On Being a Traveler, Neither Misled Nor Lonely

“The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator.” ~Aldous Huxley

You can't really tell, but the picture above is of a female airline pilot. You can see, not only is she a woman, she's young. You can also see, I found her so awesome and cool, I had to take her picture. Meeting her reminded me of this "Candid Camera" episode with Fannie Flagg posing as a female airline pilot, which always makes me laugh.

Having spent a fair amount of time recently humping my way through airports with my belongings bouncing along on wheels behind me, I reflect upon The Traveler as an archetype. As I sit here in the airport of the City of Brotherly Love, blogging on my Iphone, I observe the Travelers around me. Perhaps they observe me too.

What sort of Traveler do they see? Am I the disgruntled lady bustling along with a scowl on my face? Am I the dreamy neophyte, wandering around with an expression of wonder and awe? Am I the businessperson, shuffling spreadsheets, laptop and cell phone as my work day carries on in spite of my travel schedule?

I suppose I am, at times, each of these.

My favorite Travelers are the old couples, the ones who have been on a few dozen trips together in their lives, so many that they've got the rhythm down, they carry each other along in a fascinating display of affection, appreciation and annoyance. Traveling with the one you love is quite an exercise in ambivalence. You want to shove him out of the plane one minute, but then you also want to sneak off into the lavatory when the flight attendant's not looking and get your official entry into the Mile High Club. And then you also really appreciate having him there to hold your purse while you go potty.

So I'm sitting here watching people, and many pirates go unnoticed by me as I find myself noticing women instead. I saw a woman in New York who was so beautiful I couldn't stop watching her. What do you imagine when I say that? I don't know how to say "beautiful woman" without causing you to imagine...something this woman was not. In Dallas, you can't swing a dead cat on a string without knocking over four or five beautiful women. They are everywhere you look. Their beauty is in their features, their perfectly kept bodies and faces and fingers and toes, lips and tits and hair. All of it as flawless as it can be. This woman, I don't know, she had an aura, something really unique about her. The term "glamour" was once a word used by witches to describe a spell that they would cast upon themselves to bring about this sort of effect--a glow, an aura, something that captures the eye and pleases without being predictably pleasing or flawless. This woman wore a glamour about her, though she was not young and perky, nor was she stylishly dressed. She was in her mid-40's I guess, dressed in cute jeans and a blouse, comfortable sandals. She had golden hair, not blonde, not red. Her face was aged in a fascinating way. Simply gorgeous.

I sat near her and listened as she chatted with her husband (Bob--he was beautiful too), then called her daughter and conveyed a request from Bob to the daughter to "shock" the swimming pool with chemicals and to mail some letters he had left on the bureau downstairs.

When traveling, you tend to hear others' cell phone conversations quite easily, whether you want to or not. For instance, right now a woman is about five feet to my right in front of me discussing loudly the various methods, stages and advantages of inducing labor. To my left, another woman is talking about a client of hers who learned during past-life regression that she drowned in a past life and that's why she has lung problems in this life.

The express flight I was just on was piloted by a woman. She too was a remarkable lady with a fascinating aura. I was not the only passenger who noticed the gender of our pilot. A business traveller seated nearby rolled his eyes and made a clever comment about her landing, but I was quite proud of her and her bumpy landing. Right on, girl, you dribble us down the runway like a basketball and you'll still be the coolest chick on the plane cause you're the one flying it!

Fear

Steve has recently confessed something interesting about his psyche—he has a couple of phobias that prevent him from doing some really cool things. Things I would miss very much if I could not do them. This got me thinking about fears and phobias and the extent to which some people allow them to control their lives.

Tornadoes, first of all, he’s afraid of tornadoes, which is interesting because, like me, he grew up in Oklahoma where we kept them as pets. Less reasonable is his fear of flying. He hasn’t been on an airplane since he was a child, and does not expect to ever again. He had an anxiety attack just driving through the airport.

Being me, of course, I thought about this and analyzed it way more than is normal.

What an interesting approach to fear, and one that seems so foreign to me. I am intrepid, of course, I fear nothing, but if I was ever afraid of something, I’m the type that seeks to play with that fear. See the scary barking, growling, snarling dog? I wonder how far his chain will reach? How much adrenalin will I feel if I stand *here* and then how much if I stand *this much* closer?

There must have been a time when tornadoes scared me as much as they do Steve, but year after year, I stood out in the yard watching the swirling sky rather than ducking for cover in the safety of the storm cellar. It wasn’t long before tornadoes didn’t scare me at all anymore.

How many flights would it take before Steve would conquer his fear of flying, if instead of ducking for cover he stood up to the fear, welcomed the adrenalin, and boarded the plane?

I blogged recently about The Hot Zone and the Ebola virus, admitting that I am freaked out by him. “Terrified” might not be an exaggeration. And yet, the stories of the scientists who handle the virus every day, studying him, watching him, holding him in their hands with only a few layers of cloth, plastic and rubber in between—wow, what a fascinating job that must be. What a rush, holding death right there in your hand.

So I’m not the kind of person to develop phobias, those niggling little fears and insecurities that grow plump and round from constant care and feeding. There’s a downside to being brave like me, of course, and that is risk. Every once in a while, ya play with a rattlesnake and he nails ya, right in a tender spot. Ow!!

I've attracted someone's attention...again...

A psycho called me last night. A woman. Blocked number, female voice. She must be young, ipso facto the phone call (immature). Other than that, I have no idea who she is or what her problem is with me.

As I told Sissy about it this morning, it occurred to me, I seem to attract this kind of thing. Sissy, for example, has never had one of these psycho-woman phone calls. Me, I’ve had several.

My first female stalker was the girlfriend of my ex when I first met him. Of course, at the time he told me she was an ex-girlfriend, but given his propensity toward lying and cheating and her insane reaction to me, I think she was probably current girlfriend who got shuffled aside when new girlfriend (me) came along. She didn’t take it well. She got ahold of my number and started calling late at night when she knew I was at home. First just hang-up calls and then heavy breathing. Then finally she progressed to saying things like “You’re gonna die.” At which point, I told Gary to tell her to knock it off. Which he did, and which she did.

Then a few years ago I went out with a guy a couple of times. We had a date to meet at a Halloween carnival at Elzie O, with Rosanna and her Lord Byron. Rosanna had called this guy to confirm the time and left a voice mail on his cell phone. As we waited for him outside (he was late), her phone rang and some woman said she was Clay’s wife and why was Rosanna sleeping with her husband? You’d have to know Rosanna and see her reaction to understand why this was so funny. We laughed and laughed. The woman had hacked into his voicemail and got Rosanna’s number, thinking she was the one he’d been seeing lately. Well it wasn’t long before she sniffed down the right trail and found my number. By that time I wasn’t seeing him anymore, but she called and harassed me for several weeks before I told Clay that if his wife called me one more time I would start contacting people at his job and asking for their help in getting this problem resolved. The phone calls stopped.

And then, just recently, when I had posted my rooms for rent online, I got a response from a guy who said he was going through a divorce and wanted to see the rooms. He made an appointment to come by, and then didn’t show up. I called him to see what happened, and then I called him again a few days later to see if he was still interested. Late one night, the phone rang with his name on caller id, and it was his wife. On and on about George, this is his wife and who are you and why are you calling my husband? I didn’t tell her about the rooms for rent, not my business to tell her that her husband is moving out. I just told her I had posted an ad online to which her husband responded. Nothing sexy or romantic, sorry. Apparently she didn’t believe me, she called again two more times.

And now, last night again. Some woman telling me I better be careful. She said, “You’re an older woman, I’d hate to see you get yourself into trouble.” Which is a funny thing. Older, as in frail? Like I’m 80? Or older than whom? Older than her, obviously. And clearly, this is about a man, it’s always about a man, isn’t it? Older than him? Strangely enough, for the first time in my life, I’m involved with men who are younger than me. I’m dating younger men, so I guess that makes me an “older woman.” Is that what she meant? Was she concerned that I might get myself into trouble, being unable to keep up with the libido of a younger man? Ha, aha-ha.

She called on my cell phone, which means she must have harvested the number lovingly from the man’s cell phone contact list or his called number list. Like any good psycho would do. But that doesn’t narrow it down much, since everybody I know calls me on my cell phone instead of home phone. Being one who rather enjoys drama, I am, of course, curious what this is about. Heck, I wish that I had done something to deserve being stalked, but alas, my life has been rather undramatic lately. She’s wasting her insanity, she should save it until there’s a reason for her to feel threatened by me.

Veronica Franco was a red-haired Venetian courtesan who lived from 1546-1591. Her fascinating life has been portrayed in The Honest Courtesan, a scholarly book by Margaret F. Rosenthal, who is a professor of Italian at USC. The movie Dangerous Beauty is loosely based on that book.

Let’s talk about 16th Century Venice. What a beautiful place and a dangerous, exciting time to live. Those of us who believe in reincarnation might imagine that we lived there in that time.

Venice, founded in myth by Venus rising from the sea, always featured two closely linked iconic visions of the goddess—as pure and inviolate virgin and as symbol of love and pleasure. At that time, the city of Venice was mostly associated with love and pleasure. Some historians believe that there were an astounding 11,000 prostitutes in 16th century Venice out of a total population of about 100,000 (Rosenthal finds the figure exaggerated, but even half that number would be amazing).

Essentially, a young Venetian woman who aspired to a decent lifestyle could enter a convent, marry a rich man (which required the woman to come up with a substantial dowry), or become a courtesan (essentially a high-priced prostitute). Being in love with a man she could not have in marriage, Marco Venier, and being not well suited for life as a nun, Franco became a courtesan as her mother had once been.

She acquired rich and powerful patrons, such as Dominico Venier. As a result, she achieved astounding upward mobility. She acquired an excellent education, although how she managed it is unknown. She had a successful career as a published poet. Tintoretto painted her portrait, which shows that she was quite fetching.

Women in this place and time experienced widely different lifestyles, as nuns, successful courtesans or wives of rich men. The life of a nun should be easy to imagine. Wives were cloistered creatures without education or financial independence, their life devoted entirely to home and family. Courtesans, on the other hand, could mingle freely with the rich and famous, acquire education and wealth of their own, participate in literary, political and intellectual circles, and even publish their work.

Franco was incredibly successful in this milieu; between 1570 and 1580 she edited works of various authors and published books of her poetry as well as epistolary works. She was greatly concerned with the plight of younger women who lacked dowries; her published letters often refer to their plight and her wills left money to help poor women.

Franco’s success inspired extreme jealousy from male courtiers and poets whose position and patronage she greatly threatened. A particularly venomous rival was Maffio Venier, nephew of Franco’s patron Domenico Venier and cousin of her married lover Marco, who later became a senator. Maffio repeatedly attacked Franco by name in satirical and often obscene verse. She dueled with him, by pen and by sword, effectively striking back at Maffio to defend the role of courtesans in Venetian society.

As single career women do even today, Franco struggled to raise her children; she had three sons. She suffered ruined relationships and public persecution.

In the movie’s dramatic portrayal, she endures the torture of seeing Marco marry another, followed by the dubious satisfaction of his writhing agony in seeing her so successfully position herself as the most admired and desired prostitute in Venice. Eventually the two of them find a comfortable arrangement within their limitations and they remain lifelong lovers and friends.

Franco’s erotic encounter with King Henri III of France is legendary, though exaggerated in the film version of her life. In the movie, after a delightful night of masochistic lovemaking with Franco during which she holds a sword to his throat among other indignities, Henri makes French naval power available to Venice in its war with the Turks. The king finds it rather difficult to sit down but seems extremely satisfied after his night with Veronica Franco.

In the film, the plague (and numerous other misfortunes) savages Venice from 1575-77 and many women, especially courtesans, are placed on trial by the Inquisition. The theory is that the tragedies that befell Venice resulted from its licentious lifestyle. Thus prostitutes were set up to take the fall, as women are still today blamed for the moral weaknesses of men. Franco is accused of witchcraft, since she had obviously bewitched legions of men. She makes a stirring statement on behalf of women, however, and is saved from certain death when her many clients are shamed by Marco into standing up for her.

In real life, Franco was in fact tried twice by the Inquisition in 1580 for the alleged offense of performing heretical incantations in her home. Her son’s tutor accused her of performing incantations that were designed to discover the identity of a thief and also to inspire various merchants to love her. His accusations also dwelt on her behavior as a prostitute and reflected his intense envy and desire for her. And for good measure, he accused her of eating meat on Fridays. The charge of performing heretical incantations was potentially quite serious because of the risk that she might be invoking the power of the devil.

Although Franco’s inquisitorial trials lacked the high drama ascribed to them in Dangerous Beauty, the actual events were nevertheless quite fascinating, particularly Franco’s skill in parrying a determined inquisitor. Franco’s life is truly inspiring. Lacking any money or familial influence, she capitalized on her intelligence and talent, as well as her brilliant personality, physical beauty and erotic skills. Overcoming powerful legal and literary adversaries, she attained fame as a published poet and author and became a participant in the intellectual and political events of her time. She is a historic figure worthy of our attention and admiration more than four hundred years after her death.

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then,
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?

'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

~John Donne