Little Infinities

There are certain inevitabilities on the the road to one’s destination. Inevitabilities that travelers would often rather skip, but whose existence is the barrier between the Things that Everyone Does and the The Things a Few of Us Do. They’re the tiny little inconveniences that add up to a whole that stop so many in their tracks. These discomforts that stand in the way of our destinations - the long, endless flights, the dry recycled air, the dragging of suitcases, the crying baby on a 15 hour flight, the pat downs, and the endless days - they are the rite of passage into life on the road. They exhaust the traveler. They frighten the vacationer. And, eventually, like all rites of passage, they bring us to a new place at the end. It’s in the midst of this in-between place, the place between who we are and who we will become, that, if we’re lucky enough and we’re passing through with our eyes open, we can find perfect little infinities.  

On this trip, at the end of a crooked, dry sleep, I awoke to this one: a perfect soundless bed of clouds, lying over an endless sea, somewhere between the old continent that we’d left behind and the new one we were approaching. An endless ripple of perfect violets and blues melting into an endless horizon. ​

This is the reward for the traveler: an effortless, impossible beauty in the midst of a series of inevitabilities; that little infinity that appears out of nowhere that reminds us of the spectacular beauty that surrounds us. And the ability of every place, even the old and familiar, to feel new again.