CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  The end of a rainy day of tasks. A grabbed meal from the market buffet. We sat at the eating shelf looking out at the parking lot. Our recycled boxes of food and plastic forks in hand. Maybe it was the rain, the colors, the cars passing and swaths of people blurred by the evening lights. It sent my thoughts back to other places we had been, Seattle, Paris, Vancouver. Places were it rained and the meals we shared. Were tables were elegant and forks silver. Elegant was not here. The chairs too short to be comfortable, maybe a Bezos thing, I don’t know. It was his store. A gruff short Russian sat four chairs away speaking Russian, sometimes slapping a hand on the eating shelve. His deals still happening. To the right a group of market employees sitting at a table. Contemplating their future I guessed, but not speaking of it. My thoughts returned to memories of the past, to maybe repeating those grand times. I wondered if she thought the same, but here we were. A common market, a pla...

  There is no Lost and Found Department for people. Thoreau once said, “Not until we are lost, do we begin to understand ourselves.” Sometimes though it’s difficult to reach that lofty goal. Feeling lost can seem like drowning. I ts been said that as many as 60% of people in the US feel loneliness. The reasons run deep. Rapid changes in society and the workplace can make you feel shoved aside, a failure, frozen in time. The digital world which pushes bounty and pleasure can leave you grasping for a foothold in the good life it promotes, when at the same time yours is crumbling.  There is no one solution for this. You have to create your own Lost and Found Department. One where you look up from what media is saying you should be. To recognize that it’s not all about money and fame. Where you realize the real currency to finding yourself are the love and relationships you build over time. Perhaps the best place to start is loving yourself.

THE LAST BLUE NOTE I watched again the travel show by Oliver Weber “On The Rails.” The opening episode where he takes the train across the deserts of Mauritania, the most impactual. Oliver makes copious notes in his journal as he travels, even running into another traveler who also journals, adding watercolor sketches between lines. There is so much in this that is me, trains, travel, the desert and art. I have the tools, the journals still blank, the kit of colored water color pencils, a brush to add water, and a pocket of money for the ticket. All things that could fill my life cup with to savor and share. It’s like listening to a jazz player waiting for the last blue note to finally stir you into going. The train from New Orleans will be in Charlotte at 5:49 am tomorrow. It will travel to NY City passing through DC, Phili, Durham, Richmond and places in-between. I wonder each morning why I am not on it. Maybe still waiting the last blue note before I go…