Two of a Kind, Each on Our Own

To be honest, how I arranged it, I’m not quite sure. I don’t really like travel that requires working on someone else’s schedule—unless it’s planned well in advance. That gives me plenty of time to make friends with the idea that I have to be at an appointed place at an appointed time. I guess this was one of the “kick in the adventure mode and see what happens” kind of things.

I had really needed to be on an airplane. We’re two of a kind—airplanes and I. We both travel alone through a silent sky. It’s not a choice. It’s just what we’re built for. Call it fate. Call it psyche. Call it DNA. It’s not a gift. It’s not a problem. It’s not something that’s anything. It’s just what is. Airplanes and I will always be slightly over-sized and ungainly when we’re on the ground and in one state too long.

It’s not that we mind having passengers or that we don’t get damn close to some people and certain places. People fill us up. Then they’re gone again. Places hold us close. Then we have to leave. That’s the way it works. It’s how it’s supposed to work.

I found an airplane that was going the way that I seemed to be going. Somehow I seemed to have the right kind of miles and the right kind of smile on to talk my way onto it. I even got a seat with enough leg room. I settled in with my headphones, and this time I was the grandchild of Richard Strauss, the composer. I drank wine, and listened to music.

The airplane and I landed. We were two of a kind coming down together. I always feel a little sad when I get off an airplane.

I was through the airport and into a rental car. They drive on my side of the road here. I thought I could find my way. I had time to get lost. What’s lost when you’re not really going anywhere? I breathed in the countryside, driving slow. I had traveled across an ocean and my eyes could believe I had traveled back in time.

I passed a man riding a bicycle in a suit on a back country road. I’d say he was sixty.

A couple was working in their garden. The garden was rich and dark. Garden. The garden was larger than half a city block. He wore a vest and a white shirt with buttons. She wore a green dress with an apron over it. Their hair was going gray. They made me think of the farmers in Van Gogh’s painting “First Steps.”

Welcome to Tuscany.

I drove a bit further. Then I pulled the car over to watch the sunset. I saw a boy walking through a large open field. He was an airplane too, I suppose. We were alone in our thoughts far apart, together, the same, yet different. We were two of kind, each on our own.

At sunrise, I was on a beach with bountiful clouds by an ocean of love.
By sunset I was by a bountiful field in an echo of solitude.

The world offers so much, if I see what I’m looking at.

—me strauss Letting me be