Day 4850

 

Playing frisbee with cousins…

Day 4849

 

Playing catch with Juli at sundown…

Day 4848

 

Practicing card skills with Juli…

Day 4847

 

Practicing magic tricks…

Day 4846

 

Watching the World Cup (US v. Belgium)…

Day 4845

 

Playing chess with Juli…

(remembering) Australia (Days 398-440)

This is the (new) experiment - remembering the travels that loom large in memory, but whose (public) documentation is spare and exists (primarily) in the schism between image and written word.

This is not beside the point. 

It may be the main point.

Let's begin...

The Australia trip represents many beginnings: sidecar learns to (consistently) walk, my yin obtains a (Melbourne) library card, and I start to navigate the (sometimes) choppy waters where personal and professional ambitions converge. 

But this is beside the point.

The point is that it looks like puffs at the airport on day 398 and buying groceries with (unremembered, yet documented) friends on day 400 and the balcony on day 401 and at the Melbourne Zoo on day 412 and a visit from Grandma on day 418 and a train ride to Karunda on day 431 and hanging on Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas on day 432 and hiking in the rainforest in Daintree National Park on day 434 and visiting Erskine Falls on the Great Ocean Road on day 437 before finally coming home and crashing out on day 440.

Looking back on these images, though, I realize that the most accessible memories of those six weeks are not necessarily the ones that found their way to this venue. For instance, this was the soundtrack to our time in far north Queensland:

and although listening to this song in an otherwise nondescript grocery store parking lot is one of my most salient recollections, there are no images, only the emotion of being on a great adventure on a continent that I never expected to visit, the first of numerous work-subsidized vacations that transpired from 2014-2019. This sense of excitement and gratitude imbued our entire time in Australia, even the mundane 10-minute walk from our apartment in Southbank to the office each day, where we got to experience the wonderful autumn weather during months previously known only as spring.

Other items exist as pure recall - nearly sterile, like facts memorized before a quiz. These bookends exist to anchor the experience, like sidecar being unable to walk when we left Florida but fully ambulatory when we returned. While this fact is omnipresent, the feeling of what it was like to watch this new phase of independence emerge is largely absent, even though moments like these seem like they should be etched into memory:

As does this one, which (based upon the dimensions and filter) appears to have been posted on Instagram and evokes a playfulness during our last days as we drove along the The Great Ocean Road:

stopping along the way for my yin to feed raw strips of meat to kookaburra at some roadside farmer's market: 

But, when I pause to remember what that drive was like, the first things that come to mind are sidecar (who detested car rides as an infant and toddler) crying in the back seat and my yin attempting to nurse her to sleep, and reminding myself to stay on the left of approaching cars at night as we wound our way back eastward towards Melbourne for our final night in Australia.

At some point in early parenthood, amongst the deluge of advisory cliches, someone told me:

the days

last forever 

the years 

fly by

and the wisdom of this statement has only become more pronounced with the passage of time.

  

Parenthood, more than any other experience thus far, sits at the intersection of ineffable joy and the unrelenting, sleep-deprived grind of tending to the needs of another. In doing so, an entirely new identity emerges, one that (at least for me) establishes itself as primary at a dizzying pace that comes to inform all others. The bond to one's romantic partner, previously dissolvable, becomes permanent through the act of parenting; one's own parents, once superhuman, morph into aging grandparents; and one's professional identity and aspirations become inseparable from providing for one's family.

With this change comes a disorienting loss of self, or at least the reassessment of previous musings, and core beliefs, and musings masquerading as core beliefs that - while still meaningful - are unavoidably diminished in the face of parenthood:

on Art Basel 2010

get out of my mouth, Bukowski!

home alone on a Friday night

a second pot

transference, accuracy and the delicate art of perception

(re)reading Bukowski

Tales of Ordinary Madness (book rant)

and reveal themselves to be largely superficial when (re)encountered on the painted panels of a campervan: 

These roadside reminders are proof that our heroes - literary, artistic, spiritual, religious, historical, whatever - do not belong to us. Any "special" knowledge or relationship we think we have is actually a form of hubris or selfishness or both, and we are best served to heed poet philosophers from the (not too distant) past:

Kill You Idols

And this is why parenthood has been a teacher without compare. 

Day 4844

 

Celebrating the 4th with cousins…

Day 4843

 Image missing 

Day 4842

 

Kayaking with Eliza at W. Kerr Scott Reservoir…

Day 4841

 

Morning cousin shenanigans on Enola Holmes 3 release morning…

Day 4840

 

“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, whoop…”

Day 4839

 

Cousin pillow fight…

Day 4838

 

Kayaking on Price Lake…

Day 4837

 

Playing with cousins on our arrival day in Boone…

Day 4836

 

Snuggling with Bentley after time away…

Day 4835

 

"Lounging" in Heathrow...

London (Days 4833-4835)

Day 4833

Our first full day in London begins with my yin and I taking consecutive walks around Knightsbridge, with her coming across random memorials:

and me taking a walk in Hyde Park and its more refined artistic expressions:

Prince Albert Memorial

Unlike our previous family trip to London in 2018 when we stayed in Notting Hill, and given our limited time in the city, we opted for something more central to maximize our time, and Knightsbridge provides a nice balance of being both laid back and centrally located, allowing us to maximize relaxation and minimize travel time. It is also quite posh:

But this is beside the point.

The point is that it was a swelteringly hot day in London, following a night of severe weather with an alleged 29,000 lightning strikes across southern England. Undaunted, we set out for Camden Town on the tube where we came across this lovely, and surprisingly moving, poem by a Polish poet:

“Letter” by Tadeusz Dabrowski

Upon arrival at our destination, we are greeted by sidewalks full of tourists:

and funky storefronts:

and picturesque passageways by the lock: 

where dozens (hundreds?) of vendors sell all manner of wares that generally remind me of St. Marks Place in New York circa 1997, albeit far more gentrified. As far as that goes, Camden also seems much more crowded and developed than it did when we briefly visited eight years ago, as evidenced by a tremendous multi-story food hall where we stop to get a chili paneer pizza, an improbable and absolutely delicious fusion dish from Bombay Pizza:

from their website, not our table

Bellies full, we stop for one quick pic:

and then head back south to wrap up our shopping excursion with new shoes for me:

from their website, not my feet

and a couple of new stuffies for sidecar at a very fancy department store:

Exhausted from the excursion and with temperatures pushing into the upper 90s, we get tired of waiting for the bus and decide to take a cab:

so we can make it home in time to rest before the day’s main event, a (mildly?) inappropriate musical:

at the Garrick Theatre:

which we enjoy immensely from the opening curtain to the closing bows:

Exhausted (and delighted) from the day, we take the tube back home and walk past an even fancier department store on the way back down Brompton Road:

While my yin and sidecar head straight for the apartment, I stop for a takeaway dosa at a nearby shop. My yin and I eat while sidecar readies herself for bed, and we tuck her in sometime after 11, snuggling with friends new and old:

Day 4834

The heat wave continued on our second full day, but undaunted by either the weather or my sore feat, I once again set out for my morning constitutional in Hyde Park, setting off in a different direction than the prior day. Preparations are being made for some sort of summer festival, which makes for a somewhat less attractive walk, but eventually I reach my destination, the somewhat underwhelming Marble Arch at the northeast corner of the park:

However, on the way back, I did come across a pretty cool statue of a baby wrestling a fish:

and a spiky blue flower in the rose garden:

and a Modigliani-esque sculpture of Pan chasing a family at the Edinburgh Gate:

The Rush on the Green

I returned to our apartment in time to meet one of my yin's innumerable yogi friends, but the day's heat was already causing transportation delays, forcing him to abort his journey from Heathrow to meet us (which was already remarkable to the point of incredulity given his red-eye back home to the UK). 

But this is beside the point.

The point is that the day's main event was a trip out to Watford, where we had mid-afternoon tickets for the Harry Potter studio tour:

This outing was one of those wonderful decisions owing to our general aversion to planning too much or too soon when we travel (trust, trust, trust - everything happens for a reason, in its own time, in its own way), and I'm honestly not even sure how we learned about it or whether it was in the Isle of Wight or after our arrival in London. Regardless, upon arrival...

Lumos Solem!

There are numerous images of our hours at this attraction, like my yin holding eyeballs:

and sidecar's (unintentional?) selfie in Foe Glass:

and an unexpected lessons in forced perspective:

and the actual Knight Bus:

and my (soon-to-be reverend) yin on the way out:

Suffice to say, it was an amazing day that reignited sidecar's love of Harry Potter and (one of) the most impressive self-conscious tourist attractions we have ever visited. 

Day 4835

Our final morning in London is largely undocumented, owing to a late morning flight back home (via NYC), but we did take the time to go up once more to the rooftop and take in the view once more:

Our ride to the airport ends up being an unexpected delight, with an Albanian driver who left home at 13 and has lived in London for nearly 30 years. In an odd coincidence, I tell him that Sam-I-Am has advised me to consider Albanian citizenship as a cost-effective alternative to (future) EU residency, and based upon our conversation en route to Heathrow, it seems like a capital idea if all of his countrymen are as friendly as him. 

Upon arriving at the airport, we arrive at Virgin's (amply documented) Upper Class drop-off, which I first experienced seven years ago when traveling for work. Upon entering the lounge, sidecar (reluctantly) agrees to a quick pic:

before we find a place to sit and wait for our time to board.

This adventure brought new challenges that may or may not ever see this venue, and addressing them brought more down time than previous international adventures, but with the slower pace emerged a return to this form, and for that I am grateful.