Summer Travel

I once read an Aldous Huxley quotation that said, "You never really have to go anywhere. If you look hard enough, you're already there." I thought the line was interesting, so I repeated to my mother. She stared off at the wall for a few seconds, as she often did when I presented her with something she didn't like. Then she replied, "He sounds like one of those writers who took a lot of LSD."

P.S., she was right. Huxley took hallucinogenic drugs, and a wrote a book about it called "The Door of Perception." The book later inspired the name of a rock band called The Doors. So I'm on vacation in New York City over father's day weekend, and here I am thinking about my mother. Fair enough. I left Iowa City last Thursday, flying from Moline to Chicago, and Chicago to Laguardia Airport in New York City. I've spent the past few days here, and I'm headed for Europe tomorrow.

New York has been an exhausting blast. Restaurants, bars, hotels, walking in Central Park in noonday sun. I'm heading back out tonight, but for now I'm content to sit idly and listen to the traffic go by. I walk outside, and a feeling of floating comes over. Unburdened, lightheaded, an unexpected sensation of joy. A feeling of freedom.

Or maybe I took too much LSD. Either way, it's been fun.