Liberty at Sea

On August 1 of last year, we closed the door to our home of the last several years and the life that went with it. The last thing to leave, mewing loudly as I carried her to the car, was our cat, Zorrie. I cried a little as I settled her into the backseat; it hurt to take that sweet kitty away from her home. Cats are creatures of habit. I guess that I am too, though for me habits are meant to be broken, so my feelings were bittersweet.

Three days later, having dropped Zorrie off at my sister’s house and gotten my sister in return, we were boarding the “Liberty of the Seas,” a cruise ship bound for Mexico and Honduras. I never thought that I would find myself on a cruise, but my sister Debbie loves them and through a series of circumstances had a cabin booked on this one and no one to travel with, so she asked if we would like to go. It just so happened to coincide with our exodus from everyday life, so we said yes. I think I would always say yes to offers of travel, but cruises never much appealed to me, so I agreed with some apprehension. I looked forward to spending time with my sister, but I was so looking forward to our next adventure that I was seeing this as some kind of an interruption to my previously scheduled programming.

My doubts were not quickly assuaged. After standing a queue or two, we were finally swallowed up into the ship and spat out into what can only be described as a mall, albeit an upscale one. It was well appointed, pretty even, in the way that a nice shopping center can be. There was nary a sign that you were on a ship but for the signs posted in the cruise sales office. Apparently, people go on cruises in order to purchase their next voyage. Also, if you need a Swiss watch, a fancy new dress, maybe a diamond or two, you’re in luck. Fortunately for folks like me, who shouldn’t even be allowed around such things, there are also bars. Once I sighted the facsimile of an English pub, I began to calm down.

Liberty of the Seas Hoof and Claw pub

After a pint or two, our cabin was ready and we went in search. Like all grand hotels, the hallways, stretching great lengths of ship, all looked more or less the same. We soon learned to recognize our position by way of the colorful art festooning the halls, a small differentiation, and made our way to the walk-in closet that would serve as our home for the next ten days. It was small, but comfortable enough, and of little relevance inasmuch as we wouldn’t be spending much time there anyway. Soon, it was dinner time and we found ourselves at a table of strangers, who were soon to be friends. Though we were disparate in personality, conversation flowed, and I enjoyed getting to know our new shipmates.

One topic of discussion was the fact that as we sat there, so did the ship. Our departure, originally scheduled for 4, had been postponed till 7, but one of our tablemates had heard that we were further delayed, till 9 or 10. Good enough, as long as the delays didn’t make us miss our first port of call. Our appetites were soon sated, so off we went to explore the ship a little further. At 10, we were on deck, waiting to see Galveston recede into the distance. But the ship stayed put, and we overheard someone saying that we wouldn’t be sailing till 1 am. Another pint, perhaps? At 1, we returned topside, only to discover that inertia continued to hold sway. Was this just a hotel at sea? Finally, we retired.

About the time I made it to sleep, I felt the faint rumblings of the vessel as it finally pulled anchor, and by the time I made it to deck in the morning, land was nowhere to be seen. Breakfast, which we chose to eat in the main dining room, was good, but not great. Though we soon came to the conclusion that food in the main dining room was superior to that in the buffet restaurant or the auxiliary establishments where prodigious heaps of grub were to be had any time day or night, I would compare the cuisine there to that of a good, but not extravagant hotel. It ranged from good to very good without reaching for greatness. There are, at extra cost, a handful of nicer restaurants on board, but we didn’t avail ourselves of them at any point, out of frugality and the fact that the fare in front of us was more than adequate.

Sated, we began our explorations of the ship in earnest. Liberty of the Seas is a big boat. Or rather, as we were frequently admonished, a big ship. One of a set of triplets that became the largest passenger ships in the world in 2007 (though they only held that title for two years,) it will carry almost 4000 passengers along with a crew of over 1300. With 15 levels and at a total length of almost 1112 feet, there is a lot to reconnoiter.

Most decks are primarily taken up by the cabins into which those many folk are shoehorned. Though it’s fun to speculate about the people behind those endless doors, stalking the halls is mostly just for your mall walkers and the lost. Most of the action goes on in your lower floors, where the dining room, main theater, bars, casino, art gallery, the large shopping center at sea that I was talking about earlier, and a couple of the specialty restaurants reside. Also, on the upper decks, where you’ll find spas, pools, dance clubs, video arcade, water slides, more bars, and the Windjammer café, which is the aforementioned buffet restaurant. On the uppermost deck is a chapel, which is a good quiet place to look out on the endless sea and contemplate the big questions, or at least decide what bar you want to go to next.

One remarkable aspect of all these doings is that the majority of them take place indoors. They might just as well be in Las Vegas. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I somehow had in mind the great voyages of literature, perhaps a colossal whale or two. Although on the upper decks you can look out at the ocean, you do so surrounded by cavorting children and with the background beat of popular music. You are also several stories in the air. It helps that you can do this while sipping on a fruity cocktail, but it didn’t really fulfill my seagoing fantasies. I was thinking of the murky deep, of quietude and brooding, a secluded deck chair and a good book.

It took me a while, but I finally found it. I hesitate to mention it, as I don’t want it to be overrun, but in the interest of honest reportage, I feel I must. Also, it just may be that what I enjoy the most may not have the same appeal to others, so I’m probably safe. On the lower couple of decks, out where the lifeboats and some of the mechanicals necessary to keep the ship at sea abide, there are narrow outdoor decks which are much closer to the water and much less encumbered by bustle and noise. There are shuffleboard courts, but little else to impair the intrepid sailor or walking enthusiast. It is even possible- and this is both my favorite part and the thing that I am most hesitant to reveal- to go up a set of stairs and find yourself on the bow of the ship. The first time I discovered it, I was blissfully alone, hearing the sound of the rushing waves and feeling the force of the wind in my hair. Finally, I had my moment of Zen.  

On subsequent days, there were occasionally a few other passengers up there, posing for the inevitable Titanic picture or marveling at the sky and sea. But by and large, it remained a reprieve from the bustle of the voyage and my favorite place to be. Whenever I could, I would sit out there and read or look out at the sky or the stars. Though I enjoyed our daily routine of food, entertainment, and camaraderie, I also appreciated these quiet moments and can picture them in my mind even today.

The first two days of our voyage were spent at sea and that was all there was to see. These days were spent, as I say, in exploration and settling into something of a routine, and were anything but boring. If anything, I was overstimulated, what with the constant barrage of sight and sound, entertainment, new friends, rich food, sales pitches (there is a constant effort, especially the first couple of days, to upsell you on the fancier restaurants, duty-free shopping, and of course, your next cruise,) and Caribbean cocktails. Did I mention that there are drinks to be had? So naturally, I sought respite in a good book, sitting on the deck, just as I had fantasized.

I was reading Kerouac at the time, predictably delving into On the Road for the umpteenth time as inspiration for our upcoming travels, and I sank into his language, as I am wont to do when I read any of the authors that I have loved over the years. In a drowsy stupor, I heard his voice in my head as I stalked the ship. At first, he didn’t seem so happy; (cue Charlie Parker)

Kerouac at sea.

Listless, I walked the long wooden decks, where finally I found solace from the buzzing brainless, the moiling mass of bing and bang, the nothing time of filling. The ocean at least had something to say, though in tones too deep for understanding. Wild but caged, I paced and looked through bars at inviting swaths of cool blue waves and envied the denizens of the deep. I needed to move, to drive fast through landscapes of dry and dust, or along looming mountains of good solid rock and threats of avalanche, through unfathomable straightaways of amber grass, to be in charge of destiny and its great maw of consumption. Aft-ship, I stood on a small and slippery platform and watched the roiling wake as we moved inextricably through the sea. Hands on rail, I thought of vaulting over, taking my chance at freedom, swimming for it. And then the irony- as this grand greyhound sailed for distant horizon, I should get my freedom from sinking slow into depths. I laughed loud and hard, shook my head and moved on.

Having shaken off the ghost of Kerouac, I went on about my day. I ate. I drank. I played cards with my sister and Wendy. I sat in on a talk about the artist Peter Max, which turned out to be a sales pitch for prints of his work, purportedly at prices significantly below the market. Though I love his work, it turns out that I don’t have thousands of dollars to invest in such things and I think that the pitchman knew it right away. I ate some more. The show that night (there are multiple shows most every night) was a big band concert. It was there that the voice of Kerouac returned;

The clamor of dinner and the empty talk behind me, I wandered again the limpid nothing of nautical interior until through half-opened door I heard some pale but adequate imitation of swing. Entering to empty table, of which there were many, I ordered a drink, paid no attention to the waitress, and settled into my malaise. The band played, indifferent, and I looked around the half-empty room, an ancient genealogy, heads bobbing, a midwestern dream bop bar. Old feet tapped themselves sore and complacent shipboard musicians, chained here at their oars, sucking the teat of mercenary corporate moneybags, couldn’t help but loose the crazed ecstatic wondering of sound. I watched, dull pallor of mind giving way slowly, with drop of something black and bitter, and let the hymn drip over me like store-bought honey, not wild but still sweet. There, behind the beat, not in the notes, hidden in harmony, masked by melody, there was the ringing note of life, blade slicing air, not landing, just moving on like we’re all moving on, crashing forever into the inevitable crest of Now. In that moment I saw again the Truth, dissolved into it, and all was right with the world.

So there you have it. It took music and the spectre of Jack Kerouac to rouse me from my slumber. Having embarked on this voyage thinking that it was somehow the lesser of my adventures, I realized that new revelations can be had anywhere if you only remain aware. I found my personal Liberty at Sea. New experiences are valuable in and of themselves, and travel, any kind of travel, is an open door. It’s a lesson worth remembering.

STAY TUNED.

Just the Beginning

We hadn’t been out of our house for four days when first someone asked us about what we were doing with our lives. My sister had surprisingly refrained from asking too many questions. But here, at a table of strangers, still at dock in Galveston for a cruise that was to be the kickoff for our new life, one of our table mates was curious as to who we were and what we were up to. Natural enough, considering that we were to be sharing meals for the next ten days, but I was a bit taken aback by the question. We are semi-retired, we said, and in the first stages of starting a new business, we hemmed and hawed, uncertain as to what to say.

In the coming days, we became fast friends, and our travel companions were encouraging to us. But the question lingered in my mind, and now, months later, I still find myself wondering; Who are we, and what are we doing? How did we end up going down this road? Did it all begin the day we boarded that ship?

My initial inclination was to say no. The cruise was a vacation taken before we embarked on the odyssey that we are currently in the midst of. Because I was so enamored of the idea of the great American road trip, my tendency was to believe that the morning that we left Texas heading north was the start of it all. Symbolically at least, our adventures began the morning before we left, as I stood by my parents’ gravestones, saying goodbye and feeling a little guilty for abandoning them despite the fact that they have been gone for some years now. As I brushed away the dirt and disposed of the dead flowers, I felt as though I was saying goodbye to my old life and blindly setting off on a new one.

Looking back now though, I see that there are other candidates for the genesis of this journey. There was a day last spring- exactly what day I can’t say- when Wendy and I decided that it was time for us to make a change. I had recently left my job and Wendy was more than ready to leave hers; she’d put in her time and was ready to move on to something more personally fulfilling. We thought we had enough in retirement savings to take a gamble on ourselves, and so with the loosest of plans, we determined to make the leap. Maybe that was the real beginning of our quest for the life unknown.

Or maybe this expedition really began the day that Wendy gave notice that she was quitting her job. After weeks spent bringing projects to their natural conclusion, I know that it was cause for some celebration. Though not as much as when she actually worked her last day. Beers were drunk and so were we… that was certainly the day that we celebrated our emancipation. What a great feeling, to throw off the shackles of the workaday world.

Of course, that ending had a beginning too, when she got that job because someone knew her from the previous job, so I guess we have to go back to then. Or perhaps we have to look even further, to when we moved to Austin to take that first job, leaving behind small town east Texas. Or to the moment a few years earlier when Wendy decided to go to graduate school. In my attempt to figure out when this whole venture started, I might have to go back to when Wendy and I first got together. Or it could be that I have to go back to when we were born. Or our parents were born. Or when the first people walked this earth. Or and or till the beginning of time itself.

Which leads me to the obvious conclusion that we are always at the beginning. For every ending, for everything that gets left behind, there is a new beginning. For every breath that we exhale, there is an inhalation, until there are no more breaths, and then…? We are forevermore riding the wave of now and the crest of that wave is the source of all new creation.

So there, sitting amongst a table of strangers (and future friends,) stumbling through some semblance of an explanation as to who we are and what we are going to be, is apt enough an answer to the question of when this journey began.
Now, I guess that insofar as those other questions are concerned- who are we and what are we up to- we’ll have to wait for another day.

STAY TUNED.

An Odyssey

We were heading north out of Tucumcari, NM when I first saw what I’d been looking for, which was… nothing. We’d just spent a couple of days driving on what’s left of “the Mother Road,” aka Route 66, through western Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and into New Mexico, which I enjoyed thoroughly, but which is far from nothing.

OK, it’s not actually that far from nothing, but what it is is a series of kitschy souvenir shops spaced irregularly across the remains of what was once known as the Main Street of America, but which, like most of the Main Streets in America, has fallen into disrepair. If not for the nostalgia-driven tourists, most of whom seem to be from elsewhere, there would probably be no Route 66 today. Which would be a shame, in that I love both the history and the schmaltz of it. To be able to look back at the cars, the motor courts and the old roadside attractions, and to do it surrounded by other equally wide-eyed folk- including, as we did, a group of Canadian bikers- is a wonderful experience. I want to see more of it, and we will at some point in the not too distant future.

But there, a hundred miles from nowhere, alone on a desolate stretch of road that ran straight ahead as far as the eye can see, I saw what those road warriors of old must have seen driving west on Route 66, the thing that my compatriots of the last couple of days would never see whilst on their nostalgia trip, which was… nothing. Miles and miles of glorious nothing.

Of course, there is no nothing. What I was actually seeing, apart from white stripes on cracked blacktop, was the endless beauty of the northern New Mexico high plains, all red dirt, rocks, mesquite trees, and cactus. All this while driving past at 60 miles an hour until finally we decided to stop just to take in the quiet splendor of it all.

It may not look like much, but being there, no sound but the wind in my hair, eyes wide open to the consonance of it all, it filled me with gladness. Gladness to be alive, to be here in nature, to be here with my love, to have begun this adventure; I knew then that we had chosen the right path.

When Wendy and I began this odyssey, we thought people would think that we’d lost our gourds. Why would we give up our jobs, get rid of much of the detritus of ordinary life, give up security? Why would anyone jerk the rug out from under their own life? Surprisingly, most everyone took it in stride; after all, it wasn’t their lives we were messing around with. Our concerns about other people were mostly masking our own insecurities. It’s scary to take off down a road when you don’t know where it’s going. Ultimately, though, we realized that we had always been on the long cut, that we are all on the long cut, whether we are aware of it or not.

So what does it mean to be on the Long Cut? Well, in one sense, it is the antidote to the world that most of us live in, the world of hurry, hurry, the world of more money, more things, more distractions, and more stress. We tend to behave as though our lives are dictated by the pressures of living this American life. Today’s America finds us working harder for fewer rewards, trading our time and life energy for a dream, largely unfulfilled, of being as well off as the people we see on TV. And at the cost of our health, our families, our very lives. The Long Cut is the antithesis of that. But it is also a good deal more.

It is common wisdom that one should stop and take a huff of the roses. We all know that family and friends are important, even though that knowledge may come at a distance. If we didn’t already know, a quick read of the obituaries will remind us that life is short. Those of us who are not Hindus, Jainists, Buddhists, or Sikhs are fairly sure that we only live once. Platitudes aside, all of these things are true, and though we tend not to give these ideas too much brain space, we mostly know it. To be on the Long Cut is to live it.

In another sense, the Long Cut stands opposed to the shortcut. To take a shortcut is, often, to fail to be thorough, to do a shoddy job. In this sense, the Long Cut would be to roll your sleeves up and get to the real work of living, to do things the right way. Yes, it might be more difficult, it might take longer, but the work will prove to be its own reward. And that’s the thing; as I said earlier, we are all on the Long Cut. Our lives are short and singular, our task is to live it to the fullest, and though it may seem difficult to achieve, it is our responsibility to live it the best we can.

So we are driving down the backroads, taking in the scenery. We are stopping to sniff the air, and we’re going where our nose takes us. We are doing the work of living. And of creating, which is, perhaps, the best response to life that we can have. More about that later.

STAY TUNED.

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