It’s About Gratitude. Not About the Crowd Size.

Speaking about Thanksgiving with folks this year, before the actual day, had one thing in common: everyone was planning for big parties! Not many were talking about dishes they'd make or drinks they wanted to try. But everyone made sure they started with "it's gonna be a good crowd." Everyone was getting together with their families, their friends, their friends’ friends and their neighbors’ friends.

One coworker said his family is so large, there will be 70 of them for Thanksgiving so his mom, the traditional hostess, had to rent a space at their church to accommodate everyone. I cannot imagine having this large a crowd for a yearly holiday meal. I had 10 people at my wedding and that included the two of us. 

I am not sure it’s by choice, maybe our lives chose this, not us - but we’ve mostly always spent Thanksgiving with just the two of us. There were exceptions but so few and far between that I cannot even remember when they happened. 

Don't get me wrong - I am a fan of big parties with lots of noise and lots of eating, drinking, and dancing ... I grew up on them! But for some reason, my own life took a different turn. And I have been able to enjoy the quiet of a one-person or a two-person celebration, too.

This made me think back at the three years in my life when I spent Thanksgiving alone. Just alone, if you're not counting the cats. And I never felt left out somehow. I have particularly enjoyed this holiday because it’s almost the only one that is really just about the food and nothing else. That and counting your blessings. And food is a blessing ... So many people don’t have the minimum of it to survive. 

Among other things, Christmas is also about the presents and the tree; Easter (my favorite) is about going to church and all the rituals; New Years is a drinking and music holiday. But Thanksgiving is just food. You can be a glutton and it’s OK, because you’re celebrating bounty. 

But if you’re alone this year and maybe feeling a little down, take it from me - you don’t need to ... As someone who has spent several Thanksgivings (and many other holidays too) alone, here’s a list of things you can enjoy and hope you can be grateful about: 

• You can cook your own comfort food, not whatever is mandated by tradition. Not a fan of stuffing or sweet potatoes? You want French fries instead? Do it! 
• There is no one to criticize your cooking. No one to tell you the turkey is too dry and the stuffing too wet ... 
• Don't count calories. Who cares you cannot zip up your pants? You’re alone. Wear sweats! 
• Watch as much tv as you want. No one to fight over the remote with. David Attenborough sounds more appealing than a football game? Do it ... 
• Nap to your heart’s content. 
• Take a walk in the middle of the day just because. Or don’t. You’re not offending anyone.  
• Repeat.
• If you did cook, enjoy leftovers for so many more days than when you would split them with many others.
• Drink a nightcap or 10. Who’s counting? 
• Even if you’re not in the mood to cook, make some cookies and make the house smell good
• Enjoy the time off from work.

Be grateful for all of this. For little things like fuzzy socks and non-stick cookware, and for the big things like the roof over your head, your car, and not lastly, your health, or at least your mobility if you have it. 

Focus on all of these things, and think about the bounty that is your life.. I wish we could all always appreciate what we do have rather than mourn what’s not there ... But the human monkey mind doesn’t work this way ... Maybe this could be a good reminder ...  

Billions of people on this planet don't have these luxuries. How lucky should you really feel that you have all or more things like these available to you? 

Of course we could and should be grateful every day. But I do like special days when important things are brought into focus and are not lost in the shuffle of every day. Like love, and gratitude, like life and the celebration of what has been achieved or the welcome celebration of a new page that is just getting started ... And Thanksgiving is one of these days ...

Life is short. Enjoy the little or the very much you already have! Your very little is someone else's jackpot or dream. Be grateful for everything you do have, for it is never forever ... 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Why I Travel

As I walk through the security line at the airport, I notice the guy in front of me, athletic, all button-down shirt and casual cargo pants, with black thick-frame glasses that turn colors as you move in and out of the light. He  carries nothing through security but a black, almost perfectly square cooler. I figure he must have some affliction and he needs his meds kept cold (I know from experience). But appearances and our own biases can be (and very often are) deceiving. 

He pulls a plastic bag out of the cooler, with three (3) frozen solid bottles of Deer Park water. He puts them in the TSA tray and leaves the cooler open. The TSA agent warns the screening guy that “frozen water, coming up!” and moves on to help me with my bag. The athletic guy moves along through the people scanner, chewing gum, completely non-chalant and well-possessed, not even blinking. No explanation. No fuss. Like he owns the world. 

The guy behind me says to the TSA guy: “Excuse me. Umm...What is that, exactly? You are allowed to transport water bottles through TSA if the bottles are frozen?” The TSA guy goes “Yes, sir! That’s right!” The guy behind me says “Well, I don’t agree with it, but wow! Just wow!”

In my mind, I say: “Sorry, buddy, your authority nor opinion is needed here. Move along.” But yes, I am wowed too. 

After I clear security, the first thing I do is google “can you take frozen water bottles through security?” and lo and behold, yes, you can! This just completely baffled me. I have been traveling consistently by plane since 1998 - for those hard of math, that is 27 years. I have counted 10 one-way airline trips (some of them with multiple flights) this year alone and I have never known of such a rule. This was a lesson ... 

As I continue my journey, I come to my gate and we’re ready to board. They tell us, as they often do, nowadays, that the plane is full and to make sure we board quickly and sit down immediately, not to block the aisles, you know ... the usual. Then, they call people by “zones” (some airlines board by groups, some by zones). They call First Class, then Zone 1, then Zone 2. We all wait. And wait. And not one person boards in Zone 1, nor 2. I have never seen such a thing. Again, ever, in all my travels are whole “zones” completely empty with “a full flight”. The gate agent seems totally OK with this, but we’re all looking around like “are they still at the bar or what?”. I am telling myself “this is going to be a trip of firsts, I guess?”. 

After I board (with my zone - I can’t recall what it was, but I am at the end of the darn plane again, zone maybe 7 or some such unlucky number; as a matter of fact, let’s not be ungrateful - zone “never” might be unlucky; the fact that I am on a plane at all is a plus), and after all the people are in their seats, the pilot walks all the way to where I am sitting and hands over a goodie bag to a lucky passenger on account that they are a “first-time flyer”. No, not with this airline but ever. Not sure how they know this? Not sure how or if they verify this, but there it is ... I am shocked. How has someone nowadays, especially in the very large America where people are so spread apart from their families, living in this huge country, never flown? This person is not a toddler either. It’s a mature man with a head full of white hair. They are totally shocked and embarrassed and they accept the bag with a chuckle and applause follows. 

Then, to make it even more unusual, the pilot walks to two rows in front of the man he just congratulated, on the other side of the aisle, and hands over a second goodie bag to another first-time passenger completely unrelated to the first one. Now, I am thinking I must be in a dream: there is not one, but two such rare specimens on my flight. What??? You live and you learn, as the cliche goes. 

As we’re preparing to take off, they make their little announcements and there is a new one for me: they tell us that video taking is “absolutely prohibited”, and this is not an “airline policy, but an FAA policy”. And I pause. Well, if video taping is prohibited, then how come TikTok (at least this is what I hear, since I am lucky enough to not be tethered with such a curse as a TikTok account) full of videos of flight attendants being slapped by or slapping passengers all over the world? Or did the policy come in response to such videos and is new? I am not videoing but I am taking pictures, so I figured I am not in trouble, but my goodness, frozen water first, no videos second, airline rules are moving fast, even for this mildly-frequent flyer... 

As I leave the plane on my arrival to the other end of my trip, at my final destination of Orlando, FL (a destination, I feel, that should require a passport, if you’re coming from anywhere else in the US, even), I head over to the ground transportation area to call an Uber so I can head to my hotel. I was a late adopter of Uber - have been using it for about 3 years - but I have used it on two continents and tried using it on a third one, but the Gods of the travel agency protected me from using it in Africa. Long story, for another entry. 

A cheerful gentleman called Jose arrives and I see a new disclaimer on my Uber app - that Jose is “recording this trip”. Hmm ... Video forbidden on the plane, but obviously running by default in the car transportation. I do not like surprises all that much, but this trip seemed to have it all. 

These are just a few examples from my most recent trip. And this is all to say that one of the main reasons I travel (other than to get where my life takes me) is to learn. Travel is almost a free add-on or bonus of new lessons about how you should behave in the world, how you should carry yourself among other humans. It teaches you how prepared you are to just be a human firing on all your cylinders, and being the best you can be among your peers. It builds tolerance and empathy - which are becoming somewhat endangered nowadays - but this new world we live in, try as it may, I would never, as long as there is breath in my body, want to lose them. 

Travel allows me to make my thoughts, my whole being stop chattering and opinioning and just listen and watch. Assess and propose corrections in my own path. Or not. Travel keeps my senses alert. There are so many things we must be present for in travel - you cannot space out and get lost in your doom-scroll of Instagram when the TSA agent, or a passport control agent demands answers from you. You are forced to connect with the person in front of you and think. Although I like to think of myself as a minimalist when it comes to consuming social media, I still hate when precious minutes go to nothing but mindless scrolling. Travel is not mindless. It is focused, character-building (remember that 20th century concept anyone?) presence. If you don’t have that (presence) while you travel, your very life might be at stake. 

I travel  because I need new energy, from the outer world, to replenish and recharge my own depleted body which becomes stagnant after a while just being enclosed in myself. 

My sister and I grew up “in the mountains”, we call it. We were city girls by birth - born and raised in the second-largest (by population) city in Romania - but for about 3 months every year we would live with our distant relatives in the Northern Carpathian Mountains, with no running water in the house, working tireless every day for our food which came from cows, sheep, chickens, or foraging for wild berries and mushrooms in the woods. This is how we learned physical, manual labor. Life on the land was very different from life in the city. In the city, we learned how to be pedestrians and how to ride with civility in a public transport vehicle. In the mountains, we learned how to listen to nature, and know dangers unknown to the city dweller - like the call of a wolf, or the scratch of a mouse in the attic eating through corn, or getting splinters out of our soft, city hands when we split wood in the woodshed behind the house to make fires every night to heat our rooms in the wood-burning stoves or in our water heater boiler every week for our shower.

Travel reminds me  a bit of those times - when we were forced to live in a completely new environment and we were absolutely forced to develop a new set of skills that would not have been developed otherwise. 

I travel because I know my perception of the world is biased. And I need hard proof for the truth. 

I travel because I am consumed by wanting to know the truth. Is the world really as bleak as the media and social sites claim? Are people as angry and evil? Are they truly hating one another? Travel shows you a different picture of that. Or certifies it for you. But you will never know for sure unless it becomes your experience. 

I travel for food and for new-ness. For taking myself outside of my cocoon of safety and forcing myself to react, to feel, to truly know, and to truly form an opinion. I travel for the surprise of it and its shock value as much as I travel to realize that I had the weirdness and diversity of the world within my soul all along. But I just didn’t know it. 

Travel forces you to think quickly and outside the box. And make do with what’s in front of you. 

Travel forces you to look deeply into your soul and assess - do you like what you see? Here, there are alternatives, would you like to reconsider? I never speak to myself more honestly than when I am traveling - because it forces me to be present and to stay awake and aware for the simple reason to be safe. It also forces me to be awake because everything seems to be new. I cherish getting lessons from everything that I open myself up for. 

I travel because travel leads me to books. And books lead me to travel. And books have been the one, only, constant in my entire life that has never disappointed. Boyd Varty’s Cathedral of the Wild led me to Londolozi which changed my life. Then, Londolozi led me to The Elephant Whisperer which enriched my understanding of human kindness and nature kindness and nature intelligence as well. And the examples are many from so many of my other travels: the innumerable books I read about English and American authors growing up that took me to England and later America where I found my soul, eventually. 

Travel brought me to wonders like the South African wild this year - and what a quantum leap that was! I emerged transformed only with a fraction of my old self from the African bush. It tapped into senses I didn’t know I had. Our over-technological suburban world dims those senses, or, in some cases, completely exterminates them. But going out of our comfort zone (something that is intrinsic to travel) allows our minds and sometimes even our bodies, to develop abilities that otherwise lay dormant or are in danger of becoming extinct because of our lack of need to use them. When you are called to react to things you don’t encounter every day - like a leopard on the hunt, or a pride of 9 lions completely wild, with no circus director to tame them in sight, or a river full of crocs opening their huge jowls at you, or even foods you have never seen but are called upon out of respect to try - you cannot help but learn new lessons and new abilities that you might not have thought you had. 

I turned 50 this year. I read a lot of thoughts on what and who you’re supposed to be when you turn 50 or when you reach your mid-life. Some people are told they are old. Some people fight this concept and feel young or do meaningful things to feel young. Because I live inside this 50 year old body, I feel just like I did when I was 10 or 20. 50 seems to me to be just a number. 

For me, the one thing I want to be or to do going forward (which has not changed just because my ID says I am not a different age), the only thing that I hope will define me in my next decade and beyond and always is the desire to continuously learn. To avidly and voraciously keep learning, with every day, with every trip, with every person or any other being that I encounter. Keep learning and becoming and changing and morphing into who I will eventually leave as my finished “product” on this planet, once my time is up in this realm. 

I cannot think how I would be able to learn without traveling. Just like I have said many times before, stopping traveling is like stopping to breathe for me. I felt like I needed a reminder to reassess why I do it - I do it to remain whole and to keep becoming. Becoming is my now and my future. That is all ... And that is all that matters ... 

One of the places that stays with me, 28 years later: the thermal pools of Pamukkale (or “Cotton Castle”) in South-Western Turkey - I took this picture after I climbed this mountain barefoot with hot streams under my feet on a 100F degree day in August 1997. 

A City of Scars. And Hope. Detroit, MI

The man was standing in the doorway of our hotel restaurant. Inside. The restaurant had two entrances - one from the street, where the hostess was; one from the hotel lobby, where the restaurant’s bar was the first thing you saw. We entered from the lobby and this man was standing, backpack on shoulder, shorts, and a Detroit Tigers - orange T-shirt on, and stopped us with a head tilt: “Hey! Help a guy out, sir!” - he said to my husband - “Help a guy out!”. We kept walking, and I felt some remorse, truthfully. It was Sunday. I should have given him something. Or at least offered to pay for a meal. As we were sitting down and several minutes after that, after ordering, I could not clear this man out of my head. I was thinking, “I should give him something. I’ll buy a meal for him right here at the restaurant. I need to ...”. But before I could voice what my plan was going to be to help him out, our waitress came back to our table. She had taken our order, she had brought us our coffee, we hardly had time to sip our first sip, why was she back? She leaned over to our table and in a whisper she said: “There was a guy at the back door, at the bar. He watched when the bartender went to the bathroom, then snuck behind the bar and stole her purse. The police were in the lobby and caught him, so he didn’t make it very far. They took him away, there was no violence, but just wanted to alert you to be careful.” This is when I felt a mix of sad, guilty, and scared ... But not angry. Just sad, guilty, and scared. Then, I said to myself: “Boy, I guess Detroit does live up to its name nowadays.” We were downtown Detroit, in a somewhat high-priced hotel, at 10AM on a Sunday. I have traveled a bit and I had never stayed in a hotel where we had a pair of city police officers at our hotel’s reception virtually 24 hours a day, every day. Virtually everyone I know that heard that I was going to Detroit follows it with “Wow! Be careful! Lots of crime there.” Or “Detroit? Why?” As some of you who have been following my blog for years know too well - there is no such question for me as “why are you visiting a place?” Any place. Every place in the world, every rock has a meaning and a story to tell - and that is why enough for me.

Detroit skyline as seen from Belle Isle across the Detroit River. That Ambassador bridge that connects America and Canada (faint, on the horizon) was giving me nightmares. It's famous for not being marked clearly enough and people cross it by mistake. I was worried they won't allow us back! 

But Detroit will not stay with me as a crime city. Not in the least. Detroit was not a city of crime, but of dreams. Dreams come true - maybe a long time ago. But also dreams that have been broken. A city that built America. Just as much as New York City or Los Angeles.

Our hotel's lobby - The David Whitney, a former shopping mall and office building

In its most profound way, Detroit felt like a gorgeous, rich city, with more history than I could absorb that no one loves anymore, if they ever did. Like a neglected child still beautiful but savage, or a neglected garden - still beautiful but leggy and unyielding ... Like an aged person who shows all the scars of their life, wrinkles, growths and all, Detroit shows its age and its character. No different than any other historic city, as history goes, for America which is not much longer than a family album. There is a passion and an intense-ness about a heavily industrial city. I was born and raised in a university town, with a very small industrial district. But when I wandered off in the “industrial zone”, the pulse of progress, of a life driven forward, as opposed to stagnation, felt real. Felt alive. Felt strong. In the streets of Detroit - you feel that - you feel what it must have been like 100 years ago, when plants were hopping and people came from rural America to work on the assembly line, as Johnny Cash tells us. Detroit once put America on the map of the world! And to some extent, you still feel that - in the streets, in the history, in the architecture, and stories. The architecture alone rivals that of Chicago and New Work City. The streets are wide and lined with as many styles of construction as there are books on architecture. The materials are diverse and for the most part durable. But the vicious winters, the lake-effect weather, the winds, the many years of neglect have left deep scars on every brick and every marble panel. Detroit used to house about 1.8 million people back in its industrial heyday. Today, it barely has a bit over 600.000. Our culture has vastly changed and our lifestyle shifted, here in America: back in the day, people worked and lived in the city. Despite being the birthplace of the American automobile industry, a legacy that gifted it with the nickname of Mo(tor)town City, having a car was a luxury. People could not afford to ride to work and in cold, long winters, they preferred to live close to where they worked. Things have changed. Now, everyone rides. Everyone drives. People moved outside the city, in the suburbs, and some jobs remained in the city, while others, the industrial ones, got shipped, mostly overseas. This gutted the industrial Midwest, and Detroit was probably its heartbeat. You can imagine the emptiness that a city built for 1.8 people to live and work in leaves when it cuts that population to a third! Detroit just about feels like it’s populated in about a third of its spaces ... The empty two thirds echo with ghosts and memories ... The rest of the buildings are prey to decay and rot. Unfortunately - and I mean this with all my heart. You can see the uniqueness in the craftsmanship and the inspiration of every architect that ever designed for this city - much like Chicago, but in its own style and vibe. Although Detroit comes across as a big American city (sky rises, aerial tram and interchanges, urban feel), it has the noise and crowds of a small town. It’s sleepy and quiet. Hardly anyone walking around or even driving around. We had the least amount of traffic in any big city we have ever been in, for sure.

The eerie empty streets: the streets in Detroit were the emptiest in any big American city I have ever seen. 

People are amazing! We never encountered a rude, vulgar, or snappy person during our stay. They are polite, smiling, patient, calm, incredibly kind and welcoming. We asked one of our restaurant waitresses if we could bring our drinks from the bar across the lobby into the restaurant so we could have their dessert - something that I am pretty sure was not allowed, since the restaurant had their own bar and was more than willing to make a sale on their own beverages. She made up an answer: “Sure! Why not?” I asked her, “Is this legal?” She said with a smile and a shrug: “Well, if it’s not, no one told me, so I say it is legal. Come along.”

Just like there is such a thing as "Southern hospitality", there is also such a thing as "Midwestern down-to-earth-ness." A friend of mine (from Ohio, oh my!) spoke to me in my earlier years of living in America about Midwestern values - blue collar, hard work, honesty, trust. You feel these in every interaction with people here, too.

As wonderful as the renowned Henry Ford museum is (and its outdoors counterpart, the Greenfield Village; and yes, you can really see the actual car that JKF got shot in as well as the chair that Lincoln got shot it in the Ford theater in DC), the Detroit Institute of Arts was really my absolute favorite! As much as this Beaux-Arts-style building impresses through its own style, it impresses more through the top-notch exhibits that it houses. Entire houses and churches ensconced within its walls, original paintings by Monet, Van Gogh and monumental, large-scale industrial murals by Diego Rivera overwhelm you. We spent about three hours there but I don’t think we saw half of it. Not in depth for sure. I could have spent a day. The only other museum that impressed me more was The Met in New York - and we didn’t finish that one in one day, either.

The industrial Diego Rivera murals at the DIA

There is always hope, and there is always life when there is art. And the DIA in the heart of Detroit gives me that hope.

The Detroit Institute of Art

Just like I failed to eat a slice of the famous Chicago pizza last year, I failed to visit the Motown Museum this year in Detroit. Another local landmark not met. This was on my bucket list, as they say, but we got there too late and the tickets were sold out. Cannot tell you what a sigh of disappointment I unleashed! And that was the last day in the city - so, no do-over - the next morning very early, our plane would take us back home.

The Motown museum - here, in this house, some of the most consequential American music was born and launched. It is a non-descript single-family home in a row of historic houses, but it pulsed with life for me! 

Ah well, we always need reasons to go back, right?! I have a friend who was born in Detroit. When I met him, in 2000, and asked him where he was from, he reluctantly said “well, I was born and raised in Detroit.” He was quick to follow with: “But none of my family lives there anymore.” - like it was some kind of sin to admit this. He went on: ”I feel about Detroit, just like you feel about Romania: I am from there. But I have no desire to go back.” I felt a lot like I used to feel about Romania on this trip: a place that was beautiful, with hidden gem-like history pieces, but a place that its own locals didn’t know how to sell and brag about. I no longer feel like Romanians do much of that anymore - Romania has, finally, earned its well-deserved place on the map of Europe and the Romanians I know are proud of it. I hope that Detroit achieves that too. One day, soon!

Ford rules the city! And I felt like it always will. 

Old single homes were beautiful, all over the city. 

View from our historic hotel's room, with the aerial tram (which was incredibly quiet) to the right. 

This gutted building looked quite the opposite of what the billboard promised 

The gorgeous, Art-Deco Music Hall building

 

Classic old Detroit - the good and the bad, and the beautiful ... 

Another shot of the aerial tram tracks and an old building downtown right by hour hotel

A picture of the "new" Detroit

We'd never miss an opportunity to see a Frank Lloyd Wright house - the Smith House in Bloomfield Township, MI, outside of Detroit

Finding Home ...

There is a coming-home-kinda feeling about a lazy, early North Carolina summer. It’s like your heart is reset in its secret lodge in your chest and it’s back in rhythm. 

There is a strange saying around here that winter lasts for about 4 months, summer lasts for 6, and spring falls on a Tuesday. This feels, quite literally, like the truth! We have very little remembrance of true spring - the blooms are all we know about it. But the heat and most importantly, the humidity, this NC staple, is in a hurry to come back every year. We go from boots to thong flip-flops literally in one weekend.

The first sign of early summer is a blooming Southern magnolia

If you never spent any time in a subtropical climate, it is hard to describe the water in the air. The drips down your chin and under your arms just because you’re alive. You do nothing but sit there, looking at your hydrangeas and you feel a soft bead rolling down your temple. It’s only 10 AM and you can feel the hot air creeping in like a thief ... 

Kitties are lazier than usual, if such a thing is even possible, moving ever so slowly, for fear they’ll waste their energy in a hurry if they jerk around too much. Their eyes are blinking on a delay ... 

One of the must-haves in a Southern home is a screened-in porch, preferably in the back of the house, where no human traffic can bother you or disrupt your God-given peace. Lots of people dream of a house with a nice, deep front porch, but I like that just for the architecture. I would not think of ever using it to sit and take in the world. My world is that of the back yard, facing the woods, and allowing me no human pollution whatsoever - just birds, deer, bunnies, and squirrels. Maybe the occasional snake - because what is NC without its snakes?! 

On a day like today, I sit and melt away in the warm, wet air, and think about life, about what’s important, about where to next. If I learned anything in 50 years, it’s that humans will disappoint and fail, but through failure they will learn, rise again, and move on. I cannot measure my days in human victories or defeats. My beat nowadays is more that of nature, with its untainted beauty, permanence, resilience and steadiness ... Nature and that which is not human is what I seek for thy disappoint the least. 

If the most consequential trip of my life, my South African safari, taught me anything, it was that to find happiness is to be the most you you can ever muster. An impala never wants to be a lion, and a lion never wants to be a leopard. They are authentically who they are and they are the best at who they are because they wish nothing against their nature or against their natural grain. 

Human intelligence is our ticket to progress and to our demise ... Nowadays, I limit myself to what I know is true and permanent - gorgeous, massive hardwoods mixed in with Southern pines, whispering in the faint wind in my forest, finches, cardinals and sparrows having some sort of a quarrel over the shortage of bird seed, blue birds moving on after their first batch of babies have flown the coop, butterfly bushes in full-bloom waiting, patiently, for their residents to move in. 

About 4 years ago this landscape lady promised a scrawny butterfly bush she planted on a rocky hill behind my house will one day take over my yard. Every year since, I doubted her. I think it's finally time.

These are true, honest, solid things. There is no pretense, no lying, and no A.I. Just the pure, verifiable (but not needed to be) source of what is true ... I live for this. I cherish this. It's restoring ...  

Some days, it's hard to pick a favorite ...

I started this blog 20 years ago next month. I started it to document my travels, and I have been blessed with so many. I have lived a truly charmed life, with many opportunities to learn and open my eyes and my heart to a world I never knew would be possible for me ... 

But the one thing I have learned the most is that sometimes the most memorable journeys are not very far from just where you are. Not very far from your home or even from this chair, right here, where I type these words ... Not very far from the lazy kitten sprawled on the chair next to me ... It’s how you look at the world that makes the adventure and not always how many miles you travel ... 

For now, for today ... The world is warm, familiar, and soft, like an embrace of someone kind and trusting. The air is lingering, sticky and wet. The birds are getting lazier and lazier, judging by their fainting songs, as we approach mid-day. The sun is almost on top of me, I feel it and it makes my eyes squint a little, even under the roof of my screened-in porch. The fluorescent blue wasps are buzzing around and the branches are slowly nodding in the light wind. 

The skies are just waiting for some kind of signal to drop buckets on our heads yet again, despite the desperate attempts of the sun to peek through and shoo them away. 

It’s a quiet day in the country. The neighbor’s dog, suffering from some terrible separation anxiety, is the only chatterbox out there - disrupting the peace and the birds’ subdued symphony. He gets tired after a while and you hear him wail and yawn ... 

It’s another day in The South and, I am fairly sure that even if it’ll bring about change and even eternal pause to so many around the world, it will also bring a new day for those left behind. As life and physics will have it, the world still moves on. And I choose to move with it, when humanity allows, always waiting for the next chapter ...