The day started out as one of those typical of days starting too early; a bit gray and with some risk of stinking thinking. I’m free associating here in the middle of the night. I’m sitting here in the airport at Charlotte with about an hour and a half yet to wait for boarding so am using the time to write. Laptop computers certainly do make it easier to redeem time otherwise spent doing nothing useful in the middle of the night in airports. My head always goes through a strange discontinuity right before long journeys, especially while sitting in airports.
There’s a strange ambivalence in my mind. With my present recovery work I’ve gotten so attached to people on a daily basis that it’s hard to leave them. Yesterday I had a rather pleasant sense of farewell with one of my mid-day groups. In the past year or two I’ve enjoyed a sense of farewell from these groups I never got from a church, service club, or other organization. I only wish the larger culture could enjoy the sense of community those working programs of recovery bask in. People in recovery understand their need for community context to stay clean and sober. There would be a lot less loneliness, depression, and abject isolation so widespread in Western cultures if people found the joy and liberation coming from community rather than the self-sufficient “I-can-do-this-by-myself mentality” we have here in the US. I recall while in Norway in May the pleasant sense of anticipation of being with these dear people once again. Throughout much of my life I’ve never been in any hurry to return to the US after a long overseas journey. The past two years I’ve found myself happily returning home to a lot of welcome.
I’m barely leaving and I am already anticipating what I will be doing upon my return. I have a single mother who destroyed her life with methamphetamine. She’s starting to get a small bit of traction in her recovery and will get custody of her two children in late October. I have some furniture for her to re-constitute a household when I get back. I recall how bleak it was in my own childhood to be rootless and hauled around so much by an alcoholic addicted single mother. Having my own chest of drawers was a big deal. Others of us are putting together the rest of this young mother’s furnishings. Community does make a great difference to the fragile and marginalized.
More happily, I will begin teaching a foreign policy class at the local university when I return. I think I start on October 5. Curiously, having the context of meaningful responsibilities upon my return gives my present journey more meaning. The temporary disconnect from phones, e-mail, and daily deadlines is most splendid.
A splendid aspect of this journey is the torrid heat of southern summer will have passed by the time I return. We will then be entering into the best climate of the year. The magic of fall colors will be upon us, and there will be those pleasant anticipations of happy holiday events coming at this time of the year.
For the whole of my life I’ve had these strange dreams in which I’m in new cities and unable to find my way back to my lodgings. Sometimes this is a hotel, a dormitory on a campus, or a house. These dreams can often be profoundly unsettling. Upcoming travel makes these much more common. About a month ago I had about six of these in a row right after I booked two months in Australia. They were so intense as to actually be nightmares, waking me with pounding heart and anxiety. Last night I dreamed I had returned to a city I lived in for twelve years. I returned to find the city destroyed and decayed into a horrendous ghetto with all the buildings destroyed and the streets impassable because of the ruins of consumer life – old cars, appliances, furniture. These dreams may represent some sort of re-processing of those times in childhood when I was so fearful of never getting home again.
Hopefully sunset tonight will be from the deck of a ship and afford some fine skyline photos of New York’s Manhattan. I should be offshore from Portland Maine sometime tomorrow; then on to Halifax, Sydney, Cornerbrook, Quebec City, and Montreal. Hopefully fall colors will be well underway in a couple of weeks. I do find my head always gets into a much better place when I am taking images of the wonders of the world and giving them away. There’s just this discontinuity I always get at the beginning of a journey. I should be absolutely fine once arrived, awake, and not paranoid about missing connections. Some days these ‘cities’ dreams I’ve often had will make sense to me. I think in about an hour and half when I am on top of dense gray cloud at sunrise, life will instantly look much better. Happily, the gray zone at night in airports is short lived.
Sometimes the best way to appreciate home is to leave it, but not for too long. And don’t spend too much idle time in airports in the middle of the night!
I’m off!
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
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