheesy, but at the same time this sacred spot at the penitente church on sacred Indian lands is very special to me and the girls I go out here with, so this is a rapturous photo to me.  I've blogged about these painting workshops for years...this was my 12th or 13th one - it is the deepest spiritual work I do, and I feel so grateful to have found this teacher and this work.

I less than a week I fly to Europe for 5 weeks. I am doing this trip alone, and am amazed how much resistance I'm feeling as it gets closer. Almost 3 weeks of it will be on tours I've arranged, and, it's not covering huge land mass areas, but many different tiny and interesting sounding countries will be explored. As a native Texan, there is a thrill in being able to drive across an entire country in a few hours - it just seems amazing. So I will be visiting England, Ireland, Finland Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany. The Finland-Germny portion is two weeks with an adventure tour operator, and the other tour is 5 days on a jeep doing the southwest coast of Ireland (sigh). I feel strange telling people about my life when the economy is bad & people are losing jobs & struggling. I went on two luxury vacations within 3 week of each other and now I'm going to Europe for 5 weeks - I am on the other side of the economic spectrum: flush, money to spend on non-essentials, not only non-essentials but on my "dream" life - when is the other shoe going to drop? Oh yeah, there is no "shoe." (Only the "habit" of guilt, then punishment). It is not in my nature to "enjoy life." I am used to it feeling like a struggle.

When I was a child I fantasized about travel & moving & seeing places I'd never been to. Going to Helsinki feels very exotic to me, as Istanbul did two years ago. I realized that my childhood dreams have come true, but at the same time feel a gravity in my soul. I'm not sure what it is but it feels like with the achieving of a certain status that one has worked hard for comes with some sort of responsibility to one's fellow man - a responsibility to show that dreams are there for a reason - and there is a price to pay for one's dreams, but that's the subject of another posting (long). Travel emboldens me, makes me confident, and makes me want to spread the word that anyone can do this - it's not really all that expensive, but there's a lot of super detailed planning & compiling of details that goes into a trip where you're making all your reservations and plane flights. It was the journey of getting here that was so heady: the seed of the dream, the first taste of it on my first trip to Europe 32 years ago, then many years of daydreaming & scheming & spottily getting to travel, then working my way into my current lifestyle of working 1/2 the year & travelling all I want in the other part. And now I understand why it's the journey that is more important than the destination - because like Spock said in one of my favorite episodes "having is not the same as wanting." Once you get there, there's a little bit of "now what?" There was a time when I couldn't imagine how one got it together enough to by a car, a house, have a stable realtionship. I have never had a desire to have a domestic life, my own family, or to do yard work. I was just designed for something else. I found it and worked for it...but there are moments when I am alone, like now, between trips, where I trying to find the point of it all - was it to show I could do it? Is my life an example to someone whose afraid to "go for it" as my life shouts "go for it!" I am aware that I am not doing this travel to entertain or pleasure myself. Maybe I am doing it to fill time before going back to the Ice, or to have something to blog about, but hopefully there is a deeper reason, reasons I am not even aware of yet. The way I feel after a particularly good trip (this year: skiing) is a joy I never knew existed. And to have new feeling states has got to open up my world and touch those that know me. I love it when I find myself in a place where I can encourage someone to follow their passion, and I see that little spark in their eye. I am really feeling the difference of age too. When I travelled to Ireland in '84 it was about romance and drinking and being the brash Yank. Now I will be more attuned to subtleties (no drinking!) and most look forward to bonding with the people I meet in the tour group: my "family" for the week! So there are some pedestrian feelings amongst all this - I used to just envision my travel life like that scene from "Braveheart" where he is traipsing amongst the Highlands, shrouded in mist, being mythologized in voice-over. The nuts & bolts of planning temper the romance, but the underlying excitement of the unknown will always be my motivation. I don't know what this trip will be like, but I'm sure it will be full of new experiences, and that is one reason I don't feel bad about spending all this money on this trip. The money I "saved" last year has all but dissappeared, but the money I spend on travel will never be regretted.

I used to have a recurring dream where someone was handing me very beautiful jewels and I would run away & not take them. I did not trust that someone was giving me something so beautiful without a catch. The life I have now is the jewel I have let myself grab - and I cannot just say I am lucky...there is some luck, but mostly, I yearned for it, then made it an intention, and focussed on it until it became a reality. Mountains beyond mountains - step by step, anything can be made manifest.