Bon Voyage – You Need to Leave Here to Get Somewhere Else

Written 3-18-2017

There is a delicious feeling that occurs all the time this time of year for us.

It’s the same feeling you might experience whenever you:

• Enter a new museum and view the first three items of the exhibit
• Watch the first ten minutes of a new movie
• Listen to the first song at a concert
• Try a new route on your daily commute
• Experience the first three days in a new country
• Arrive the first week at a new job
• Take the first bite of a new food item

The best way to describe this feeling is to imagine that you have boarded a large ship that just started its journey across the sea. For a little while you can still see familiar landmarks along the coast but before you know it you’re completely lost in the new journey.

What would call this delicious feeling?  I call the feeling – the rapture of departure.

For us, the spring is the Season of Departures. It’s all about movements from the known to the unknown, from the past, and the present to the future. It’s about new discoveries, and reinterpretations.

Again, at this time of year, it’s like we metaphorically visit our favorite creek that enters the sea. We go there repeatedly throughout the spring just to fold little colorful paper boats then release them down the flowing water to the ocean so we can see another departure.

These paper boats and their departures represent new years, new birthdays, new seasons, and a pivotal anniversary:

• This New Year, 2017, got a new boat and new departure. Where will the new year bring us all?
• This year, we have a new President of the United States of America. He got a new boat although that one has some questionable navigation issues, and seems to be taking on some serious water.
• Both Sharon and I have our birthdays in March so we’ll both release new boats for our upcoming prosperous new years.
• There’s the new baseball season, it gets a new boat and a new departure for possible glory!
• Can you believe it? I’m now a soccer fan. Go Portland Timbers! Soccer gets a new boat and a new departure to actually score some goals!
• We both love to garden. There’s a new growing season – gardening gets a new boat and a new departure for new ways to nurture nature.
• Aria’s (our cat) birthday is in April. She gets a new boat and a new departure for a healthy year. She’ll be 11 years old soon!
• Today, March 18, is our 32nd anniversary of moving in together. Time flies when you’re having fun! This yearly anniversary always gets the most festive little boat and a new departure for another year of adventure!

Bon Voyage little boats! Safe journeys! Lovely departures!

P.S. What was that all about? For Sharon’s birthday last Wednesday, we attended a neighborhood Clark College Concert featuring some Richard Wagner Opera. However, the first item on the program was Otello Overture, op 93 by Antonín Dvořák. I’m afraid I do not know that piece although it was brilliant!

When it began, I closed my eyes, and found myself thinking about all these thoughts about that true rapture of departure.  Of course, you always need to leave where you are in order to get to somewhere else. But once you get going a little, it’s a delicious feeling!  By the way, it was one hell of a concert!

If none of this makes any sense, we’ll just blame it all on Antonín Dvořák.