“Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”
- said the queen.

I’m no jet-setter. Sea kayaking has, through a bit of work and the generosity of others, given me the opportunity to travel a bit, teach a bit and speak. It’s all good stuff. Yet I have to admit I always feel a bit like a fish out of water as I prepare to go again. The world after all is a very big place. Very big indeed!Home is secure, in perception at least. Whereas traveling far from home is a leap into the unknown. For myself, I relish in the secure. Travel is one of those cliffs I often talk about. Because I know I am better for it, I make my way beyond the horizons of my own little world. Mark Twain made a very good point about travel when he said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” . If hopping a jet does one thing, it changes your understanding of reality. Travel is yoga for the mind. It forces you to be flexible.

Here in the western world we are a cloistered species. I was musing over this concept yesterday as I found myself walking along a highway. Walking urban streets these days is simply breaking the fourth wall of life. You become aware of how days and months can pass while we float through time without a sense of touch. We move from our homes to cars to work and stores all within controlled environments. So controlled in fact that they bend our notions of existence. Within our self-imposed boxes and lines we can see things too simply without a grasp the periphery. In the HD worlds of our own creation there is sharpness, but no shadows. No shades of grey.

When I travel I’ve learned to give myself to the experience. I find you have very little control anyway. From the moment you slip off your shoes at the airport you are in the power of the slipstream. A place where the currents of the world take control. You become somewhat dependant and at the same time isolated. A drop flowing in a mighty river of humanity. The current pushes you along and there is little need to swim or possibility to control your position in the flow. I find that I tend to withdraw into a theatre where all the world is in fact, a stage. I just observe all that passes by as a sort of silent, slow-motion art film. One where scenes shoot from incident to incident, from rich color to black and white, called into focus by wandering senses; a yellow sign, a child, pursed red lips, a badge, a breeze, a ventilation pipe, the exhaust cloud of a bus, a dropped wallet, a tapping foot. Each moment captured, shuffled and stored away for later dissemination.

Sea Kayaking helps you learn to conceptualize travel and function within the experience. You know you can only control a relatively few factors. You also know that the sea is much bigger than you. When it pushes you cannot resist its wild energy. You accept this. With that realization you can trust that you’ve done all you can do and then put yourself in the hands of the world knowing what will be, will be. In that knowledge you are free.

With that said, I head out tomorrow from Chicago. I will land in Paris for a day. Well, 8 hours or so actually. My goal is to find transport into the city, then wander the streets for a few hours before returning to the airport and heading to Tel Aviv. Hadas Feldman will meet me there and off we go. I’m looking forward to some time on the water again. I’ve really missed the sea.

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