It’s Lonely Being Unique

Cool: My amazing life
Stupid: The resulting isolation

Before I get started, I would like to emphasize my appreciation of my amazing life seeing the world. It is definitely my choice. I can’t imagine life any other way and I am thankful continuously.

But it is lonely.

I am not lonely on the ship, with 650 of my closest friends all of us seeing the world together.

But coming home is surprisingly lonely. It is not just the lack of twenty people at my breakfast, lunch and dinner table and constantly running into people in every city I go to in the world.

It is the fact that I have nothing to say to people now that I am home. People talk about TV shows and current affairs which I have no knowledge of. I can talk of cities, places and sites that they have no knowledge of. In some cases, my sharing a casual experience about the ten year old girl playing the accordion on the train going to Rome is treated as if I am bragging, instead of being what it actually is, at least for me, just a run of the mill story about being on the train the other day.

A while back a woman who worked aboard told me about this problem. She would go home and no one really wanted to hear about her travels nor could they relate. I thought she had the wrong circle of friends. But that was not it. When two of my friends are talking about their cars and repairs, I no longer can relate. I don’t have a car most of the year. I don’t think about repairs. They may talk about this awesome new restaurant they found and if I chime in with the awesome restaurant I recently discovered, the fact that it is in Venice seems to ruin the conversation. “Last month when I was in Croatia…” just seems to create glazed eyes.

Then there is the trickle away of friends. Out of sight, out of mind, slowly forgotten. It is not just that every time I return to Santa Barbara I have once less friend living in town. It is also that every time I return, people just aren’t as interested in seeing me after six months away.

I think for a lot of people it is hard. They ask me what I have done in the last five months. I say Croatia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Monacco, etc. I ask them what they have done, and they say, “Same ol’ same ol’.” It is as if I am rubbing my life style in their face.

So, now I find it more comfortable to simply say, “Work as usual,” and down play the awe found in so many places all over the world.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

If you lead an incredible life and no one wants to hear it, is it really incredible?

ABSOLUTELY.

Incredibly cool.

But not being able to relate in the usual casual conversations, is a bit, well, stupid, and lonely.

Tunis Had A Thing For Doors

One of the oddities you notice in traveling extensively is the existence of a cultural gradient.

Things change over distance. Except in extreme cases (such as along the German border during the cold war) cultures fuse from one to another rather than change abruptly at a line. Its akin to the geographic changes, mountains rarely border flat land; they border foothills, and then rolling hills, and then come the flatlands.

Take for example, I don’t know why, but a Brooklyn accent. A person who grew up outside the Brooklyn City line by thirty feet will still have a Brooklyn accent even though they did not technically grow up in Brooklyn. After all, it is just an arbitrary line.

All matters of culture are this way. In traveling extensively, I have had the privilege to see the strange mergers and transitions.

For example, Turkey despite being over ninety percent Islamic, uses Latin script not Arabic. There simply cannot be a line in the sand where European culture ends and Islamic begins. There must be a bridge, and that is Turkey, nestled between Europe and Middle East with cultural aspects taken from both.

I bring this up for Tunisia. This strange merging was clear in Tunisia. Tunisia is in North Africa and is very much culturally confused. It is for all intents and purposes a culturally Middle Eastern country. It has a traditional Middle Eastern medina, which is a twisted maze of narrow alleys serving as the market place with vendors in all its nooks. I was there during Ramadan so, in keeping with Islamic tradition, no eateries were open. On the other hand, the nooks sold Nikes and clothing like what you would find at any American shop targeted at teenage girls. The newspaper stands sold Cadbury chocolate. Little kids, both boys and girls ran around in school uniforms. And most striking, the county speaks French!

It is very strange to be in a middle-eastern style bazaar (shopping district)where you are being hostilely solicited to purchase things, in customary Middle Eastern fashion...

Except the solicition is IN FRENCH!!!

(It was a French protectorate for 75 years).

That is just so wrong in my mind I can hardly handle it. It is kind of like, if you can imagine, going to a baseball game where all the chanting and announcements are in German. The whole city was confused, with its European style streets and signs and cars driving through corridors where people are selling produce from boxes on the ground.

It was clearly a city with a split personality between European and Middle Eastern.

In the Middle Eastern/European blend also found in Turkey, women dressed conservatively. Shirts covered all the way to women’s wrists and very rarely did collar deviate from the neck line. But as in Turkey, I wore a knee length skirt and a t-shirt without any notice from the local people. One of the most endearing thing I noticed was the teenage girls. Remember how I said that the some clothing in the medina resembled any western style clothing store. Well western style teenage girl clothing has a ridiculous level of emphasis on cleavage and is remarkably revealing. This does not fall into the acceptable realm of Middle Eastern/European conservative blend. So the girls just layer up. They where all the crazy styles found in Wet Seal and other western clothing stores… but in layers such that they conform to Middle Eastern/European conservative dress standards. I found this to be endearing. Teenage girls are teenage girls. It is still all about the clothes.

Anyway, once of its amazing charms was its infatuation with ornate doors. I mean the door were out of control.



The small circular black points are rounded head bolts. Then you will notice two symetrical round knockers toward the top of the door. The lower looking asymmetrical knocker is a door knob. It will be clearer below.



This one has a couple mail slots.



This is a great illustration of how the doors were actually opened. All the doors in this shape had mini-doors. That is why there are offset knobs. This one also has a mail slot.



These two doors are kind of close up. The streets were so narrow; I could not get any further away. (I literally took these pictures by placing my camera against the opposing wall and myself standing beside the camera, not behind it.)

In this one you can kind of see the outline of the mini-door. The door is actually lopsided. It is a very old building. In this one, all the black accent points are rounded head bolts. (Having just painted my front door myself, perhaps inspired by these pictures, I cannot even begin to imagine what a pain in the ass painting a door around all those bolts in it is. It explains why in the photo above, the bolts are just painted over.)



Lastly, this door is a less common style because it is not rounded at the top. The similar tile work around the door though was fairly common.



And for reasons I never understood, they only came in blue and yellow.

There was also this stunning building. I have no idea what it was. Much like its schizophrenic linguistic cultural nature (French/Islamic), its buildings are likewise, with some very European and some very Islamic. This building in my mind is the perfect Middle Eastern building.



And finally mister swaby guy. He, and his friend who is not shown, were protecting some building. I know mister swaby did not grow up anywhere near the Punjabi region of India, but he none the less really reminded me of that guy, ‘Punjab,’ from the movie Anne.



So, I have some sort of fun homework for you. In your day ahead, consider the fusion of cultures you encounter. Traveling is fun, and I love it. But you don't have to go far to see the fusion of cultures. Traveling opens your eyes to it.

Personally, I am going to the California Pizza Kitchen for lunch where I can have a Kung Pao Pizza for lunch.

Cultural fusion is everywhere. Look in your own backyard and enjoy the charm.

Home, Contentedly

In traveling I often doubt my choice to stay in Santa Barbara with so many wonderful less expensive places in the world, closer to family and friends, such as my sister’s wonderful place in North Carolina.

But I needed only to board the plane to Santa Barbara to know that Santa Barbara is home.

It is not only the place, which is stunning, but the people. I boarded the plane with an exuberant band of strangers, all good humored about trading their last twenty-four hours of delightful vacation and dreadful air travel mishaps.

But just the noise of all the commingled voices said one thing, a mass of happy, laid-back, go-with-the-flow people.

As I sit here on the plan, I wonder and question whether I am projecting my happiness at going home on this random bunch of people.

But my neighbor, the passenger aside me just interrupted my ponderances with some friendly conversation about the people on the flight.

I have been on a lot of flights in the last week and a half.

Nice to Heathrow
Heathrow to Boston
Boston to Charlotte
Charlotte to Greenville (NC)
Greenville to Charlotte
Charlotte to Las Vegas

And at the moment, Las Vegas to Santa Barbara (for me twelve hours late).

Six flights, and the tone and feel of this flight is different. Not because I am going home, but because a little bit of home greeted me here.

I had more thoughts, but I spend the rest of the flight chatting with the lovely woman beside me.

Having been here a day now, I remember it is not just the 78 F (24 C) weather in November but the real Aloha feel of the people in Santa Barbara that I love. I have talked to my neighbors, my pharmacist and even the woman at the 7-11. They all know me and welcomed me home, after five months away. I have played with other people’s dogs running free and happy at the beach. I took a five mile walk along a stretch of beach where, in the entire five miles, I only saw six people. I have sat at a green light, quietly, patiently along with others, while the person ahead of us played with their radio unaware of the light change. I went to visit someone and walked through their wide open front door only to find they were not home and would not be for six hours.

"Mmmm," contentedly, "Home."

Off to enjoy the sun…

Here is a picture from yesterday:

Out The Window

My life is a strange one. I awoke the other day convinced I was in the Amazon (where I was in February) only to be surprised by the view out my window, which was of Sorrento Italy rather than Brazilian rain forest.

This morning dawn breaks over a large pond spotted by waking ducks and geese occasionally orating with an annoyed honk. It is a warm November morning, in North Carolina, over a glassy pond, lined with green grass, sprinkled with evergreen needles and small inconspicuous summer homes.

I have always had a weakness for the south, with its warm weather, warm light and year-round vegetation. The south has a charm I have always found appealing… but about 1 billion zillion inhabitants, of the small buzzing variety, that I don’t.

In America, we move. We move across town, across the state, across the country. Perhaps, unlike Europe, because it is so culturally similar, we find it easier to just pick up and go.

I remember when I was little my mom had friends all over the country, and that seemed very odd to me. How did all these people wind up all these places? And in my five year old mind, where friends were a dime a dozen, why bother keeping in touch with all these people so far away if long distance calls were soooooo expensive?

Between my sisters and I, just counting since we each turned eighteen, twelve years ago, we have lived in Santa Barbara, Philadelphia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Miami, Hanover New Hampshire, New Bern North Carolina, London and Edinburgh Scotland.

In the past few days I have visited each my sisters, one in Hanover and now the other in North Carolina. I love them both incredibly. I see they are both lonely in the small towns they have been lured to.

I want one of those transporters from Star Trek where in a heart beat you can travel to the far regions of the world, Santa Barbara to Hanover, in a moment just for coffee.

I worry, and know, that my sisters and I are unlikely to live in the same state, time zone, or possibly even country ultimately.

I love to travel, but there is nothing like hanging out in front of the television with your sister.

So as I sit her enjoying dawn on the pond, cool are all the places I have been and stupid is being able to take my sisters with me.

Since I am on vacation, I plan on making up for lost entries. (The integral word in that sentence is 'plan'.)