Tuesday, October 2, 2012

These vagabond shoes..

It's been a while since I traveled - or at least that's what it feels like, since I haven't really documented any of the travels I have had. They may as well as not have happened, given the impermanence of whatever the neural dendrons decide to latch on to. I think mine have turned hippie - roaming without purpose, floating in whatever fluid the brain is filled with (the exact neuron with that information is MIA - I'll remember whenever that electrical pulse reaches the part of my brain responsible for trying to remember.

There have been some trips - some to San Francisco (class, and marathon), Florida (Kristen's wedding, and Harry Potter), and of course, the usual ones to Lucknow. Uncharacteristically (at least, uncharacteristically for what my latest characteristics have been like), I planned a trip to New York to see Aditi again, and also visit Papa in Syracuse. This time, I did get the airport right, unlike the last time, not that it mattered, since I landed smack in the middle of NY rush hour, quite literally, as the shuttle from the La Guardia to Penn Station waded through what seemed like LA traffic on steroids, the non-stimulant variety - since the whole place resembled a parking lot, and it took the frantic-looking driver's very Delhi-like driving skills to get me to the station in an hour.

NY day 1 was hot - saw the new world trade center tower, and times square, and a show at night called Fuerza Bruta which had performers running sideways on walls, swimming overhead, and running through cardboard feathery walls. The other time was spent in cabs, and trains. The highlight of NY day 2 was riding a bike through Central Park before heading to Syracuse, the flight for which was delayed (4 different times, one of the them being a change to an earlier time). The plane was so small, that the airport gate devoted to the airplane was really just an exit door with a handwritten 'Gate 11x' over it. On the flight, with all the bumps through the aerial corridors, I was pretty sure I'd go straight down and straight up.

Syracuse is beautiful. Too peaceful for a long stay, but probably very therapeutic for certain get-aways. Cazinovia had an outdoor modern-art sculpture museum that included a secret garden, a bookshelf with real and fake books, a real tree with cubic wooden blocks for leaves, and a natural barcode made with trees.

The trip was almost perfect, but just as I was leaving, I didn't want to. It's probably a new definition of the inertia of rest phenomena. It was hard to say goodbye to Papa.

I think I agree with Frank Sinatra, but not in the way he meant.
"These vagabond shoes
They are longing to stray.."