I love when the unexpected ends up being a delight. As kids, this is like getting dragged someplace, and then having fun in spite of ourselves. Tenerife, even on a Sunday when much is closed, was like that for me. We pulled in to see a town with the full moon hovering, then falling behind the mountains. The clouds hung low, delaying the actual break of sunrise that first day, but lighting the sky with anticipation.
With nothing planned, we wandered off the dockyard into downtown. Another city where the importance of ship travel and trade routes are highly valued. There was a Mercado some blocks away, a cultural hub of activity. As with Cadiz, the inside market offered meats, fruit, and bakery items. The outside had blocks and blocks of buyers and sellers of new and used items. It was a place where much trade takes place. Interesting repetitions were the number of typewriters displayed, and also hardware and tools, as if discarded light switch plates and phone chargers were eagerly awaiting adoption to a new home.
The map had a large green patch, and I am a fan of public space as a destination to see public art and be an observer/participant in a place where i am not being asked to be a consumer. The public art did not disappoint throughout and was very eclectic.
Having begun Murakami’s novel 1Q84, I was thrilled to park on a bench and let my partner wander for awhile and take pictures of the rest of the statues, gardens and walkways. We met up again before the rain, wandered and eventually found our way back toward the shoreline.
Spanish food is not great for a vegetarian diet, and having one’s “home” travel with us made this dinner option easy. We got back on the ship, and after eating on the back deck, took time to watch the rainbow arc completely from one end across the sky and find its way into the water on the other end. This is a rare sight for me, and more importantly, rare for me to take the time to wait and appreciate the development of this type of unfolding for my own benefit.
As I think about these types of moments, I want to be able to retain the value of the investment. Doing therapy, and teaching, involves a creation of arcs for my participants, I do consider timing and presentation in my work life, and continue to develop that skill set. We all have lenses relevant to what is important to us. When I watch other professors, I attend to timing and connection to the audience. As much as I am nourished by new content, as a learner i am hungry more for style and effectiveness.
When teaching, how do I keep the attention, when the content may have less vibrant (but necessary) aspects to complete the story? When doing therapy, how do I not talk too much, but provide enough structure to help my clients “raise their gaze”, and see what is on their horizons, beyond the short view?
Another sunrise.
What is nice about this time is that there is time. In a faculty retreat recently, I had included a slide to highlight the importance of integration. There are so many novel and innovative ideas being introduced, and in order to pass it on, I yearn for the time to savor and digest, not just regurgitate. There are both blessings and disadvantages in working and socializing with brilliant beings. I am surrounded by individuals whose knowledge and skill sets are different than mine, and i am stretched in wonderful ways. There are also times when, if I do not trust my own ways of learning, that missed opportunities lay around me, and miscommunications are more common than I would want if I have not taken the time to properly store my new knowledge.
Hiking above the clouds is not something I can do routinely, but I have learned enough through trial and error to know that my adventures to high places have yielded promising results. It is the push beyond my comfort zone that I value. Even on a short hike, I feel the familiar resistance, the same as I do going up a chairlift for the first time in the snowboarding season. Why am I here? Why do I do something uncomfortable when I could stay in a safer space?
It is in these journeys where my mind has a chance to follow the horizon and to notice the nuances of color, texture, rock, and sand. I start and finish a lot of thoughts in these treks. Much of my work is about communication and storytelling, and it is in the step-step-step that the stories find their place in the compartments of my mind. Just as living in a small cabin on ship compels me to stay organized for the sake of sanity, this kind of purposeful walking is two-fold. As I notice my surroundings, I am also putting away the snippets that are scattered across my consciousness.
Me in front of El Teide volcano.
I love this experience of getting above the clouds without being in a plane to get here. A decade ago on a failed attempt to climb Rainier, we were stuck in a cloud with very poor visibility for hours due to one of our group really struggling. As hikers descended, they were giddy about how beautiful the mountain was above the cloud. Their joy was infectious as if they had found a true religion that must be shared. We never made it high enough that day, and had to forfeit the trek.
Every time since then, I have been especially grateful for the opportunity to get above the opaqueness. This is so much like the hard times of life, the space I hold with clients when they are in the denseness of their respective clouds. I cannot just shout about the better view, but walk the pace that they adopt, staying within view, and hoping that they stick with me to get to the breakthroughs that are just beyond.
I also have a soft spot for telescopes, perhaps more metaphorically than physically (although one of the coolest nights of my life in the last five years was going up to Mt. Wilson Observatory and looking through that telescopic lens), and it was great to see the multi-country collaboration of equipment on the way up the mountain.
Gran Telescopio Canarias
Evening programming the following day included Post-Port Reflections. The faculty facilitator suggested a topic of tying literature to the experiences of the last two ports. Damian and I are in charge of facilitating the discussion next time, and are given the topic of how travel affects each of us emotionally. It is yet another lens with which to intentionally view our experiences. Ghana next, after seven days at sea.
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