In the universe of coffee table books, there must be one about airports of the world.
The intrepid author would have traveled to major airports of the world, taken photographs, picked images that best describe the country visited.
The Denver airport has a blue bronco statue reared up in an open area as you drive to its terminals. The Dallas Airport has a bronze statue inside of President G.W. Bush. The Albuquerque Airport has Zuni turquoise jewelry and Indian Anasazi pottery. The Detroit Airport has photographs of Henry Ford and industrialization in the early 1900’s.
This Narita Airport in Tokyo shows me stylized Samurai warriors, gentle and inscrutable Asian women holding fans partially obscuring their emotions, upscale shops with duty free items for world travelers. There are a few English words on signs to help visitors, but the scribbles on signs remind me that I am halfway around the world and it is dark when it is usually light.
Somewhere in this airport, there must be a Memorial to those who died at Hiroshima, victims of the world’s first nuclear explosion.
Next stop is Manilla, Philippines.
The statue in the airport there should be of the Ali/Foreman prize fight, but will probably be a ten foot tall rooster with gold feathers and sharp talons.
Airports are portals to the world.
The Denver International Airport was built in cow pastures to the east of Denver, after Stapleton closed, and was turned into condos.
To fly out of Denver you follow I-70 east till you see white sails in the country, shuttle parking lots, arrival and departure ramps, east and west terminals. There are other ways to see our world but by air is the quickest and most dominant. Percentage wise, air travel is safer than walking to your local grocery.
Airports have not been designed for long term comfort though, which causes sleepless nights for those of us who travel.
This trip, the quietest place to sleep, is an interfaith chapel in the east terminal overlooking TSA processing on the commons below.. A note on the chapel doors reminds you not to put your feet on chairs, move furniture, leave trash, or interrupt prayers.
This spiritual portal should be full of travelers since we are all about to board aluminum cans and be carried thirty thousand feet up into the sky, but no one is here but me.
The screening to get on planes is daunting, but nothing compared to the screening we have to go through to get into Heaven.
I admire Mark Twain’s quip that ” I want to go to heaven for the climate, but go to Hell for the company. ”
Stuck in the airport till my flight boards for Manilla , early in the morning, I am feeling like Hell will not be a place I want to go even if Twain says the company is good.
I bet the seats down there will be several sizes too small and the sound system will be blasting rap music as loud as it will go.
Trumpets are not quiet instruments.
In the Cancun Airport, Terminal Three, a trumpet and guitars serenade travelers arriving and departing from Mexico. The terminal is full of duty free shops, and, if you didn’t pick up gifts before, this is your last tax free shopping opportunity.
Mariachi music belongs to Mexico though Mexican taxi drivers often listen to Willie Nelson and Classic Rock. This knob of Yucatan, Mexico has more in common with the Caribbean than Mexico but this fiery Mariachi group plays their Mexican style music, in tune, with great expression and distinctive costumes.
Being a neighbor to the United States is like sleeping next to an elephant. When it rolls over you become sandwich spread.
I don’t want Mexico to become the United States and I don’t want the United States to just be a continuation of Mexico.
Maintaining your national identity, in an increasingly homogenized world, is a true work of love and an expression of freedom.
This music at the airport seems to capture the extroverted flavor of our southern neighbor in a nutshell and I sing along with the musicians in English, as they croon in Spanish.
There is room on the planet for all of us, and our differences.
Yoga studios are prevalent in Tulum.
At nine sharp, practitioners dress in loose fitting clothes, clutch their orange or green mats, make their way into the yoga studio and begin exercises with a background of soothing music and the reassuring voice of a Yoga master who has learned the same way, on a bare floor in some distant part of the world.
Yoga Shala is similar to many of the hostels here, a compound of thatched roof cabanas, most with shared bathrooms, limited cooking facilities and wide open air porches for catching sea breezes and writing in notebooks in the afternoon.
On a wall at the head of outside stairs leading up to my second floor bungalow is a circle of painted Yoga positions, each position taking years of work and concentration to achieve.
Living without amenities grows on you.
Doing simple things well is hard work.
Learning how to breath was never something I used to have to think about.
At this point in our acquaintance,I’m not sure Yoga and I are meant for each other.
Most villages, towns and cities, small or large, old or new, have a Main Street.
Main streets support shops, offices, hotels, restaurants, government compounds. Some have divided boulevards for traffic, bike paths, sidewalks for pedestrians. Main streets are where towns were conceived, the center of an onion that keeps growing outwards as people move away from ground zero in search of more room, privacy, quiet, better schools, less crime,more new, less old.
This morning, the jungle pushes against the main road on both sides.
This route would have been used by Ancients who built the palaces to the north that have been neglected and fallen into ruin, as well as other pyramids deep in these Central American jungles. This main road would have been more narrow then, would have been swept with palm fronds by slaves of conquered tribes. There would have been pageants here with elites wearing feathered head dresses parading to their quarters in the palaces for religious ceremonies and political celebrations.
As this day begins, this Main Street of Tulum, Mexico is still checking its own pulse, waking up to the sounds of tropical birds and breaking waves rolling onto white sand beaches.
It is not as grand as it once was, but peaceful, these days, is much better than grand.
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