Dimensions of a Travelers Musings

Travel is often viewed as a luxury, a special occasion, something to look forward to throughout the year while we toil at a job we may barely endure. We dream of retirement as sleeping in late while travelling throughout the world. It is truly a splendid way to invest time. Yet travel also provides important opportunity for introspection and for contemplation.

On a recently Saturday I had breakfast in a Peruvian rain forest, spent the morning on the Amazon River in a high speed boat, ate lunch somewhere over Jamaica, enjoyed dinner in Miami, saw the end of the World Series in Atlanta and indulged in a snack in Birmingham, Alabama after driving across two states. "Homeless" describes the temporal and spacial discontinuity I found myself at the end of this day.

At the same time, modern jet travel does allow for some truly stupendous experiences. There is nothing like seeing Orion from seven miles up and watching a young moon rise in the east and transform the world into sterling. "Jet" gives a positive perspective on plane travel.

Vancouver has a fine system of electric trolleys. On one of these I had an especially pleasing conversation with the driver. It turns out we had travelled to several of the same remote places in Mexico. We had pleasing reminisces over those times. He also told me where I needed to be going in Vancouver. "Driver" remembers his civility.

Some years ago in Los Angeles the Rodney King verdict detonated incendiary riots that left the city smoldering in ashes. I happened to be in Norfolk, Virginia that day and saw instantaneous wire service reports of the LA meltdown and the dislocations in the financial markets in a hotel lobby. After completing my business of the day I made a visit to the fabulous botanical gardens located next to the airport and before departing the city made a visit to the Chrysler Museum of Art. "In the Course of a Morning Past on a Future Day" describes my experiences of that fateful day. In the gardens and galleries I did find hopeful evidence of higher possibilities for mankind, if only he will seek them out.

Each evening several gleaming white cruise ships leave the Canada Place docks in Vancouver at sunset and steam north to Alaska. It provides great food for thought to speculate about the lives of the hundreds of people on one of these ships as it steams off into the crimson sunset. "Cruise" documents my speculations.


Homeless

Catapulted beyond distant horizons,
ravenous turbines disperse familiarity.

Prosaic panoramas pass into memory,
strange scenes stunning me with wonder.

Cuprous galaxies cast themselves below,
illuminating me with cosmic curiosity.

The honed edge of darkness looming,
sharp suspicions seep into my soul.

Plunging into the tenebrous realm,
alien apprehension affronts me with certainty.

Where am I?


Jet

Yesterday, I am secure in my familiar,
enjoying contentment in circadian ritual.

Turbo-charged turbines thrust me beyond;
suspended between the known and unknown.

Orion's Sword cuts new pathways to heaven,
constellations of possibility crystallize.

A newborn lunar crescent rises in the East,
illuminating a transfigured world of Sterling.

Tomorrow I soar into unseen skies,
having Faith in the Pilot who carries me.

He enters the cloud before me.


Driver

Today, of all the buses out there,
I got on Yours and not another's.

My wrinkled transfer was expired.
You gave me a new one for a smile.

You told me of journeys beyond the Horizon.
Perhaps your coach might take me there.

I was clueless how to get home,
You promised to show me the Way.

We travelled together, you and I;
linking lives on our way to the stars.

Is this where I get off?


In the Course of a Morning Past on a Future Day

The automated wake-up system reliably shocks me out of a wispy dream state at a time determined days earlier. The video display terminal at the foot of my bed, programmed to bring the world into my consciousness has given me color visions of war in three countries within the first three moments of my new day. Within two more fragments of time the falling market values of corporations and commodities on three continents are old news. A hot shower warmed by the nuclear heat of a fusion reaction a hundred miles away limbers me up to face a world with it visions of war and financial uncertainty.

Sitting in a strange city with another traveller unknown to me until seconds earlier, we share a pleasant cordial breakfast of bran from the midwest, raisins from California, and bananas from Honduras. Our orange juice comes from Brazilian frozen concentrate as our coffee comes from cloud shrouded mountains in Columbia. As we enjoy our early repast a wall-mounted video display shows us live color visions of yet another war, where many express their volcanic rage for a perceived judicial failure. Forty citizens have been catapulted into that place from which no one ever sends postcards. Thousands have seen their dreams become but arsoned wisps of despair. Three thousand miles away we are on the front lines, reviewing a retrospective image of an incident fourteen months removed, now embedded in the celluloid of an amateur video tape cassette with the potential of igniting a nation to anarchy.

The energy of sunlight captured eons ago in the leaves of a far distant long extinct forest is now being released in precisely measured amounts as I flee the front-lines of armchair warfare. Will the sands of the future yield up the energy of today's sun or only regrets of what could have been for us? Will I be pulled from my place and pummeled into infamy by those knowing no other way?

The gravel is raked in the traditional manner with its calming centering textures, punctuated by the placement of islands of weathered rock. The Japanese maples cast their soothing rippling shadows across the stones. War is again but a wisp of transient thought.

Hillsides everywhere are inundated with a vast rippling sea of animated purple as tulips compete to release their pent-up colors. Billows of lavender, magenta, white, pink, orange, red, and scarlet conceal the life and color giving foliage beneath wanting nothing more than to give a spectral performance after a winter's preparation. Canals provide free-flowing memory of Venetian gondoliers. If we could but prepare for spring, and not warfare with ourselves.

This place is called the Enchanted Forest where trees have stood as sentinels over the bay for three centuries. In the forgiving shadows the dogwood and azaleas compete for honors where the azaleas will win with their ten foot mounds of pink fury. From beneath a canopy of newly leafed solar collectors of a delicate green shade, the water lilies provide stepping stones to the space age. Across the water tri-star jets with their infinite thrust throw three hundred travellers over the horizon. The sound of the tri-stars leaping seven miles up is exhilarating in its intensity. The tri-stars are gone, the symphony continues with an encore as feathered singers orchestrate their own airborne performance.

It is two millennia before the tri-stars came. Phidias expounds. Centuries later Da Vinci and Michelango capture their world in supernatural splendor. Raphael, Renoir, Canova, Murillo, and Rembrandt add their wisdom and experience. There is a promenade of verdant turf guarded by cast images of these giants of other eras. They remind me that as tri-stars throw travellers over the horizons, men of vision have been reaching for the horizons centuries before we knew earth was but a speck about an ordinary star. I am reminded that men of vision are the eyes of civilization. Our sightless societies stumble in darkness. The promenade leads to terraced plazas where one can stand at stone balustrades and have visions of a royal way of life where all can hope and dream.

A kindly man offers me assistance. In the age of tri-star jets he offers me help because a miracle of technology has allowed the repair of his brain after a stroke. He can't smile with his mouth but he can with his spirit. The tri-star age has allowed him to tend to the needs of a centuries old garden.

Two days travel away the room is dark, where shimmering colors modulated by the inspired visions of the Tiffany studios a hundred years ago are compelling. One is nearly moved to tears thinking of the beauty one being can create in a right spirit. Hundreds of colors prove but one can be a hopeful light in a world of growing darkness.

A cast image in glass captures wisps of night clouds as they pass before the full moon of a late autumn night. I wait for the clouds to fade. Their arrested beauty is captured in the crystalline matrix.

One side of the large room is a portal back across twenty centuries. A star is over the old city, a light gleams from a stable. Several shepherds are seeking refuge from an apparition in the sky. Their anxiety fades to joyful hope. Twenty centuries disperse and I am there with the shepherds.

An industrial giant who has borrowed from the future gives back to the present. I am his beneficiary. His vision is before me. I see the vision of others who went before him. I am but a traveller with them.


A man's vision, centuries old now, is before me, with its thousands fleeing a city in flame. The high mountain peaks shrouded in ominous clouds of despair are electrified by the forked bolts of judgment. I wonder if my world will experience this vision as reality as it burns in hate and anger for those not like ourselves.

It is time for lunch.


Cruise

Attendants casting away tethers,
the behemoth casts off into iridescent radiance.

We landlocked observers, waving farewells,
watch a city of memories float out to sea.

Latin melodies painting romantic images,
on-deck lovers enjoy their sunset musings.

Newly-weds full of hopeful fantasy,
set sail for the future of their dreams.

Retirees, weary from decades of labor,
bask in gentle evening repose topside.

Others battered by realities of life,
seek Answers Beyond setting maritime suns.

White coated citizens of a dozens lands,
offer earth's bounty in delectate feasts.

Cumulus shrouds cloaking vermillion peaks,
an ivory oasis of possibilities fades from view.

May He still the winds before you.