Bon Voyage AmeriCAN Dreamers
Freedom · Sea Life · The AmeriCAN Dream
The ElixirCruiseships Come True
Freedom is not what you do with what has been done to you. Freedom is a chance to be better—and sometimes the route there runs through Normandy, Norway, and a life at sea.
Field Note · Freedom Is Not Free
A Chance to Be Better
Three years earlier, I had stood on the beaches of Normandy with awe and gratitude for the sacrifices that gave me a future—and the freedom to live the AmeriCAN dream by travelling the world.
Freedom is not what you do with what has been done to you. Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
New York to New England, calling at Halifax and Boston Harbor, with a stop at the UMass JFK Presidential Library—a highlight of the journey.
Boston and Old Ironsides
More Americans died in the D-Day invasion than in the entire Iraq War.
Read the Normandy field noteImpossible Is Nothing
An Active Run
Travelling is an activity, not an accomplishment—but what an active run I have had.
Geography is the topography of ignorance: a finite disappointment when the map becomes the territory and you finally visit those hole-in-the-wall places. Sometimes it is easier to transcend reality with imagination and reframe the conversation: “Melbourne was awesome.” “Ghana? Amazing.” “India? A magical delight.”
The future just is not what it used to be. Nevertheless, there is not one ship that does not sail to a port where life becomes uncomfortable.
You do not quit countries; you quit people—and you can only quit once. The best ships are friendships. I have met extraordinary people while sailing around the world, and I have not given up on the inherent goodness of people.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Because it makes me happy—the beginning of my latest and greatest grand voyage.
Rome Sweet Rome
Enriched by a wonderful osmosis in the Norwegian fjords.
Flåm: Free for All H2OThe Gravity of Travel
To travel, you need three things: time, money, and opportunity. The zero-gravity thinking that runs my show is not about those finite resources. It is about resourcefulness—being clever enough to get what I want.
After all, living on Earth and doing nothing still gets each of us a round trip around the sun. You might as well do what you like regardless of the naysayers, because Earth School kills all its students, and procrastination is suicide on the instalment plan.
The Question
When your life flashes before your eyes, do you not want to see a movie worth watching?There is no time like the present. Then again, if it were not for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
No matter how many plans you make—or how much control you believe you have—life is always winging it, especially when you live and work on a cruise ship. Some people call it a dream world. I love sleep and dreaming. This is dreaming with my eyes wide open.
I can see the future, and it works.
The Call · A Passion for the Possible
The Infinity of Hope
Going out to sea is the infinity of hope: a preview of life’s coming attractions where you have final cut in your own movie. You can lose yourself in the ocean’s food for thought. Its menu is the meal, and itineraries are full of promises. The sea gives you a sense of destination and the energy to begin again.
Yet when I think of all the places I have been—and all the stories I have told and heard—life at sea is a constant preparation for something that never happens. Once you understand that, you lose your fear of the unknown and begin living blissfully inside a kind of fuzzy ambiguity.
Call it faith. Call it a passion for the possible. An adventure is something more—but nothing less—than bad planning.
When I cold-called for my first ship job and got it after a twelve-minute elevator pitch, I began to trust myself.
Only when you trust yourself can you truly begin to live it up.
Intoxicating—but I swear to drunk I’m not God. On the way to one of Norway’s most famous waterfalls.
Read the Vøringsfossen field note
A still image from the waterfall journey.
A Sailor with a Small S
I am not a Sailor. Maybe I am a sailor with a small s.
Living on a ship might be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria. It is not real life. It is an alibi.
It is like going out of your mind every day in order to come to your senses. A fool who persists in his folly becomes wise.
After all this foreign travel, I no longer want to cast doubt on perfection—America. The sea calls to me: “I can help you lose your baggage without going to the airport.”
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
I can see again.
Norway’s waterfall landscape in motion.
Return · The Daddy Party
DIY: Do It Yourself
The Mommy Party says, “How can I help?” The Daddy Party says, “Do it yourself.”
There is nothing I would not do for my country, and there is nothing it would not do for me. That is the way we go through life—doing nothing for each other. That is me subscribing to the Daddy Party.
Embracing the expat life I chose, so much of it has been about non-doing. I have had nothing to do and all day to do it.
By the accident of birth, I won the geographically-desirable-places-to-live-on-the-planet lottery. Yet I squandered my inheritance in the United States of Unconsciousness: a shared hallucination of “any place but here” and “the grass is greener.”
The Return
The grass is greener where you water it.Right now, I am drinking from a fire hose.
Running on rainy chalk headlands. England has an extraordinary coastline. The grass is pretty green here.
The Elixir
New Eyes
I have lived the Eliot line through direct experience: the end of all our exploring is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
The ship was never simply transportation. It was a machine for perspective. It took me away from home long enough to see home clearly.
The sea did not give me certainty. It gave me resourcefulness, friendships, and enough fuzzy ambiguity to keep moving.
Cruise ships came true because I stopped treating the dream as a destination and began living it as a decision.
Companion Stories