Not so long ago, when I was younger, I loved to travel.\u00a0 And, under the right circumstances, I still do.\u00a0 Not lately, however.<\/p>\n
On my way back from NY last week, I ended up on what we used to call a “Milk Run” — Westchester to Philly to Phoenix to SNA.\u00a0 It wasn’t so bad, mainly because I have simply gotten skilled at the modern travel thing, which consists of a series of small details, performed ritually, and expressed pretty well in “Up in the Air” — no need to detail them now.<\/p>\n
But, on the leg from Phoenix I had a very brief conversation with a guy, maybe my age, maybe a little younger (at what point does it become disconcerting when, in your daily travels, the people you meet are generally younger than yourself…), but in any case, this guy had been traveling – that is flying — twice each week for NINE YEARS.<\/p>\n
His kids were 16 and 9.\u00a0 So, it was all they knew of him — that he was simply gone most of the time.\u00a0 For me this was a bit heartbreaking.\u00a0 But of course I have no right to even think that, since for all I really know it could be the best thing for everyone.\u00a0 But, my heartbreak was merely an extension of my own reality for these past five months.\u00a0 Last week my nine-year old had cried when I wasn’t going to make his Open House, which he and his class had worked so hard for.\u00a0 How many times had this guy I met experienced that kind of call?\u00a0 And how did he survive even the first one?<\/p>\n
On another leg I met an extraordinary woman by the name of Jackie who was indeed a bit older than me, although not nearly as much as she thought, wherein she praised my attitude of suffering over these kinds of things,\u00a0 as well as the plan I shared with here wherein I would sacrifice the money, the professional challenges and accolades for some kind of Mosquito Coast-like radical family action, or series of actions.\u00a0 She said that her own father was absent, and remained so, even to this day.\u00a0 He was, however, a hard worker.\u00a0 She said he did a wonderful job of providing for the family in a monetary way, but was an absolute failure in terms of providing emotional nourishment.\u00a0 Or even archtypal nourishment,\u00a0 because who can argue the inherent and far-reaching power of the Father Figure, as it were?\u00a0 How many stories have we heard about young men wandering around, looking for the spiritual father?\u00a0 Um …Ulysses, The New Testament … Catcher in the Rye to name\u00a0 a few.<\/p>\n
But, see, I can’t really tell if things really ARE different than when I was a kid.\u00a0 Everyone tells me so — and this is in the context of when I describe what it was like to grow up with my own father, who was an absolute failure in all efforts to support the family in a monetary way, but a complete success in every other.\u00a0 People tell me — they say things like “But the seventies was when this kind of thing was acceptable …”\u00a0 What kind of things, and who are these people, you might ask.\u00a0 Well, I’m mainly talking about giving up completely on what one can only describe as an unbalanced life led for the sake of much more money than would be needed if we lived a reasonable lifestyle.\u00a0 Giving this up in favor of something much, much less.\u00a0 Much smaller.\u00a0 But filled with time.<\/p>\n
It’s a cliche’ and I’m sorry for it — but it must be said again, and this is where I actually have some experience on a few different levels regarding the purely materialistic life — it is absolute folly to work yourself half to death in order to buy things.\u00a0 There’s more to it than that, of course.\u00a0 In fact it’s actually CRIMINAL to buy things that you don’t need for the sake of buying them, when you could be giving your money away to someone who could actually do some good with it.\u00a0 But … hey, I can take that back for now, since I don’t want to offend the neighbors.\u00a0 Much.<\/p>\n
Anyway.<\/p>\n
Just had to get that off my mind.\u00a0 And anyway, it’s the 31st of May.\u00a0 I can’t go a month without writing some damn thing .. especially since this category is “Daily Writing”\u00a0 What a joke!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not so long ago, when I was younger, I loved to travel.\u00a0 And, under the right circumstances, I still do.\u00a0 Not lately, however. On my way back from NY last week, I ended up on what we used to call a “Milk Run” — Westchester to Philly to Phoenix to SNA.\u00a0 It wasn’t so bad, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.owenscott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}