Home Again

That was fun.

Home again after 10 days of being outside the U.S. London was as welcoming as it always is, and this trip also included 3 days in Amsterdam.

Travel is a good thing, though "The farther you go, the less you know" (a slightly inaccurate bit from the Tao Te Ching) is always in the back of my mind whenever I venture beyond familiar terrain. Then again, at least parts of London have become familiar enough that during the last trip I was able to provide directions to a couple of tourists.

I am always surprised at people I meet and how willing they are to talk. Here are the highlights, some of which may be expanded upon at a later date.

• Charlie, the young Englishman who was working the desk when I checked into my hotel in Amsterdam. He gave me a key to a room that was already occupied, and when I returned from actually entering that room, he seemed relived that I was neither upset nor impatient.
  

• The bartender in Amsterdam who enjoyed conversing about hockey and American baseball (I forgave his being a fan of the Yankees).
  

• Bill, the Canadian I sat beside on the flight from Amsterdam to London and with whom I talked about economics; Canadian and American lifestyles; global warming; his favorite restaurants in Houston, Texas; snow skiing; and living in Amsterdam. Our conversation started when he glanced at the small watercolors I'd purchased from a street-artist in Amsterdam, one of which depicts an apartment building next to a canal: "I used to live right there," he said, pointing to the top apartment.
  

• Carmelita, the cheerful woman who sat beside me in Amsterdam's airport gave me a short history lesson of both Holland and Suriname, and who told me that the next time I am in Holland, I should call her and visit her small coastal town (with my wife, of course). We compared notes about our children, and she even took control of my notebook to write down her name, address, and phone number.

• The 2 docents at Christ Church in Oxford who seemed pleased that I could discuss a bit of English history with the, including history of the church itself.

• The young New Zealander employed as a bartender at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in London. He'd been working in London for 6 months and in a couple of days was on his way to Boston where his girlfriend lives.

• The Hungarian bartender near London's Covent Garden who pegged me as an American by the way I pronounced the "r" in "beer." She told me of how she learned English, which was actually quite good.
  

• The woman on the express train from London to Heathrow Airport, who was on the way to Kenya to work on disease eradication (and who was born in Kentucky, as was my father).

• The man I sat next to on the flight from London to Chicago, whose wife has Parkinson's and uses voice recognition programs to help her use computers.
  

• The woman I met in Chicago's O'Hare field who works for a California pharmaceutical company that is working on drugs to extend the lives of children afflicted with rare diseases.

• Dave, on the airplane from Chicago to Sacramento, who coaches trainers and other coaches around the world and who was on his way home to California. He sold a company at age 42 and found that retirement wasn't as much fun as he'd hoped. "Coach Dave" was embroidered on his rucksack.
  

For the most part, I simply found ways to ask these people questions and to let them talk, and when they asked things about me, I provided as few details as possible. It's better that way, in the end.

****

The trip wasn't just talking to people, certainly.

First, I owe Kominski many thanks, for instance, for suggesting that I take the accumulated episodes of "Things We Didn't Say Yesterday" along with me for some reading/editing. Not only did I find typos and inconsistencies, I also discovered that I'd basically written the same episode 3 times. How stupid. I'd written them all with no planning or thought, really, so I could've expected a recurrence of themes and language. But the same episode? Goodness.

Second, somewhere over the Atlantic I believe I found a solution to a problem with plot/structure in the novel I thought was done. So, this will, I hope, be addressed soon.

Third, though the Muse has not yet seen fit to allow me to see the ending to a screenplay I've been writing, I was allowed to see bits of dialog and theme that should be developed further. I am thankful for these gifts.