From Solitude by Anthony Storr:

The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required. After major alterations in circumstances, fundamental reappraisal of the significance and meaning of existence may be needed. … Changes of attitude take time because our ways of thinking about life and ourselves so easily become habitual. …

Suppose that I become dissatisfied with my habitual self, or feel that there are areas of experience or self-understanding which I cannot reach. One way of exploring these is to remove myself from present surroundings and see what emerges. … No one can tell, until he has experienced it, whether or not this necessary disruption of former patterns will be succeeded by something better. …

View from Cincinnati Airport Terminal

Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren’t bad people; they’re just acquaintances. (Jay Leno)

I’ve always loved this quote from Jay Leno because it’s so true.

My first Christmas in Cincinnati, when I had just started at F+W, I didn’t have any friends—but I needed someone to drive me to the airport. So I asked my manager at the time, Greg Albert. He is such a kind-hearted man that he agreed—I believe it was even on Christmas Day. I still think about that moment.

If it’s the airport drop-off that tells you who your true friends are, it’s the airport pick-up that can tell you who your true loves are.

While married, every time I returned to Cincinnati airport, my husband would be waiting at the gate (when that was still permitted—remember those days?), or right at security. He was never late. He was always there. His face always brightened up when he spotted me.

You know a relationship has transformed when the small details change … when the pick-up routine changes.

During our final months together, when returning from a trip, I wasn’t greeted even at baggage claim. I waited for my luggage to pop out while listening to my iPod, pretending not to care. (Why do we always pretend so much?)

The Conductor is not a punctual man, so he’s not always at security waiting for me, but he’s definitely rushing in that direction.

However, when returning from my last trip, he texted me as I walked through the terminal to the security point, and informed me that he was in the cell phone lot. He would pick me up outside once I had my bag.

Downgraded to the cell phone lot!

Yes, The Conductor and I sometimes have difficult moments (weeks) (months). Maybe I hadn’t realized how difficult a time we’d recently experienced.

Of course, after he performed the drive-by, I had to immediately inform him that I’d never had a significant other use the cell-phone lot with me. His very rational explanation was that it was 15 degrees outside, and he knew how much I hated to walk in the cold.

Fair enough. Plus he had a nice bottle of water waiting for me inside the very toasty car.

Nevertheless, a shift. It hurt.

One of many high school ID cards

I am very careless with my belongings.

This past week, when I flew to NYC for Digital Book World, I left my purse and coat in the plane overhead bin.

I walked right out of JFK after claiming my bags, climbed in a cab with a colleague, and it never occurred to me I didn’t have these belongings with me—until near the hotel when I thought about paying for the cab.

My mom has said that she never knew someone so smart who could be so dumb.

For all of high school and college, I rarely carried a purse, and even then, always one that slung across my body (so that when I sat down, I would not take it off).

This tradition continues today, and it is by far my best method of self-protection, though not infallible. When I was married, my husband was the Purse Savior, always ensuring it was with me when departing from coffeehouses, restaurants, theatres, vehicles, and foreign lands.

A catalog of things I recall losing or misplacing:

• about 9 student IDs … I lost so many that, at a reunion, someone returned one of my IDs (after seven years)
• three cell phones—including one iPhone
• three purses including wallets
• two megacases of CDs
• two iPods
• two retainers
• two coats
• numerous power adaptors
• countless rings, necklaces, bracelets
• shoes
• pajamas
• god knows how many floppy disks and files—I had to stop keeping an electronic journal in high school because I lost disk after disk after disk

One year—notably, the last year of my marriage—I lost my purse so often that my credit union started charging me a $10 fee whenever I called for credit/debit card replacements.

On my latest loss this week, I had to call Delta’s Lost & Found (a division of Baggage Services—my new favorite!), and file a claim. I had a good feeling my items would be recovered, so I tried not to worry about it. My colleagues and friends were more skeptical. “Only on the West Coast I wouldn’t worry,” my friend Christina stipulated.

So then I started to worry enough that I called The Conductor and asked him to overnight my passport and fifty bucks.

But as I expected, in 36 hours, I got a call. My stuff was safe and I could pick it up on my way home out of JFK.

In fact, my stuff was SO secure that it took 30 minutes to find someone at baggage services who could unlock the safe it was stored in. Delta also had fastidiously cleaned out my wallet of all bills and change to prevent staff theft. In place of the cash was a voucher for $59.16 to be redeemed from a Delta customer service agent.

There’s a beloved Czech novel called The Good Soldier Svejk. In it, Svejk bumbles through his service in the army, and does the stupidest things, but so good naturedly that he always comes out on top.

I try to view my foibles in this light. Nothing really bad has ever come from losing my things (e.g., no identity theft), and I have developed a healthy detachment from material objects.

Or maybe it’s my detachment from material objects that makes me so careless.

This reminds me of my great love for the poem—one of the best villanelles of all time—”One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop. It starts like this:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Read the entire poem at Poets.org

Upon arrival at the Irish farm in Kilgarvan, a bottle of homemade bog myrtle beer was waiting in the kitchen, as a welcoming gift.

Apparently, bog myrtle leaves were used to flavor beer before hops became popular in Britain, and they are still used as a flavoring agent in Swedish spirits. (Bog myrtle leaves pictured above, courtesy of tigerlillith.)

For those with access to bog myrtle leaves, the recipe:

• a big handful of bog myrtle leaves
• 1 gallon of boiling water
• 1 lb sugar
• 1 lemon sliced
• 1 oz yeast or 1 tablespoon dried yeast

Put leaves, sugar, and lemon in bowl. Pour on boiling water. Allow to cool. When tepid, float a piece of toast on the surface and sprinkle yeast on the toast. Leave for 24 hours. Remove the toast and strain liquid into bottles. You can keep the beer for a while or drink at once. Watch out for popping corks if you bottle immediately.

Alternatively strain into a fermentation jar and fit fermentation lock. Leave for about a month or until fermentation ceases.

If you prefer a sweeter drink, make a syrup with equal volumes of water and sugar. Heat until sugar dissolves then cool before adding to beer. If you like a spicy beer, add a teaspoonful of ground ginger to the syrup while heating.

You can also make a double quantity of the beer in a plastic bucket. Double the sugar and water in this case, but no the lemon, nor yeast.

Irish Coffee

Also, I got my hands on the real-deal recipe for Irish coffee, as follows:

• 1 very generous measure of Irish Whisky
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 1 heaped dessert spoon of whipped cream
• hot, strong coffee

Pre-warm a stemmed glass. Add the whisky. Add the sugar and stir in the coffee. Float the whipped cream on top. Allow the cream to sit, do not stir!

I returned home Monday night from a 3-week holiday in Ireland. (Read previous entries on this trip here and here.)

A quick index of the trip:

Canceled flights: 2
Delayed flights: 3
Re-routed itineraries: 1
Airport shutdowns: 1
Hotel shutdowns: 1
Road shutdowns: 1
Occurrences of lost luggage: 4
Unexpected nights spent in Dublin: 4
Unexpected nights spent on Inis Meain: 1

Now, Christina Katz did warn me about traveling during Mercury Retrograde. I thought it would result in a minor miscommunication or two.

Fortunately, for the trip I brought a Kindle loaded with the Zanders’ Art of Possibility, which was the perfect read to experience the trip in another light. Here’s a new index:

Extra magazines read: 8
Extra books read: 2
Additional cities enjoyed: 2
Extra movies viewed: 5
Extra days to refresh the world perspective: 3

Possibility was one theme of the trip. Here are some others.

Observation & Building Fires

My Inis Meain cottage was heated by a small stove in the living area (seen above). I found the instructions for using the stove in the kitchen—and at first I thought these instructions were for the kitchen stove, which frightened me when I read the first operating step was to light the stove in the “typical way” by building a small fire using newspaper and sticks.

Not having any kindling, I bought packets of fire starter bricks to get the show started each night. The coal was stored in a shed in the backyard, and every afternoon I went out with a metal pail and shoveled it full for that night’s fire.

I have no experience starting or maintaining fires, so everything was trial and error, closely observing how the fire behaved when I used a lot of coal or just a little, what size of coal lumps worked best, if it mattered how I arranged the lumps.

Of course, all of these things mattered, and there were also variables like how much to ventilate the stove, how much ash to leave, and how much stoking was too much.

It usually took 90-120 minutes for me to build a hot enough fire that I could throw anything on it and not worry. Frustratingly, my last night on the island, even with a full pack of fire starter left, I couldn’t keep the fire alive after 2 hours of babysitting it. Looking back, I probably had too much ash build-up in the stove after a week of burning coal, and I wasn’t properly emptying it.

The entire process was one of the hallmarks of visiting Ireland. The farm I later stayed at was also heated by a stove, although a much more massive one, sitting in the kitchen, and you could cook food with it. (Don’t worry, there was a modern stove as well.) One compartment of the stove had eggshells in it; the farm owners dry them for use in their gardens.

Aside from the stove, the farm had a fireplace with stacks of logs for burning (and good kindling), and keeping that fire lit was a breeze. But relying on fires for warmth became tiresome, and if there was one thing I was grateful for when delayed for 3 days in Dublin, it was that I was staying in a hotel room with a thermostat.

Confidence & The Book of Kells

On New Year’s Eve, The Conductor and I drove to Dublin for our last night in Ireland since we had an early flight home on New Year’s Day. It snowed that night, and snowfall is so rare in Ireland that the Dublin airport closed the next morning and nearly all flights were canceled. About a centimeter of snow resulted in a departure delay for 3 days.

The Conductor and I had some time to kill in Dublin.

I have to thank friends and colleagues at this juncture—so many sent wonderful tips and recommendations on how to make best use of the time. The Book of Kells at Trinity College seemed to be on everyone’s list, so we went there first.

Since the Kells exhibit is at a college library, I assumed entry would be free, but once we arrived at the building for admission, we saw it was nine euros per person. I glanced at The Conductor, and he glanced at me, and we stepped out of the entry line and started browsing the gift shop next to admission instead. (At this point you have to realize we were on unbudgeted travel time.)

I noticed a poster-size image of the library too beautiful to be believed, with medieval texts crowded on floor-to-ceiling shelves in a magnificent two-story hall. It was the Trinity College library. I told The Conductor I doubted they let the common man in that place.

A few minutes later, The Conductor motioned for me to follow him up a flight of stairs in the middle of the shop. Lots of signs stated “no entry,” and there was a steady stream of people coming down the stairs into the shop.

“Hey, where you going, it says no entry?”

The Conductor charged ahead as if he didn’t hear me. I took shy bunny steps behind him, looked at my feet, and tried to feign ignorance.

Of course, at the top of the steps was the amazing library, and no one was guarding the stairs to ensure people didn’t reverse access the exhibit. (I never imagined a hokey gift shop could reside under such a magnificent room.)

For a few minutes, I just stood and enjoyed looking at the room, waiting for someone to tell me to get my ass back down into the gift shop. Then I tentatively toed around the glass cases with old texts.

The Conductor whipped out his iPhone and started to take a photograph when a staff member shouted, “NO PHOTOGRAPHY.” By then he’d already taken one shot (which you see above), and he came over to show me with his trademark arrogant grin. He walked away to see the Book of Kells as if he owned the place and had paid full-price admission of everyone in that room.

The Conductor has taught me a lot about confidence, although the level of confidence displayed at Trinity College ventures into brashness.

I stayed within about 250 feet of the stairway, and enjoyed every illicit moment that his brashness allowed me.

As I was reading my pile of New Yorkers on the island, I came across an article about the financial crisis by Malcolm Gladwell, and noted some points that reminded me of The Conductor, who works in financial services.

Investment bankers are able to borrow billions of dollars and make huge trades because, at the end of the day, their counterparties believe they are capable of making good on their promises. Wall Street is a confidence game, in the strictness sense of that phrase.

This is what social scientists mean when they say that human overconfidence can be an adaptive trait. “In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exagerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning,” Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, writes.

“Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.” Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself stronger than he is.

Later in the trip, after our flight was canceled, I wondered aloud, on the airport shuttle, how many people on that shuttle were the victim of a canceled flight. The Conductor got out of his seat, asked for everyone’s attention in an Irish brogue, welcomed them to Dublin, and asked for a show of hands of canceled flight passengers. Everyone raised their hand.

The Conductor & Publisher Paradox

While The Conductor (shown above) can be a man of confident action, he still asks what I want to do. And, while I work as a Publisher and am a big decider, I am terribly indecisive.

Alain de Botton recently tweeted, “We should be suspicious of relationships with anyone who could not confess to at least 5 reasons why they would be very testing to live with.”

Probably No. 1 on my list would be: “Can’t make quick decisions.” E.g., it can take me so long to choose a movie to watch that I run out of time to watch a movie.

The Conductor, knowing this, either obligingly or hopefully, asks me what I’d like to do anyway.

When our flight home was canceled (but we were already at the airport), The Conductor asked me what to do, which made sense. I am a more experienced traveler.

We joined a very long line of irate people to speak to an Aer Lingus representative. I guessed it would take 3-4 hours of standing in line. It wasn’t the best thing to do. The best thing to do was to get on the phone and call the airline.

But my cell phone wasn’t working in Ireland. Plus I didn’t have the numbers of the airline. As we stood in line, I talked through what we really needed to do—which is a good set of instructions for anyone stuck:

1. Get (or always carry) the airline numbers. In this case, we needed numbers for Aer Lingus (canceled flight to London) and British Airways (next leg of journey to U.S. that we would miss). For anyone using a travel agent, obviously carry your agent’s number with you everywhere.

2. Have your e-ticket or confirmation numbers handy. I had mine, but The Conductor didn’t have his—and had to use an Internet machine at the airport to retrieve the info.

3. Call and pester the airlines until someone re-books you.

I kept our place in line while The Conductor gathered the airline numbers and his e-ticket number. The line had barely moved in the 30-45 minutes it took him to return.

The Conductor’s phone was working, but even if it had been my phone, I would’ve made him call. I hate making calls. (I even wrote a blog post about it.) I hate trying to accomplish things on the phone. I especially hate calling customer service centers for any reason.

The Conductor has spent a great deal of his life working the phones. He could probably write an instructional manual on cold calling. So his skills in this area always prove invaluable.

When he found someone from British Airways to help us (Aer Lingus was hopeless), The Conductor had the customer service rep pulling all kinds of strings to rebook us on a flight home the next day, which ultimately turned out to be impossible. But we had the satisfaction of knowing every conceivable solution had been tried.

If it had been me making the call, we’d still be in Dublin. (When I called American Airlines yesterday to inquire about our lost luggage, I was told there was absolutely no information on it. Later I discovered The Conductor had called prior to me and learned the bags were in Chicago, but weather delays were preventing onward travel to Cincinnati.)

Miscellaneous Notes About Ireland & Dublin

1. Rick Steves has said that Dublin is a bore. I only spent a day in the city center, but compared to other European cities I’ve visited, I’m inclined to agree.

Admittedly, I was extremely neglectful and never properly experienced the pub & music culture, either in the city or the country. But The Conductor did on St. Stephen’s Day, in the tiny port town of Ros a Mhil. For him it was the best part of his trip; he fit into the scene so well (pictured above) he was even asked to sing a song for the Irish; he chose “Stardust.” And I missed it.

2. I craved salty snacks nearly the whole time I was in Ireland. While biscuits in the UK/Ireland are vastly superior to what’s in the U.S. (I suppose you need something to keep tea time interesting over a lifetime), there are few options for a connoisseur of potato chips, crackers, and puffy rice-soy snacks.

3. I endeavor to visit places off-season because I dislike throngs of people, fighting crowds, and waiting in lines. However, visiting Ireland off-season meant many things were closed. I would’ve paid anything to see Skellig Michael, but boats don’t travel there in winter.

4. I love HSBC ads, which I saw on television during my trip, but I usually know HSBC from their European jetbridge ads. More on this in a future blog post. If you haven’t seen their ads, check this out.

5. Irish rhubarb yogurt. [Loving sigh.] This isn’t really unique to Ireland, but whenever I travel, the food served or sold tends to be local—and the fact that food is made fresh and/or local (and not in a factory) is emphasized at every turn. I wish this trend would pick up faster and more strongly in the U.S., so yogurt can taste like yogurt again and not like a pasty cup of chemicals.

6. I highly recommend the Aran Islands for a writing retreat.

7. Malt vinegar packets can look exactly like ketchup packets. You’ve been warned.

Photos

For those who want the full slideshow:

• On Picasa you can see all of my Ireland photos (no captions), about 120 shots.
• You can see a curated version with captions here, about 25 shots.
• Also, you can view some of The Conductor’s snaps, another 25 or so.

Following are a few photos that I find to be the most poetic and symbolic of what I saw in Ireland.

On Inis Meain - a stone shed and a faded blue wooden gate

On Inis Meain - livestock grazing among stone ruins

A stone cairn on Inis Meain. Cairns serve as markers. This one was marking Synge's Chair.

The trees in Ireland take the shape of the wind

The coast off the ring of Kerry, near the town of Portmagee, with Skellig islands in the distance.

New Eyes, First Days Back Home, and Chili

Returning home is the hardest part of these personal odysseys. While I’m away, I don’t miss my home, work, or the people there—everything takes on a degree of such unimportance, I think I must be on the wrong path in life.

Then I’m back, and I have these new eyes. I see people I know so well again, and experience a feeling of welcome and belonging that slowly expands into the passing minutes and hours.

I am reminded of “Ulysses” by Tennyson, which I am so fond of, as my father had taken two lines (in bold below) and turned them into a work of calligraphy. I wish I had that piece of artwork, but it is lost.

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

On my first full day back in the U.S., I left the office over lunch to grab a bite.  I ended up sitting at the counter at Johnny Rockets (where I never go), having a bowl of chili—heavy on the cinnamon and topped with cheese and onions—and dipping French fries into a pond of Heinz ketchup squirted from a very large bottle. And I paid with my American Express credit card.

My luggage is still not home yet; I presume it’s having a rest in Chicago. I don’t mind waiting as long as it comes eventually. It’s opened up new possibilities, starting with a new shampoo, a better toothbrush, and fun conversations with immensely kind pilots on Twitter who have good advice on lost luggage.

Old Irish Cottage on Inis Meain

1. Arrive at cottage late at night. The only heat source is the small stove in the living room. Unable to light a fire (run out of matches), so bundle up in coat, scarf, hat, and climb in bed under 3 layers of blankets.

2. Awake to pleasantly warm cottage (after taking off layers while half-asleep during the night). Realize that my eco-cottage has a heated floor system that kicks on late at night and turns off in morning.

3. Realize I do not have a three-pronged converter for my laptop, only two-pronged. Slip into depths of despair.

4. Trudge to island shop for sustenance. Find three-prong U.S/Ireland converter for sale, against all odds. (This is RARE, folks!)

5. Read my backlog of New Yorkers a little faster so I can use them as fire starter.

6. Build raging fire on 4th night by lighting only 1 match.

7. Cook a Spanish tortilla de patatas without a recipe. Delicious.

8. Meet an American (Michelle) working as a designer at the Inis Meain Knitting Company.  Have an in-person conversation with a human being for the first time since the immigration officer.

9. While opening a bottle of wine, break off the metal corkscrew inside the cork. Three days later, determined to drink over the holidays, force cork down into bottle. Drink wine with miniscule fragments of cork dancing inside glass.

10. Eat store-bought mincemeat pies on Christmas Eve.

Note on #10. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I love Irish & British food. The island shop had dozens and dozens of individual-size box raisins for sale on the day before Christmas Eve —for mincemeat preparation I would guess, not school-box lunches.

My best to you over the holidays.

Old cottage on Inis Meain

I wasn’t expecting trouble when I passed through immigration at the Dublin airport. I’m American, I’m privileged, and I look like I spend a lot of time reading indoors.

I was the second person standing in the non-EU control line. The person ahead of me was a young guy who wasn’t wearing any shoes. Earlier, an Indian Sikh questioned him about it; turns out he’d been going barefoot in public for a long time.

The Irish immigration officer serving the line was a young female. She didn’t like something about the young man’s documents. He probably had a student visa—maybe it was expired. Their discussion lasted 15 minutes. This was the slowest moving immigration line I had ever experienced.

Finally, she allowed him to pass, and he left abruptly and in disgust. She had retained his documents.

Then I approached. I was wearing shoes, so I figured I was safe from scrutiny. At first, her questions went as expected, and she spoke to the passport.

“What is the purpose of your trip? [Vacation.] How long are you staying? [Two weeks.] What is your destination? [Aran Islands.] Do you have friends or family there?” [No.]

Full stop. She looked up at me.

“Nobody you’re meeting for the holidays?”

“No.”

“Do you have a return ticket? [Yes.] May I see it?”

I took out my file folder of travel documents and passed over my itinerary.

“Where are you staying?”

“A privately owned cottage.”

“And how did you find this cottage?”

“Online.”

She was even more vexed than before.

“But you said it was privately owned. How could you find it online? Don’t you see how you’re contradicting yourself?”

I tried to explain I only meant that a private individual owned it, but that person did not actually live there. Rather, he rented out the cottage.

“So you paid for this?”

“Yes.”

“Show me the receipt.” This was the first time I’d ever been asked for such extensive documentation of my travels, and I’ve traveled every continent except Africa and Antarctica.

“All I have is an e-mail exchange with the owner.”

“Let me see it.”

“It’s on my computer.”

I had to remove my laptop from my backpack and pull up the correspondence. I held the laptop at chest level so she could see the exchange through the fiberglass barrier.

“What’s this person’s phone number?”

“I don’t know, we only communicated online.” I could hear her response before she formed the first word.

“You rented a cottage after finding it online, don’t have a receipt for your payment, and haven’t talked to the owner.”

“I have the phone number of the caretaker.”

“Let me have it.”

I gave her the name and number of Bartla, who I had yet to meet or speak to, but lived next door to the cottage.

She tried calling, but no one picked up. I wondered on what grounds she could refuse me entry. Plans too bizarre to be believed? Danger to self? Mental illness?

She turned her attention to some of the print-outs I’d handed over in the meantime, with the owner’s orientation and instructions about reaching the island and the cottage.

“What do you know about the Aran Islands?”

“Only what I’ve read.”

“So you decide out of the blue to come to Ireland over the holidays, not the mainland even, but a remote island. You’re traveling alone, you don’t know anyone, and you’re staying by yourself in a place you’ve never been. Why?”

Looking back, there are so many answers I could’ve given. Perhaps if I simply said I was a writer working on a novel, or that I was taking a spiritual retreat, she would’ve felt like it all made sense. Or maybe I should’ve told her I wanted to put family and friends at ease by visiting a stable country after my experience in Thailand.

But why this place, at this time—and not some other?

It felt like a classic Alan Watts Zen question: Why do you exist as you, instead of as someone entirely different? How is it you came to be?

The existentialist aspect to the question was perhaps not what the immigration officer intended. And I gave a weak, one-word reply:

“Wanderlust.”

As ineffectual as my response seemed even to myself, she backed off, aside from asking how I meant to support myself financially for 2 weeks. (Ha, doesn’t she know every American carries several credit cards!)

She finally raised her stamp. As it thunked down on my passport, she said, “You know, we’re looking out for your safety, too.”

I departed down the corridor to pick up my luggage—which was delayed and didn’t arrive until the next day—and wondered about safety. Many friends and family told me to have a great time, plus: “Be safe.”

I’m reminded of a Chekhov quote: “Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

Traveling alone is by far the safest thing I do.

On December 16, I left the United States for a 2-week vacation in Ireland. A key objective while I’m here (in the quiet and remote Aran Islands) is to rebuild my homepage.

Good progress today.