5/22/15, “Eastbound”
Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey
For the first time in six months, I am heading east. There is so much to be said about heading
east, the logistics of the trip, being six hours ahead of the people I know and
love back on the East Coast make it for a much better trip. However, I will not be writing about that,
not yet at least. Almost nothing has
changed in my life in the five days since I’ve closed, so maybe it would be
better to explore how my life has changed in the past year, since my last
Memorial Day trip, the one that took me to the 1964 Stadium in Tokyo. This trip will take me to the 1912 Stadium in
Stockholm and the 1952 Stadium in Helsinki.
Not much has changed in the past year, actually. Sure, a lot has happened, and my readers have
been along with me every step of the way, but has anything changed? Some shuffling of friends, to be sure, which
I have mentioned enough times.
Rekindling old friendships or allowing them to fade, forging new ones,
it doesn’t matter. I have roughly the
same number of friends in my life now as I did a year ago.
The main theme of my entry last year was love
and beauty and happiness, even exploring the idea of irrational happiness. If I trust to empirical evidence, I can only
conclude that it makes sense to embrace irrational happiness. What I referred to as my one source of
irrational happiness has been the main source of happiness for me over the past
five months. To dismiss the happiness
because it was irrational would be, well, quite irrational. I have come to realize that I need to enjoy
my happiness in a way that is purely rational because irrational happiness can
very quickly become irrational unhappiness.
With rational happiness, it is much harder for it to become
unhappiness.
As for my ideas on love and
beauty, nothing has changed, at least not much.
My ideas on beauty are the same as they were. Is it any wonder that, outside my family, the
most beautiful person in my life is also the one whom I love most? No, reader, there should be doubt about that,
even if it is irrational. However, it is
rational to love her now for one simple reason: because I fell in love with her
then, at I time when I thought I was incapable of falling in love again. Even if I fell in love with her for
irrational reasons, I fell in love with her, nonetheless, in so small part
because she was beautiful. All of the
rational reasons why I value her friendship now, I knew none of those at the
moment when we first met.
As for my
ideas of love, has anything changed since a year ago? I would say that I have gone full circle and
pretty much come back to where I was then.
Actually, no, that’s not true. I’d
have to say that my sister got it right when she said that I owed it to myself
to find someone with whom I have great chemistry and with whom I have physical,
emotional, and intellectual attraction.
A year ago, I was just trying to find my Dagny, the one with whom I have
the emotional and intellectual attraction.
Atlas Shrugged makes no mention of Dagny’s beauty, I don’t think, nor
does it mention if John and Dagny have the same tastes in pop culture. My entries from that trip were some of the
best entries I’ve written, I think, and I hope to match the quality in this
trip. Like that trip, only one thing
matters on this trip: visiting the Stadiums.
It has been a very boring Day 0, woke up early, did an inspection,
worked until it was time for my traditional pre-departure lunch at Hop Won, lit
up a Cohiba, headed the cigar shop, said my goodbyes, got in the car, got stuck
in traffic, worried and panicked, made it to the airport an hour and a half
before the flight, went through security, and got to the gate where I proceeded
to write this entry, which I will close after I describe what I mean by “Eastbound.”
The last time I have gone to this approximate
time zone was my last birthday, eight months ago, after a very special lunch
with someone whom I had no idea would soon become one of my best friends. When I am travel east, I am six hours ahead,
which means that, by the time I finish uploading my photos and writing my
entry, it’s around 6 or 7 PM on the East Coast, which is the perfect time to
maximize the visibility of my posts.
When I stay in the west, I need to either post in the middle of the
night New York time or wait until the morning, which often means neglecting the
photos. Also, flying east is great
because I sleep on the flight and arrive in Europe early in the morning, ready
for a full day. Coming back is not so
pleasant, though.
Also, it means that
for the first part of my day, until at least noon, everyone back home is
asleep. It basically means half a day
with no status updates, no social media, just radio silence. Sure, I post stuff, and then, the notifications
and messages start trickling in in the afternoon as people wake up, start
seeing my posts. I like it much better
that way than being on the same or earlier time zone. With the weak euro, it’ll be great to go back
to Europe, and I will now close so that I can board.
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