the cassandra pages

Thoughts on Travel

We've just come back to Montreal from an intense, eye-opening, two-week trip to Sicily. I'll be writing more about our experiences over the next couple of weeks, but first I wanted to say a few things about travel in general, because I've been thinking about that a lot during this trip.

I feel extremely fortunate to be able to travel. It was always a goal for J. and me, but with a few exceptions, we put it off: as self-employed people it was hard for us to get away for extended periods of time, and travel requiring airfare has always been expensive. We lived frugally for many years in order to be able to put money aside for later in life, and I'm grateful that we're still in good enough shape to be able to enjoy the kind of adventuresome travel we like to do. Nevertheless, I know I'm lucky, and that there are lots of reasons why many people never get to go far away, or choose not to.

Unlike my husband, who had traveled in Europe and the Middle East when he was young, I grew up in a family and among people who didn't travel much at all, and though I longed to go to faraway places, I was afraid. Not of flying, which I've always found exciting, but like my mother and other family members I had fears of getting sick or lost or being unable to sleep, and there was no one to give me the confidence to prepare well, then just go, see it as an adventure, and deal with whatever happens. You have to learn to travel, and it wasn't until I met J. that I had someone to trust and confide in who helped me overcome those fears. I loved big cities, but was nervous about them, especially getting round on my own, but eventually I got over that, too. I can still remember the thrill of accomplishment the first time I went off on my own in London, and found my way without trouble: it's given me a lifelong affection for that city. People who meet me now may see me as worldly, urban, confident and sophisticated, but there was a time when I certainly wasn't any of those things, and I have a lot of empathy for people who find travel daunting. Those fears still live inside me, and once in a while they still surface.

Travel, for me, is a privilege and a responsibility. If I'm lucky enough to go somewhere, I try to learn as much as I can, and to absorb that experience deeply so that I can share it in some way, do something with it that isn't just for myself. Some people travel inside their own bubble, like the loud, inconsiderate, demading tourists we all sometimes encounter. Some people seem like they aren't really seeing anything, just capturing each sight -- or themselves in front of it -- on their phone or iPad so they can show their friends they were there. I guess I see travel more as extra-ordinary time: an opportunity to leave normal comforts and routines aside, be vulnerable to experience, to suspend judgement, and to be open to the potential for internal change. I love the feeling of heightened sensory awareness, of having to figure complex things out and make quick decisions, of trying to communicate in unfamiliar languages and make connections simply as one human being to another. I like projecting myself less, and listening and seeing more.

J. and I have chosen not to stay in fancy hotels or eat out a lot. Because we are sometimes in locations where there is poverty, we keep a low profile, dress down, and try to blend in, even though it's obvious we aren't locals. Usually we stay in apartments or small b&bs where we can cook meals from food bought in local markets and do our own laundry; we try to bike or walk as much as we can, and to take care of ourselves rather than expecting to be served. I'm concerned about the carbon cost of air travel, but also realize that the money we spend in local economies like Mexico is helpful for the people there. I don't feel guilty about traveling, but I think we need to be aware of what we're doing and the impact it has.

I also realize that we are seen as immensely privileged by many of the people we meet: I am able to come into their place and go away again; I have money and freedom and opportunities that many people, both here and there, will never have. Being sensitive to these emotional complications is a significant part of travel for me, and I hope it informs what I write and what I draw or photograph -- or choose not to.

The more places I go, and the more our world becomes divided between haves and have-nots, the more I find myself thinking about these issues. Sicily is surrounded by the Mediterranean; its proximity to Africa and the Middle East has affected its entire history as well as the present. Refugees are not a theoretical concept to be debated, but an everyday reality. Mexico City has been hit by devastating earthquakes; its people live with corrupt government, injustice, grinding poverty, and constant violence.

I've been deeply affected and changed by what I've seen, not just as a witness to the present but to the layers of human history that travel reveals. I'm never sure what to do with it, but I don't want to merely collect beauty and ignore the awfulness. I need to find ways to hold and express both, because our world is, and has always been, made of both darkness and light.

Hattie

I was sad to learn today of the death of Marianna Schaeffer, author of the blog "Hattie's Web," and a longtime commenter and friend of mine at The Cassandra Pages. Over the past months, she faced her terminal illness as she did everything else: with courage, honesty, and no nonsense. I'll miss her intelligent, straight-forward opinions and comments on contemporary affairs, especially politics, and I'll miss her friendship and companionship online. May she rest in peace.

Thinking with Merton about America's Predicament

The Orange Line has fancy new cars, and whenever I get on one of these shiny trains, I feel like I must be one of the first passengers. That's why when I sat down early yesterday morning, it was a surprise that the empty seat was warm. I hadn't seen anyone exit, so they must have gotten off at a previous station. Of course, I told myself, thousands of people have already taken this train, it is no longer brand new. But the strange feeling of someone else's presence persisted, along with my musings about the places our bodies temporarily occupy in an urban environment, only to be replaced by another anonymous body, and another.

When I am on the train, I'm often going downtown to sing, or returning from singing, and though I seldom wear earphones or use my phone, bits of music play repetitively in my head. Yesterday I was going to the cathedral to sing a complex modern Mass in the morning, and later, music by Orlando Lassus, and I have noticed that this awareness sometimes makes me feel special. But the warmth of the empty seat, and the presence of the other passengers, reminded me that no one is any more special than anyone else, or, rather, that we are all equally special, even though I may have been the only person on the train who was thinking that.

The Montreal metro platforms aren't crowded on Sunday mornings, but as the trains arrive, they make me think of Mexico City, where the opening and closing mouths of each train disgorge and swallow up vast quantities of human beings. There, too, I often remember Thomas Merton's words: "What if everyone knew that they were going around shining like the sun?"

Merton wrote those words after having a spiritual experience -- a revelation of oneness -- on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky, one day when he had left his monastery of Gethsemanii for a medical appointment or some similar reason. I had a similar revelation while waiting at a deli counter in a grocery store in Hanover, New Hampshire, nearly twenty-five years ago, and from that point on I have known that I am connected to every other being; that we all possess, at our core, the same divine spark (Merton called it "the eternal diamond"); and at the same time, that we are each entirely unique, special, precious, beloved. It's not explainable in words, and so I will not try; it's better (while still being impossible) to try to live out of that awareness in all of one's relationships. But it is also clear to me, as it was to Merton, that most of humanity goes around unaware of who they actually are, and of the potential for love, compassion, harmony, beauty and joy for which we are made. Babies come into the world open and trusting and full of potential -- but then other people and the world begin to impinge, and the separation, alienation, and undermining begin, accompanied by a gnawing hunger for love and for something ineffable that we sense is out there. All our lives, we remember the grandmother or father, the teacher, the friend who saw the spark within us when we were young, who saw us as we really were, who recognized and tried to nurture the best in us. And all our lives we suffer because of those who did, and do, the opposite. Under good circumstances, or sometimes against all odds, some people find their way and manage to live lovingly toward others and toward themselves, in spite of setbacks. Most struggle. And a few slip into the darkness and become capable of terrible things.

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We can blame society, parents, religious institutions, educational and justice systems, the economic situation into which we were born, racism, homophobia, misogyny: all are part of the systems that maim and destroy people. Today I read a number or articles about guns in America that sought to prove that gun control was the answer to that country's epidemic of violence. But until a society looks beyond the gun to the hand that holds it, into the mind that picked it up and felt the need to buy it, and beyond that mind into the forces that not only made the gun easily available but created the desire to be prepared to shoot and kill, there is absolutely no hope for change.

Let's be clear. This is a country that fought a devastating, bloody, and still unresolved civil war war over the right of certain human beings to own and enslave other human beings. It is a country that committed genocide on the native peoples. It is a country that has treated all its "enemies" who were not white and European as sub-human and unequal, and still does -- and steadfastly refuses to discuss any of this history or to acknowledge the legacy of violence, injustice, and inequality that is interwoven and perpetuated in its national narrative. America definitely needs gun control. But what it needs more is a gigantic mirror.

Thomas Merton's life and thinking were profoundly influenced by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear arms race, which he saw as potentially the most terrible development in human history, not just because of its ability to create Armageddon, but because of what the existence of such weapons does to the human psyche. Merton was born in 1915 and died, accidentally, at age 53 in 1968. I was a teenager then, certainly influenced by growing up just after WWII, by the Cuban Missile crisis and the continuation of the nuclear arms race, then by the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of those times. My life has already been a decade longer than Merton's. I've seen the failure of the anti-war movement to significantly endure past the mid 1970s, and have been dismayed by the rise of corporate power, the increasing disparity of wealth and opportunity, the militarization of American society, the persistent threat of nuclear war, and the incredible lack of compassion for immigrants and anyone who is "other", as well as our own poor and disenfranchised. The wrong turn after 9/11 has plunged the world into much greater instability and fear, and gravely altered American society: much of what we are seeing today has felt predictable to me for a very long time.

And yet, the sense persists that humanity evolves on a time frame that I cannot see or comprehend. I've just been reading some ancient history, about Greek and Roman city-states in other parts of the Mediterranean. The cruelty of the tyrants and states in those days was on a scale that we can barely imagine. When a city was conquered, its entire population was often destroyed, or sold into slavery. And these were not uncivilized or unsophisticated people, they were often, as the writer put it, "educated people who spoke Greek and simply ran afoul of the massive inferiority complex of the Romans toward the Greek world." We don't physically enslave entire populations now, or crucify 6,000 slaves along the nation's most prominent highway, as the Romans did after a rebellion. We do other things that, on the surface, at least, seem less devastating and less cruel. 2,000 years of history have not taught a majority of human beings to share, or to lose, or to resolve difficulties without resorting to violence in our words or actions toward others, or by turning that energy against ourselves in destructive ways we don't even recognize.

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So I am not particularly optimistic about humanity in general in the short term, but individuals can actually live differently if we are willing to keep our eyes and hearts open, and resist the temptation of following the herd. We can do a great deal for one another to make these times more bearable, especially if our relationships go deeper than the general discourse on social media. We can find strength as well as solace in the arts, in our work, in the natural world, in learning, in openness to difference and ways and people we do not know. We can learn to see and refuse the violence in our own selves, nipping it before it flowers into malevolence that affects our own spirit and those around us. We can try to be the people who see the best in each other, and encourage that, especially in the young.

There is so much work to do. Please, let's get on with it.