5/26/15, “Homeward Bound”
Helsinki Airport, Finland (HEL)
It is a little past 11 PM in New York, most of the people I know and
love back on the East Coast are still awake or have just gone to sleep. Me? I
am homeward bound. All good things must
come to an end, and, here in an airport smoking lounge at Helsinki Airport, my
trip draws to its close. I have been
awake for close to two hours now, since past 4 AM local time. I did not get to sleep until almost 1
AM. If I did in fact get three full
hours of sleep I would consider myself lucky, the 24-hour daylight still
messing with my sleep schedule. It was 9
PM in New York when I woke up, and I do not know when I will get to sleep
again. Perhaps not again until 9 PM New
York time. I wrote previously about how
wonderfully simple traveling eastward is start the trip. Now, it is time to pay the piper, to do the
opposite, to deal with the miserable westward return journey.
I have written on my themes of love and
beauty ad nauseam, and there is not much left to be said on the matter. Okay, that’s a lie. Ignoring the unprovable/incontrovertible
metaphysical topics of god, freedom, and immortality, love and beauty are
probably the two deepest topics in philosophy.
There is so much to be said about beauty and aesthetics, and even to
describe only my own aesthetical tastes would extend far beyond the space I
allocate to this Travelogue. Both last
year and this year, I have dedicated a great deal of space to that topic, and I
believe my reader is beginning to understand my stance on these issues, but I
will recap.
To me, beauty is
simplicity. Beauty is that which does
not distract. That model of beauty from
my high school? She is extremely simple,
and I mean that in a good way. I see her
as the ideal and anything that deviates from that ideal as a distraction, as a
lesser form of beauty. That is why I
know with absolute certainty that she will always be the most beautiful woman
in the world to me, for the rest of my life.
If I think of the people in my life I find most physically attractive (I
am recalling two friends in particular), they have that in common, the
simplicity.
Beauty, to me, is a
deductive process, not an additive one.
Nothing can add to someone’s physical attraction (other than like
personality traits or intelligence, which I find a very attractive quality,
even manifesting itself in my interpretation of physical beauty). I don’t understand when people say that
someone has an “exotic beauty.” To me,
that exoticism is a distraction. I will
give a specific example from a little over a year ago. One of my philosophy friends was describing
my now-current philosophy professor, saying she didn’t find her attractive,
that she was “Too white” or “Too Katy Perry.”
Granted, I don’t find Katy Perry attractive, there is too much there
that distracts. 2002-era Avril Lavigne,
yes, of course. There is nothing there
that distracts, just pure cuteness.
Likewise, my philosophy professor, the piercings, the tattoos all over
her arms, the odd haircut, there is too much that distracts. That is her style. That is what she herself finds attractive,
and I would never advocate someone changing herself out of what she perceives
others want. Beauty is subservient to
self. You cannot be beautiful if you are
pretending to be someone else, and, yes, this is an Avril Lavigne “Complicated”
reference.
Again, to me, the most
beautiful people are the ones were are simply and plainly beautiful without
even trying. That girl in high
school? I like to think that she woke up
that way every morning. For all the
girls I fancied myself in love with in high school, I never once thought that I
loved her. Yes, this my transitioning to
my final discourse on beauty. I have ten
minutes. I just wrote that beauty is
subservient to self. Likewise love is
subservient to self. (Going to
plagiarize Ayn Rand here.) In order to
say “I love you,” you must first learn to say “I.” Love is a value, and, in order to have
values, to love anyone or anything, you need to value yourself.
Every single person in the world I love, I
love because they make me happy. They
make me happy because of the decades we have shared together, because of all
the times we have hung out, because of fond memories, because of the times they
have cured me of depression, because they can brighten the darkest of days with
a single text, because they make me smile every time I see their name in my
Facebook feed. Different people in my
life fall into different ones of those qualities I just mentioned, but, reader do
you see where I’m going?
Love is a
selfish thing. I love these people
because they make ME happy, not out of some misguided sense of duty or demand. To love is to value, and I choose whom I
love, just as I choose my values. This
is a very simplistic view of love, and it only addresses rational love. I have mentioned previously how we also feel
irrational love and how it would be irrational to dismiss irrational love. There is so much more to be said on that
topic, and I’m not even sure where to go with it, so I will leave it
there.
After I closed last night, I
packed and went to sleep, having trouble sleeping with daylight still coming
into the room. I woke up at 4 AM from a
text and was unable to get back to sleep, I don’t think, my alarm going off at
4:30 AM. I hurried to get ready and took
the taxi to the airport. The Duty-Free
did not have any cigars, but I got a bottle of Finlandia vodka. I then got some yoghurt, seltzer, and
espresso for breakfast. After breakfast,
I went to the smoking lounge, where I lit up a Montecristo and proceeded to
write this entry, which I will now close so that I can head to my gate, as my
flight to Oslo is about to board.
Oslo Airport, Norway (OSL)
I don’t have much new to report, certainly no more insights into love
or beauty. It is that word above that
starts with an N that is the reason for me writing now. When I set out to see the world, I had
already been to 7 countries (USA, Canada, Mexico, Norway, UK, France, and
Greece). My travels would take me back
to all of those countries, except one: Norway.
I have detailed my remaining international travel for the next two years. I visited USA (obviously), Canada, UK, and
France in 2014, and I was in Mexico in March and am going back in September and
more times, too. Greece, I mentioned for
Athens and Rhodes.
However, Norway? No need.
I will eventually go to Norway again.
After all it has seven WHS waiting for me to visit, but there is no
pressing need. I did not expect an
Official visit to be part of the trip, not until I booked it and the OSL
connection turned out to make the most sense.
I actually considered going into Oslo, getting a quick breakfast, having
a cigar, taking a picture at Parliament, and buying a flag pin. I decided against it. Instead, I got breakfast at the airport and
bought more cigars, unable to smoke any of them without leaving the airport.
After I closed at HEL, I went to my gate,
where I slept fitfully on the plane, if at all.
After I was done with my business at the aiport, I had to proceed
through EU/Schengen exit procedures, since this flight would take me outside
the Schengen Area. It was the first time
I had to show my passport since I arrived at ARN. The gate for the EWR flight was closed off
from the rest of the airport, and I sat on the floor between a cute Norwegian
girl on the bench to my left and an outlet above me to the right. It is a good spot. I there proceeded to write this entry, which
I will now close, as boarding is about to begin. I guess I’ll sleep until like 9-10 AM New
York time and then work for the rest of the flight. That will leave me rested enough for the day
and also allow me to get as much work done as my laptop’s battery will allow if
there is outlet at my seat.
Aboard SAS 907, En route OSL-EWR
I suppose there is one topic left to discuss before I close out the
trip, one more item of Northern culture to explore: food. While I have recalled almost every meal I
have eaten, I have not gone into detail about my interpretation of the
cuisine. Again, why should there be more
similarities between Alaskan and Swedish cuisine than Swedish and French
cuisine? That one is simpler to
answer.
Different animals and plants
live above the 60th Parallel than below it, and that is often
unaffected by longitude. The vegetables
that can be raised at arctic conditions, the animals that can survive there,
and the berries that grow, all of them more similar than different around the
North. Something like game meat, root
vegetables, and berry sauce would seem the ideal meal to me, with a berry
cobbler for dessert. It just so happens
that that is the speciality of Northern cuisine. Whether it was venison or reindeer, carrots
or onions, lingonberries or blueberries, that was mostly what I ate. Fish, too, also plays a role, and I prefer
the fish that is found in the North to that that is found south of the 60th
Parallel.
Oh, and the coffee and
desserts, the experience of fika, is absolutely sublime. Even the bad coffee there was good. Excluding coffee that came from a dispenser
instead of a pot, I did not have a bad cup of coffee. There is a coffee shop in Manhattan called
Fika. It is terribly overpriced, but it
is the best coffee in the city. Yes,
it’s a Swedish or Finnish place. Reader,
every single cup of brewed coffee that I had my entire trip was just as good
as, if not better than, the coffee there.
Perhaps it was the fact that coffee was practically coursing through my
veins that I had so much trouble sleeping?
I don’t think so. I was fine
sleeping in Sweden, and I drank plenty of coffee my first day. Maybe it took a few days for the caffeine to
become so permeated in my bloodstream?
Whatever it is, the Swedes and the Finns sure knew how to do coffee
right. Alright, that is all I have to
say.
After I closed at OSL, I boarded
the plane, and I was pleasantly surprised that the seat I had chosen, in an
empty row of four, remained an empty row of four. In other words, I had four pillows and four
seats to myself. I slept better than I
did either night in Helsinki. I got
about four and a half hours of sleep before I realized that I needed to wake
up, it being around 11 AM in New York. I
then asked to have my meal brought, it being my usual lunchtime in New York and
me having slept through what I guess was lunch service. They just brought a snack, but I have no
appetite, so I’ll probably bring it back to the office with me or eat it on the
bus. I will need to work until at least
6:30 PM tonight, maybe later. After I
had my meal and wrote a couple of proposals, I proceeded to write this entry,
which I will now close so that I can get back to work.
New York, New York
My watch, which is still on Stockholm/Oslo time, says it’s past 1:30
AM. Helsinki is even an hour after
that. It was 9 PM New York time when I
got the text that woke me up. I will
probably be up for at least another three or four hours, not getting to sleep
until past 11 PM New York time. I have
one last idea to share about love. There
are the people we love because of who they are, and there are people we love because
of what they have done for us. I argue
that both types of love are equally valid, and there are people in my life in
both categories. The interesting
question that becomes what it would take for me to stop loving them.
If I love someone for who they are, what
would it take for me to stop loving them?
Three things. One, I realize I
was wrong about who they were. Two, I change
and become someone else. Three, they
change and become someone else. This is
the Objectivist view of love. Now, the
other view? Someone does something that
benefits me so greatly, that makes my life a little bit better, to the point
that I might say, “For that, I will always love you,” could I ever unlove
them? Well, it would take them doing
something so cruel, so mean, that it negates the good act that caused them to
gain my love.
If you examine family
ties, and I think my readers know me enough that I will never say I love a
member of my family simply because they are my family. “Tell grandma you love her” is common thing
parents tell their children. I think my
parents know better than to try and tell me that. Did grandma (being generic here) do anything,
other than giving birth to my parent, that causes me to love her? Is there anything about her that makes me love
her? These are rhetorical
questions. I am not answering them. I just encourage my readers to dig a little
deeper, to try to avoid causeless love, to say, “I love her because of
everything she has done for me” or “I love her because of who she is” and to
never say, “I can’t explain why I love her.”
That is my final word on this topic.
Anyway, after I closed we soon landed, and I breezed through border
control with Global Entry, gladly bypassing the long line. I took the bus back to the city, working en
route. I had a fairly productive
afternoon at the office and then went to the cigar shop right before they
closed. I lit up an Hoyo from the box I
bought in Oslo and walked home, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I
will now close, along with closing out the trip. Next stop: Taylor Swift concert in
Philadelphia, though if I don’t stay overnight it might not count as a
trip. Otherwise, it’s the big summer
trip with my mother, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks to
say “Mainland US Complete” and Canada to say “Canadian Prairie Complete.”
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