On Codes

Over the past 21 days I will have been in eight different airports, spanning from North America to Northern Europe to the Baltics.  I will have taken 14 flights in total; I will have been in six different countries.  The life I chose to lead is vast.  And not without complication- but what reward is riskless?- that would be boring.

A couple of flights ago, I wrote this in the pages of my ever-present travel journal (and forgive the whispy language- it was very early and tend to wax kind of idiotically profound when I am exceptionally sleepy):

'On another plane.  So very very many planes- up and down and up again.  

I can't begin to recall how many sunrises, sunsets, sun-somethings I have seen from a plane.  How many tiny windows I have gazed out of, watching the sky slide by.  

This morning to my right is pitch black-blue.  To my left the sun is turning the lowest part of the horizon into a peachy-mango which lightens into a pale-lemon then to a too-pale blue.  It is like watching Easter happen in the December sky.  

I would not give up a heartbeat of any of this.  I would not give up one shade of color, one instance of aura.  Not for the fear of the inevitable, not for settlement. 

I would not give up the loveliness to cure the loneliness- what is alone for so many is alive for us few, alive certainly for me. [Insert random factoids about landing times in Riga here]

There is a beauty that comes from living this way- an exceptional beauty gained from constantly exposing myself to the rest of the world.  It is the wonder of it all.  I know that I have considered this before- but one of the reasons that I travel how I do, that I live how I do, is because of how much of myself I give to it.  I like to think that I open my whole heart to a place, a time, and a people.  And whatever comes of that is whatever comes of it- but at least I've opened myself.  At least I've tried to give myself up to somewhere new, different, away.  

I want to give as much as I take from these places.'

And then during my first flight this morning, I did this:

'CLT/JFK/CDG/SVG
SVG/OSL/TOS
TOS/OSL/SVG
SVG/FRA/RIX
RIX/FRA/SVG
SVG/CDG/JFK/CLT'

It looks like alphabet soup- or a toddler playing with those jumbo, colorful magnetic letters.  It feels a little different.  These call letters have become the code of how I live- the complicated, sometimes risky code of how I live. These are codes that correspond to the colors of the sunrises, sunsets, sun-somethings that I have seen.  Color code, country code, area code, zip code.  Airport code.

Numbers,

Letters,

Life.

One Christmas Eve flight down, Two to go.

So much love, Dearests.