Where are we?

Travel is Poetry

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:40:02 -0400

We are off the boat, and back in Chile. We are in the beautiful little town of Valparaiso. Yesterday we were introduced to the life and works of Chile's most famous poet, Pablo Neruda. We visited one of his homes, and I was inspired and enlightened by everything we saw and learned.

I think it is no accident that I discovered Pablo Neruda on this adventure around the world of ours. That I found him in this rainbow colored village called Valparaiso, that can, itself, only be characterized as an amazing work of art. It is no accident that I only just discovered him, because his validation for the importance of poetry, that I have shared with you above, describes, unintentionally, my experience on our travels – The vast family of humanity has indeed proved to be incredible and extraordinary. The people we have met, and the places we have visited have painted a poem on my heart that is beyond even the beauty and rhythm of Neruda's own verse. And even though I sometimes attempt to share, with my own writing and with pictures, the glory that is our experiences on this journey; it is my direct exposure to, my firsthand involvment with, my actual participation in these encounters that has branded my heart, my mind, and my soul with this indescribable ballad that can only be called... Poetry.

So even though I break this bread with you; and even though I appreciate, more than you will ever know, your willingness to listen, and search for some connection to our story that sparks even the tiniest feeling of having experienced something... My real hope is that it's not a feeling of experience that you get, that you are not just content with living through us; but that it is a feeling of inspiration that overtakes you, and that you too venture out and find, for yourself, the beauty that is everywhere... and that you share it, and inspire others to do the same.

For those who have been apart of this journey so far - I thank you. For those who have traveled along with us through our website, or on facebook, or by reading our emails - I thank you, and hope that we run into you at some point; or even better, that you will join us somewhere along the way.

Because travel is poetry, and poetry 'should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.'...

Peace,

Blayne

Click here to go to South America

Perry's Around the World

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:01:26 -0300

Ok, I just realized it is Friday the Thirteenth, and I was just riding a horse along a giant ridge in the Andes Mountains - good thing I’m not superstitious!

So, we’ve been traveling for almost a month now, and I, again, have slacked on keeping this thing up-to-date. I’m really trying to catch things up, and have gotten from The Inauguration in Washington, DC - Where we started our whole adventure, through Santiago, Chile - the first place in South America we visited.

We’ve also already been to the breath-taking Easter Island, and are now in the equally awe inspiring Mendoza, Argentina. I will have those sites up within the next two days (before we leave Mendoza). That will have us caught up, and in sync. There are already thousands of photos to sift through, and hundreds of amazing experiences to share with you; so thank you for your patience, and for continuing to check in on us.

You can start at the Inauguration by clicking here:

Or, go straight to the Around The World site by clicking here:

Or, Click on “Wonderland” here, or at the top of this page, or at the bottom of other pages to choose where you want to go.

I just have to add, that Friday the thirteenth or not; six hours on a horse riding through the mountains will make your butt hurt... Seeing what we saw today makes it all worth it, but it still hurts :).

Where have we been?

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:25:39 -0300

We have gotten a lot of emails from people we don’t even know (not to mention the one’s from the people we do know) asking us, “What’s Up!? Where did you go? Are you not traveling anymore? Did your plans fall through? Why did you just leave us hanging?” Etc... etc... Well, we’re back, and here’s the long and short of it.

We did sell the house (for a lot less than we expected to, but at least we sold it. We know a lot of people who have dropped their house’s price farther down than we did, and still can’t get a nibble). We feel very fortunate to have gotten out from underneath that burden.

As most of you know, we were basically living apart for more than a year (not in the bad way those of you who don’t know are thinking). We put the house on the market the summer of 2007, and we closed on July 31, 2008. Buffy and the kids moved down to South Carolina at the end of the school year Spring 2007, and the kids enrolled in school. I stayed in NYC trying to sell the house. I traveled down south as much as I could, but it was never enough.

Anyway, we sold the house at the end of July, and we were reunited in SC by August 2. The whole time we were trying to sell our house, and I was in NY, my brother, sisters, mother, cousins, etc... declared their excitement at the prospect of Buffy, Taylor, Zach, and I being “back home” in Myrtle Beach, SC. Well, the first month was amazing! But, it didn’t take longer than that for them to realize that the idea of us moving back home, was much more attractive than us actually moving back home. The result was five months that could be described as that moment at Thanksgiving when the wine and tryptophan kick in, and all hell breaks loose. All the petty jealousies, and resentments came out, and all the hard work we had done that allowed us to reach the place that allowed us to make the decision to sell everything and travel the world was challenged. I won’t pretend that I didn’t participate in all the mayhem. It’s just like when I was living in NY, and I would talk to someone on the phone, and would speak with a Southern Accent for a week. When I found myself in the middle of all of this Drama, I slipped right back into old habits, and reacted just as irrationally as I was being treated.

There were all kinds of expectations for our reunion. The picture for some was that I had come home to save the family, and the family business (which does need saving, by the way - Not that I think I’m qualified to save anything... this was an idea that some of them had). The picture for some others was actually the opposite, and they were going to save us. They believed that we had finally left Satan’s Den (their perception of NYC), and now was their chance to Save our lost souls (Our rejection of organized religion, and secular views geared more towards spirituality and acceptance of all religions, and people, has never sat well with their Southern Baptist dogma). Not all of them felt this way but some did, and tried very hard to Save us. Then, the picture for others was that we would simply adopt the animosity and resentment they all had for each other, and take sides - even when we didn’t take sides (which we never did), there was an assumption that we had because that’s just how things were done. The bottom line is that we spent the past several months buried in a sea of misunderstanding. No one could possibly believe that we didn’t resent everyone else for what they had, or think we were better than everyone else because of what we had. Resentment, and jealousy manifested in a sea of gossip is just a way of life with them, and our new found open mindedness, and desire to embrace the world and it’s differences was, and is, incomprehensible to them. By incomprehensible, I don’t mean that they are incapable of comprehending or understanding those concepts, but that they are not interested in those concepts. The idea that we were not calculating every move to get something for ourselves was, and is, lost on them. There is a general concept that exists there that can be generalized down to: You can’t win, unless someone else loses... you can’t succeed, unless someone else fails. I’m not judging, or even condemning them for this way of seeing the world, just for their insistence that we adopt it; or worse, their claim that we actually do see the world that way, and are lying when expressing our “open to everything and everyone”, and “everybody can win” philosophy.

Without going into any more detail, I think it’s clear that the reason we haven’t been keeping up this blog/site is because we have been a little distracted with “family” drama. Which, I think you all will agree, tends to take over your life when you are smack dab in the middle of it - hell, even when you are not smack dab in the middle of it... There were other more substantial reasons too, like computer mishaps; but that turns into more of an excuse than anything else, because you can always start over, or piece things together from other sources. But, we’re back... sort of...

Why sort of? Because we are only “back” here on the Web. Here on this site. Here in the Blogosphere. We are not back in NYC, or back in the old way of thinking about things and the world... We are simply back on your screen cataloging our life and adventures - subjective and objective. But more to the point: We are Back-on-track!

I am writing this from a small apartment in Santiago, Chile - the first stop on our Around the World adventure (Well, the first foreign stop. We did hit Washington for the inauguration first). I’ll get back to Chile, and Washington for that matter in a minute; but first lets wrap up the months leading up to our departure...

There were some birthdays during the last few months leading up to the Inauguration!!! Buffy’s 40th, Taylor’s 15th, Zach’s 12th, and my 45th. The most significant of these was, of course, Buffy’s 40th. I planned a big party up in NYC on top of the Gramercy Park Hotel. this was openly resented and ridiculed by many of our family members in SC, who proclaimed that we were back home now, why would we go all the way to NYC for Buffy’s birthday. The idea that she had twenty five years worth of friends back there did nothing to ease their dissatisfaction; and not a one of them came up to celebrate with Buffy despite our pleas, and our having paid for an extra room at the Gramercy just in case (this, of course, burned a hole in their claim that it was about money).

There were also, obviously, some big Holidays during that period! Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years! All of which were surprisingly Drama-Free (perhaps because all the drama was already going on outside of the holiday, we were allowed the unique experience of using the holidays as a relief from the drama, instead of as a release of the drama).

I don’t want to make it sound like things were all bad during the six months before we left, or that my family is any more crazy than any of yours; or that I’m any less crazy than any of my family... All families have drama, and ours was just thirty years of build-up, with plenty of time to air it all out (not limited to the one or two days surrounding Thanksgiving). There was just as much making up, as there was fighting. Buffy and I also had a great vacation with my mom and two of her girlfriends Becky and Esther at my Uncle Wayne’s house on Green Turtle in the Bahamas. It was a beautiful place, and we had a great time.

Anyway...

Our itinerary for the first leg, which will be for almost seven months, and entirely in South America, is:

From January 18, 2009 until August 2, 2009

Washington, DC (to see Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America!)
Santiago, Chile - Easter Island - Mendoza, Argentina - San Paulo, Brazil -
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (for two weeks of Carnival!) - Paraty, Brazil - Camburi, Brazil -
Buenos Aires, Argentina (will be here for a month during “Spring Break” back in States, which is going to allow Taylor and Zach’s friends to come and visit!) - Cruise Ship: Radiance of the Seas for a 14 day trip traveling down the west coast of S. A., around it’s southern tip, and back up it’s east coast to Chile - Valparaiso, Chile - Quito, Ecuador - The Galapagos Islands - Iquitos, Peru - Boat: The Aqua for a four night expedition down the Amazon River - Cuzco, Peru - The Inca Trail, and Machu Picchu - Lake Titicaca - The Nazca Lines - Cartagena, Colombia -
Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica (We’ll be here for a few weeks, and several of our friends and family members have pledged to join us!) - Kingston, Jamaica - Montego Bay, jamaica - Back to US

Our plan is to return to the United States for about six months (the kids will enroll in “hard copy” school for that time, and resume “soft copy” Distance Learning again in January 2010). Taylor will be turning sixteen in the fall of 2009, and wants to be with friends and family, and who can blame her. Besides, we may need the time to plan the next leg: From January, 2010 to either January 2011, or August, 2011 (one to one and a half years). This time exploring Europe and Africa. After that it’s Asia, and the Middle East... and then who knows what - We are open to it all!

We thank you all for your patience during our absence, and welcome you back! We appreciate your desire to follow us around, and hope that you will be inspired to expand your horizons, and embrace a little bit more of this diverse and fantastically enchanting world filled with an incredible assortment of intriguing, charming, and irresistibly alluring people.

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Added February 14th, 2009

I’ve made some changes to this entry recently in response to a lot of negative feedback from some of my family. You can actually read the comments of my cousin Beth below. The other feedbacks came in the form of emails, and I assume that means private, and so I will not reveal them here in this public forum. I will only say that there are family members who have expressed the desire to never talk to me again, and asked to be removed from my email list. Actually, the public forum part seemed to be the crux of the hard feelings. That I had aired something private in public. Please understand that I am not bashing my family, nor their way of life; but simply trying to represent, honestly, the events and circumstances that prevented me from staying current with our blog. I believe that my accurate description of the happenings during our time in SC leading up to our leaving for Washington were necessary to help the readers of this journal have an authentic experience. The details were for the most part left out, and what was left in was only meant present a truthful accounting; and not meant to degrade, or belittle; or as a judgment on anyone’s character... “Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts.”

I am happy to have any feedback from any of you - good or bad. Your honest opinions, and/or responses.

Help us Jump-start our Adventure!

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:17:30 -0400

OK, so here’s how you can be a part of helping us to jump-start our adventure. Several months ago we entered a contest to win a Dream Vacation worth a whopping $10,000! The contest involved creating a photo showing you and your family in a way that symbolizes your families’ dream vacation, and a caption highlighting your vacation request. Well, when we thought our house was going to sell quickly, we dreamed about going to China for the Olympics. Well the house selling thing hasn’t happend yet, so we decided to make China our Dream Vacation picture for this contest, in hopes of still making the Olympics. We used the picture I created for the Welcome page of this site, and tweaked it to fit our Dream Vacation theme (made the hole look more like dirt, and added the graphic in the center at the other end of the hole), and added the caption, “Dig a Hole to China... Then Jump In!!!”.

We don’t know how many entries there were, but yesterday we were notified that we were among the ten finalists! Of course, becoming a finalist is just the beginning. Now it’s up to the people out there on the World Wide Web. People will go on the internet, and navigate to the Very Best Kids website (I’ll put the link at the bottom), they would then click on the red “PVote” button; and then be taken to another page revealing the ten finalists’ pictures. They would then click on the one they think is the best. People can vote once a day, per computer ,until July 18th. The Picture that gets the most votes during that period WINS!

So here’s where you come in... Please click on the link below and select our picture as your favorite. Then, please go back every day until July 18th, and do it again. Also, please direct all of your friends and family to go to the site and do the same (I know it’s shameless to ask, but we need as many votes as possible).

Well, it didn’t happen as quickly as we had hoped it would, but our house is now in contract, and we are expected to close on July 16th. I think you wold agree that getting chosen to be one of the finalist in a vacation contest that ends on July 18th is simply Karmic. This could be the perfect kick-start to our life of traveling, and you can help us make it happen. Thanks in advance for voting, encouraging your friends and family into voting, and for helping make our dreams come true.

Click the Vote button above, and help us start our new lives

Keeping them smart and social

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:28:21 -0300

We went live with this site yesterday. We sent out a mass email directing many of our friends and family to the site, without any explanation of what they would find here, beyond, “Click here to see what’s about to happen in our lives.” A vast majority of them had no idea what we were planning. Needless to say, we were flooded with tons of emails, and phone calls. Some surprised, some not surprised, some sad, some ecstatic, some worried, and some envious; but all with a plethora of questions. Most of the questions were concerning the kids, Taylor and Zach.

Some were worried that this adventure we are embarking on was for Buffy and I, and we were going to be dragging our kids along with us. If you read The Rabbit Hole, you would know that we discussed this as a family, and Taylor and Zach were the first to say, “When are we leaving? Can we go tomorrow?”

Others were concerned about education. Believe me that is a huge concern of ours too. We have been (OK, Buffy has been) spending hours upon hours on the internet, and talking with other “world travelers”, and talking with both of the kids schools about our Distance Learning options. We welcome any information, or advice on this matter! Both of our kids are exceptional students. In advanced and honors classes. They are as interested in their education as we are. They both have very lofty university plans, and we have no intention of doing anything that might get in their way of pursuing those dreams. Those of you who know Buffy and I, know that our kids always come first. We have found several promising choices in the distance learning field. Many of these internet based programs offer Honors courses, and graduate their students into Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc... If we didn’t feel that Taylor and Zach would continue to excel on the road academically (and we actually believe that they will achieve levels of learning beyond anything imaginable in a stationary school), then we would never even consider this endeavor. We feel very confidant that we will find the right courses, and that Taylor and Zach will continue on the academic path they are on now.

Of course, some have suggested that academics aren’t the only thing to be considered when talking about school. What about their friends? As I’ve already said, Taylor and Zach were the first to ask if we could leave tomorrow. That’s not to say that they don’t have friends whom they would miss terribly. Of course they do. But, they spent every year, but this past year, in school in New York City. Where half of their friends were gone the whole summer... Off to Europe, or the islands, or the West Coast, or just upstate. In fact, Taylor and Zach were those kids too. They have spent every summer of their lives down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (Where they are actually living, and going to school right now). Interestingly enough, the friends they’ve become closest to since moving are other kids who have moved there as well. Kids form Boston, California, England, all over the world. They are drawn to different cultures, and people from different cultures. We all are. The truth is, thanks to the internet, iChat, email, and cell phones they are in almost as much contact with their friends who are still up in New York as they were when they still lived there.

I’m not suggesting we have it all worked out - Not even close. Nor am I suggesting that we think it’s going to be easy - Not even close. Believe me when I say that I have no expectation whatsoever that things will go even remotely to plan - Not even close. Our plan is to just take it one day at a time. We’ll try a little of this, and a little of that, and so forth, and so on... We might decide this isn’t the right thing at all for us, and come running back home. We might stay in one place for a week, or decide it really suits us, and stay there for a year. We’re not searching for the meaning of life, we’re searching for the experience of life. We are open to whatever that means. That might mean we end up living in a small house in Mayberry, USA; or a Flat in London, England; or maybe we find our way back to Harlem... Who knows. We have no set plan, and we hope to never be tied to a set plan. We’ll get ideas that might seem right, but we’ll be ok if they don’t turn out that way.I think we will settle in a lot of places, and some for extended periods of time. We might even enroll Taylor and Zach in a local school if it seems we’re going to be there for a while. We hope that all of our friends (the ones we have now, and the ones we’ll meet along the way), as well as our families will join us OFTEN on our adventures. It is you, the relationships that make it all worth while. So, no matter how far we go, no matter how long we’re gone... We’ll never be far from home. I know it’s corny, but it is true home is where the heart is, and our hearts will always be with friends and family.

I guess the thing is, Cris, I know the importance of “My Bed”, and “My Sheets”, and “My Stuff”... We will still have a home that will hold all of that. Even though we are selling our big house, and the big lot where we were going to build another big house; we are keeping a small house in Myrtle Beach that will hold all of our treasures. Our stuff that makes us feel secure, and safe. We will come home and sleep in “Our Beds”. But right now, running off into the wide, wide, wide world just seems like the thing to do... So, we’re doing it. I think all of your concerns (and I know I didn’t address all of them) are valid. They are things we have thought about, are thinking about, and will continue to think about. But I’m not sure there is a right or wrong here. Because nothing is permanent. Life is pliable, it’s moldable. Even when you’re standing still you and the things around your are changing. I just think you experience more of those changes if you’re moving.