In search of Alchemy

It's been a year now since I decided to leave my hard earned home of five years and go out into the wide world once more.

Once more with nothing. With no furniture, not even a bed. With my books packed up and left behind, boxes of colour and memory dusting in a barn. My piano gone, pictures locked up, papers destroyed.

I left with no job and limited savings to make my way alone in a place I had never lived. To move back into a city from deep rolling hills, back into all the languages of the world and the engine of city traffic from the kayikiki call of fox outside my window and coyote and bear in the woods. To make friends in a city of strangers after leaving those who would come by with homemade butternut soup and thermometers when I was sick or hunt christmastrees with me, swim in lakes and pools, and explore the surroundings of a whole wide state.

It was just this idea of where I wanted to be next, who I wanted to enable myself to become (again?) and what I wanted to surround myself with. An image of the lifestyle I wanted to experience next and opportunities to find.

How has it nearly been a year since I was packing all my things away to set out across the country?
And what has been done or found or left in that year?

    "To live without roads seemed one way

 not to get lost. To make maps

of stone and grass, to rub stars together,

find a spark."

~from "Spark," a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

I have travelled through and explored
New York, New Hampshire, Massachusets, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina
as well as
New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Guatemala

I have depleted my yatch savings fund to nearly the last dollar, but starting saving over again.

I slept on a floor and then an airmattress for three months.

I worked as a canvasser on the street, a cashier and hospitality hostess in a pizza place, and am in my second position doing development and marketing work in an awesome arts organization now.

I completed two residencies, two terms of grad school, a critical thesis, and am preparing to graduate with my first Masters degree.  (There is always room for another MA...)

I've missed my friends, people who have poured into my life over the five years who feel like family, who may themselves have moved, too, but many of whom still keep in touch, find ways to say hello and an "I'm thinking of you" and some of whom have even managed to visit.

I've made new friends and reconnected with friends from my past--discovering one college friend and I can see each other's bedroom windows from our rooms here in all the expanse and building jungle of this city.

There have been organizations to discover, to join and participate in. Women's groups, political groups, arts groups, writing groups, UN groups, groups from my life's many homelands, embassies, music, bellydancing, martial arts, concerts, all my favourite food groups, rake-leaves-at-the-monuments--so many different experiences to explore and wonder at. So many fascinating new people with complex backgrounds and stories far crazier than my own. Giving strangers in the metro or at a restaurant my name, my number, my smile.

I've made it to a movie theater five times. (LOTR the Hobbit II, Frozen, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Maleficent, and How to Train Your Dragon 2, again--if you were wondering...)

I sold my car.

My belongings are still in storage and I miss my books and my piano every single day.

I've acquired more books and learned how to use a library at last (though I still don't like them much!)

I've seen 2 ballets, 3 operas, 3 theater productions, 1 dance show, 1 musical, 1 concert (and I think more that I cannot recall offhand).

I have visited and been visited by my siblings more this year than perhaps the last two years combined.

I've run away to a nearby beach twice, and made it back to NY briefly twice, too.

It's been a scary year. A year of wondering, Am I going to make it? Can this work out?  A year of signing onto leases before having employment, believing that the job was around the corner. Believing what I was earnestly looking for would come.

On the hard days, I would draw up this wonderful quote in my head from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

It has been a year of letting go of everything and finding a path through the sky.

And, in fact, doing not zero, not one, but TWO high ropes courses, despite vertigo and hating feeling out of control. And losing a friend to an accident, who two years earlier helped me first conquer those things, climb a 70something ft tree and jump off a 50 something ft pole.

This year has felt a lot like skydiving did last summer. At the beginning being excited, then going through the paperwork that lists in horrid detail every possible way you might die or worse, injure yourself and recieve nothing but a miserable life without any assistance. And then you see the little backpack that is supposed to let you soar and you think, no way. That will never work.

Yet still you get into a rinky-dink plane and you climb up two miles into the sky and you open that door and jump anyways and somewhere in that crazy freefall you discover what it is to fly, and you land on your feet ready to go up again, to fly some more, to see the world in a whole new way outside of itself and so far beyond your tiny little being.

It's one of the most beautiful things imaginable.
And it is my life.
And I am deeply grateful.

Thoughts from the Washington Mall, Post Migraine

More than half a year ago now, I came first to this new city. My seventh capital of the world to live or study in, I think? It is strange to me, that a year ago I came with my brother on a trip, thinking perhaps he would find work here after graduation. It never occurred to me that I would come, instead. Now I walk past every day where I celebrated my birthday last year in novelty. 

How is it that a person can love so much in this world, carry so much heart for so many very different places and people? 

I am so exquisitely happy in this place. Hearing every day languages of home. Walking beneath buildings of familial architecture, stepping once more into the paths of people whom as global expatriates you know your whole life. The fashion, the art, the galas. 

But I find my heart equally close to breaking as to bursting, from sorrow as from happiness. Only the sorrow is so much more difficult to share or even visualize. It is sometimes hard to embrace the wonder of my life right now when worlds I know feel like they are on the brink of chaos. Or have already fallen into it, fighting and despair and confusion. When I am reminded of how fragile life is, when countries can implode overnight. When places which (or who, because to me they feel like people, like family) have bled into my being are bleeding again and I am far away but the blood calls. Countries to my south, countries to my east, all north to my heart. 

And then you add the single stories. The rape of every person woman man child, rape of country. The kinds of rape and violation that make you sick in public on the floor and it is nothing, your waste is nothing, to what you responded to, what is happening. Even stories outside of my countries, stories like the kidnapping of hundreds of girls, enslaved as wives (is that at best or at worst?) and taken away from education that they risked everything for. I just risk debt for my education. 

I went and toured an opera studio workshop here in DC, and one room was full of clothes, racks of shirts and dresses and pants hung and freshly laundered. Shelves of shoes, boxes of props. Clean and waiting full of promise to be stepped into and I stepped instead back into my mind, my memories; to walking through Birkenau and Auschwitz with the rooms of piles of shoes piles of hair and glasses and suitcases labeled with names of the dead. Of the people I met who survived, who walked like ghosts the streets of the cities I grew up on and stopped me to tell their story, this old story over and again. I stepped instead of into opera, the schoolhouse in the countryside of Rwanda, where I studied, where I witnessed room after room of white limed shattered limb fractured bone bodies. I think there were some 17 rooms I counted but I tried not to remember that too specifically. And then a big room there, with clotheslines every which way, draping ornamentally, awfully, bloodied torn bulleted clothes of women men and children. But I kept on touring an opera studio, which was wonderful and amazing in itself! and reveling in the fine arts instead. Instead of what? 

I think of these worlds I love. I think of how fragile ideas are and how hard we have to fight for them and sometimes against them, of how much is often sacrificed and how only sometimes we come out whole. 

I work hard in myself for these worlds I love, to let them stay together, to find a history that works for them all even when the cultures clash, even when the different histories I have imbibed and come to embody over the years are so different as to make this almost impossible. But I like to hope that if somehow one person can come to hold the world, maybe one day the world will also be able to hold itself. Maybe more of us will come to reshape our world and fit the pieces so beloved to someone, together. 

The End of our Exploring

It is a rainy day here in the city, and I am curled up over a steaming cup of coffee at the Ethiopian cafe with a fellow writer friend. It's our writing day, only every time I bend my thoughts into story, what comes back to me are images of my life right now.

Steam has gathered on the windows, so condensed it runs down drops inside the pane of glass like rain and the strong smell of beans crushed and rushing into waiting mugs fills the air. I love this place. I love being here in this city where everything is always happening and changing and full of possibility.

Yesterday bore witness to the arrival of a real bed for me. We laughed in my flat, called it a rite of passage that I graduated from an air mattress to the real deal--something that all my flatmates have gone through, and with this same mattress now passed on to me. It was a day of rearranging my room to make space for this new thing, and a day of realising; I have been in this place for four months now. I have left my last home six months ago. Six months. That is a half year! How has that time passed without my count? How does it seem both so little and so long?

I have been in my new job four weeks now, and still love it. I love that I work in the centre of the arts  in a role which encompasses everything from theatre to opera to orchestra to ballet and on to touch every outer reach of this wonderful galaxy. Love that every week I meet new people and can begin a new friendship to enrich my world, to hopefully enrich other worlds. Love commuting to work and standing in this throng of people and voices and colours. Sound and motion. Love going for a walk in the city somewhere new every time, something yet unseen to find.

Today I made my first craigslist purchase: a chair for my desk. When I leave this coffeeshop it will be to go home to my room where I have a real bed now, to sit down at my desk that I pulled out of storage, to use this new chair to pour into words this story that will be written that will come out that breaks my heart and I have no idea the ending to, the middle of, the path.

I am reviewing my life in my head these days. Thinking of the many lives I have lived and how separate from one another they have so many of them seemed. I love how connected this life makes me feel to the rest of myself. Not as whole as living in London made me, but close. And beautiful. It is so much in the little things. New friends. A bed. A chair. Steaming coffee in the rain that tastes the flavours of another home. The three languages I heard in passing on the street one of which I share, one I recognise, and one as yet unknown.

Last summer I started thinking about moving on, but could not imagine that life. Seven months ago I decided to leave and launch out into this new somewhere. Six months ago I began, not having a clue what lay ahead.

I remember five years ago now, I wanted so very desperately to have a place in this world. To have my own place, my slot marked out for me and the path clearly stretched out before me. In many ways I think we are wired to want that, to look for our little slice of life and fit it, to be restless until it, to fear being without it. It is safety and comfort and clarity. Security and definition. I as a writer love definition, oftentimes too much. As a young adult with a unstable, roving childhood, I wanted that place of my own, or at least to know how to claim it, how anyone can ever claim something. Have ownership or be owned, perhaps. I wrote a lot at the time about how you find your path, about what that should look like, and I finally decided that perhaps the straight lined path is just an illusion. We are living in a world with a curved horizon, a lie of a line. Even the straightest path circles around the world and if we expect it to be even we are in for a rude interruption or two. So I slowly changed my thinking. I decided that maybe the curving route that can go anywhere, that can wrap itself around the world over and again and come from so many different places beginning again everywhere and coming always from somewhere else and going still elsewhere may be the most beloved best adventure infinitely satisfying experience possible.

Now I think that if I could see down a straight line to the end of my life I would be bored or crazed to an early death.

I love this adventure of discovery, the not knowing, the thrill of beginning ever again. Love how many chances we have to be new and renew. To begin and begin again. Greater and greater.

“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.” 

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

I have no idea what these next six months will hold. I couldn't possibly have imagined the adventures of the past six and I am so glad, because everything has been harder and more beautiful than I could possibly have. This is a beautiful thing.

Lost in Language

There are times when life appears to mimic literature and as you move through your own passages now stumbling, now wandering, now dancing: motifs and themes begin to appear in the scenes. It makes me think of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a book whose ideas and thoughts I adore and run through in my mind over and again. Who is to say whether it is our noticing and noticing again of random events which give them their significance, or whether we notice the event of them because of their significance? Which comes first and in the end does it matter? (I think that yes, it does matter, because there is a certain amount of power involved and one way gives us more power, the other less. But that is all beyond the point of thought I am following tonight.)

For the last many days, I have been thinking of language. What am I saying? For the last many years, the last decades of a life that only does have a few decades, I have been thinking of language. And now my critical thesis revolves around language and my dreams focus on language and my insecurities stem from language.

I am working on the idea of code switching in language right now, a study which seems terribly overlooked and I am bound to generate far too many pages in my thesis if I do not cut myself off or learn to control my insatiable desire for more, for satisfaction, in this topic. It is a black whole of wondrous exploration at the moment.

The more I explore this idea and try to get inside the concept, the more I find myself surrounded by it every day and moment by moment. Being in this capital city certainly aides that, as I am regularly plunged into other languages on the metro, the streets, and in restaurants. (it is glorious!)

A few weeks ago now, I went out wandering and by a series of spontaneous decisions, ended up at a sushi happy hour. No sooner did I sit than I noted that the gentlemen at the table next to me were speaking English. A moment later, I thought, no, they are speaking Spanish, that's funny. Then it was English again. I couldn't figure out which language they were actually speaking (was it English or Spanish, and why was I having this difficulty deciphering which--it must be Spanish if I am thinking about it in English concernedly?) until finally they started switching back and forth between them--one in English the other in Spanish and then one in Spanish-English, the other in English-Spanish. We ended up talking after I could no longer not-listen and not-lean in towards them and it was delightful to discover not only fellow South Americans (I claiming that part of my identity) and make new friends, but to be part of what is this idea of code-switching, of moving across the borders of language and culture for various purposes. I had just been thinking about it and then there it was next to me and happening inside of me.

Tonight, getting on the metro for a rather long commute home, I stepped onto a nearly empty train car. I walked up the whole length of it to sit towards the front, where three people in three separate rows where talking across the space--about nothing less than language. About switching between languages and "wearing" accents and putting on culture. Did they know these are the ideas I dream about now at night and in my waking moments? So I listened, and when I started laughing with them, I was officially part of the group. I even moved up a row to sit directly with them. Now we were four strangers (as they were all, in fact, strangers) sitting together and talking language, connected by our Caribbean heritage and our chameleon abilities (or lack there-of). We went our separate ways one by one, saying good night, high-fiving, waving, all smiles. It was fascinating and wonderful and so beautiful it almost hurt me.

I realise I'm not really telling you anything here about code switching. Feel free to research it a little and let me know what you find. I don't think you will find much--I haven't yet (aside from 200+ pages culled out of linguistic, literary, and psychology journals that lightly touch the topic). But I am writing my thesis on it so you can know that you will likely be hearing much much more about it.

Really, I just wanted to say tonight how exquisitely wonderful it was to get on a nearly empty traincar and find myself in the midst of a circle of friends I do not and will not ever know the names of. To step into a basement Japanese restaurant at the edge of Chinatown for sushi happy hour and find friends who know the cities I have walked in and who coax back into my consciousness a language I have only turned over and held in my subconscious for years and years.

These beautiful strangers and these waking dreams and falling back into language are all the reasons I wanted to come back to city, to international life, to this world where by accident I can walk into all the places I know of as home and speak friend.

Rubbing Stars

"To live without roads seemed one way

not to get lost. To make maps

of stone and grass, to rub stars together,

find a spark." 

~from "Spark," a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Sometimes it is in the wandering that we find ourselves in the most perfect of places. 

Just now, I am curled up on a couch in the lounge of a college in Vermont, happily tuning in and out of conversations around me; tuning in to hear discussions of publishing, of writing styles, point of view and audience. Tuning out to reflect on the day, on the last few days, on the end of last year. Last year when I came to this place of wonderfulness at the very end and after too long in transit. Tuning out to think of the next few days and the future smiling at me. 

To settle back into a small city, even if just for this period of 12 days, is beautiful. Walking everywhere--20 minutes down a slushy slide of a road to the downtown, dumptrucks loaded with snow driving past, clearing the way. On either side of the main streets quaint shops, local and proudly green or organic or handmade all. Espressos in honey-wooden rooms, crepe cafes and mad tacos and the most alice-in-wonderland sort of thrift stores. A sweater I have hunted for 8 years! Late night viewings of Les Miserables with my roommate at the old cinema by the capitol building and a taxi ride back through the night. 

Engaging in lectures on all sorts of wonderful subjects; of craft and of creation, of theories and possibilities and fascinations of all kinds. Readings that make you hold your breath, unable to breathe for the beauty of the words, of the particular arrangement of those precisely chosen words one after another in art and in meaning (and are those the same, afterall?). Losing yourself in workshops; reading and thinking and sharing--this wonderful back and forth--dialogue to take a work from what it is to even better; to impossibly better. Beautiful.

I love the new faces, the new stories, the new friendships being made. The fact that this place is obviously a community that exists across space and regardless of this particular place; the understanding so crystalline that when we leave this particular here we will still be together talking and sharing and exchanging. Pushing and encouraging each other and continuing these dialogues. Continuing this lovely engagement. To not only go out with a group of friends, of fellow students, but with professors you cannot wait to work with; have so much to glean from. 

I love that in all my wandering without roads, I am found here, in this perfect place. Ready to wander some more, ready to make maps of stone and grass and to find a spark--to make a spark. To write. 

What's A Little Uproar, Anyway?

A week ago was the first day in about a month and a half where I woke up and actually felt good. I was beginning to think I'd never recognise that feeling again if it ever tried to show up, but I did, and I welcomed it back wholeheartedly.

This week has been full of much much work (that still didn't all get done!) as well as some happy fun. I don't have much to say on the matter, because right now I need to either be sleeping or working on story revisions... but I just have to tell you this one little anecdote.

Saturday afternoon my dear friend Cherith and I met up for a few hours visit. We used to have a girls time once a week at least back when we lived about 3.5 minutes apart. Now, though, the 1 hour drive dividing us makes that a little harder to swing. So it had been a while. Too long. And we decided to fix it with a late lunching at Applebees.

Well, with apologies to the vegetarians and vegans among my friends, I wanted meat. Badly. Like a starving carniverous dinosaur, in fact. Enough that every cow I passed on the drive there (and believe me, there were a LOT of cows!) looked like big juicy flank steaks just waiting for me to go bite into them. So when the waiter came around to collect my order (I just had to take enough time to see what kind of seasoning and sides I cared about, if i cared about them at all), I ordered a steak. Nice yummy 7 oz steak (just enough to leave you wanting more...)

And how would you like that served?

What? I questioned back. The din in the room was a little loud.

How would you like that served?

For some reason I thought at first he was meaning what did I want it brought out on, or maybe how it should be cut. So i stared rather dumbly at him, I'm afraid.

How do you want it prepared? He asked, patiently changing the word for me.

Well, I don't know about you meat lovers, but I like my steak so raw that it's practically like the cows I passed on the way here, still moving around on the plate. The more red, the happier I am. It is perhaps a more Gollum-esque turn of mine.

But I was really having a bad day for languages. I mean, all this writing and delving into your worlds and stuff, it's all tapping into these langages that I've never let mix in my head. They're flapping around there like a bunch of liberated girls from the 20's now, shaking it up and giving me mental wiplash.

So I said to the waiter, I'd like it rawer.

Can you say that out loud, please? Just take a second. Do you hear what it sounds like? A roar. A nice catty little claws out badly sexy RRRAaaawrrrr!

The poor waiter just stared at me. So I tried again.

Raawwweeerrr!

Rare? Cherith (I think) ventured to verify.

Yes. Rare. More rare is better. More raw is better. Rare-er. Raw-er. RED.

So yeah. Saturday is the day I Raaawr'd at a waiter. hahaha!
It's nice to be out and about again!

Adventures of a Recuperating Winter-bug Woman

Far too many days have passed since I last stepped into this space, and I'm sorry for my absence!

These past few weeks I was first terribly busy for a few days, and then horribly and utterly miserably sick for a solid two weeks. I'm practically all better now, just more tired than usual. So, apologies--but know I'd much rather have been on here than be stuck sick in bed!

Being sick was a good reminder that my feisty independent self still can appreciate the care of friends, and I was touched by friends who came to watch movies with me so I wasn't alone the whole time (or skyped me so I could have a "change of scene" and actually croak to someone), or to bring me soup, a thermometer, medicines, juices, things I could actually eat now and then, and take me to the doctor. It also reminded me how much I hate not having words, because I was so sick I couldn't even think straight or get a string of words to work together. That was even worse than not having people around, I think--not being able to use words. 

I remember so many different times in my life when I've not had words, too; when it has been not sickness, but language that has kept me from being able to speak, to say, to express. Sometimes it's just complete muteness. You have no words yet in that language, you cannot speak if you wanted to, your body does not know how to shape itself around that sound--it can barely recognise it as sound at all! And other times, it has felt like choking--when I've had the words in my head, when my tongue feels them in my mouth, but the edge of them gets caught at the back of my throat and garble comes out instead, choking noises none of us can comprehend. But when you cannot even think words, not in any language, not even with the mind in your fingertips? I am so thankful for the ability of my mind. 

This last month, when I wasn't sick, and I wasn't going home early because of still being absurdly tired from having been sick, I was probably busy enough to make up for the sick time.

A group of seven members of a county leadership program (myself included) organized and hosted a silent auction, dinner, and mock trial to benefit the county youth court program. That was a really neat moment (a moment that topped like a cherry hours and hours of preparation and planning!). We had an overwhelming amount of items that we auctioned off throughout the day of the event, and then over 80 people who attended our dinner--raising about $3000. I go back and forth with this amount--is it a lot, or not that much, as a number by itself? But when I think of the significance of that number, when I think of the difference it will make to this program (ensuring the continuation another year of an amazing program of restorative justice for young people needing a second chance), then I think, wow, that really is an incredible success, and I am honoured to have been able to be a part of making that difference.

Our leadership class actually just came to completion this week: we had our graduation celebration Friday night, and the 14 of us got our certificates of completion for the program as well as a beautiful plaque to display and certificates of merit from our local state senator and of congressional recognition from our local congressman. I like baubles like that, I admit it. It's one of those "oooh, that's really neat" kind of things. But I want it to be more than just neat, and more than just a bauble or accolade to dangle like an earring or other accessory. I'm excited to be a graduate of this program now, and to go out and continue to see for the rest of forever all the ways I'm going to intentionally and unintentionally let this program affect my life. I love already being so much more connected to the greater community that I live in, and I'm so excited to go do something purposeful with that connection.

And finally (though not all-inclusively)...
Late yesterday afternoon, after hours of trying to write in the afternoon, I enjoyed taking a break to go "teach a cooking class." I'm not sure how much teaching really happened, but I did succeed in leading a group of about 15 college students to prepare a very yummy dinner of one of my favourite foods from the Caribbean--pastechis. These are delectable half-circles of fried dough containing some wonderful filling. Last night we made some with cheese and then some with a spicy beef. We topped that off with a very USA chocolate chip pie. It was fun. Fun to share this taste of home, fun to hop around a huge kitchen, and mostly just fun watching all of them chop, roll, saute, fry, mix, knead and interact with each other. I did go straight home and sleep after that, though! (energy is just not up to par yet...)
But then today, I went skiing again! Because yes, I really did love that first go. So I picked up a friend and off we went--her first time since a nasty accident 4 years ago that had her in a cast for about 5 months, and my second time ever. She took to the slopes like a fish to water, and I, well... I had a few intimate bonding experiences with the ground this time around. BUT, I had a wonderful time, and I made it up a whole new and super high ski lift (a feat because of my fear of heights) and down a big new swooshing slope--the hardest of the beginner levels. I'll definitely have a lot more rounds on the beginning slopes before I even consider going on the other ones, but it was nice to walk away with that accomplishment. And now, I am considerably exhausted and ready to sleep, dream, and anticipate all the wonderful things waiting in this new week. 

The Woman Wanders Again

(from Thurs night)

This night stretches long as I sit in the train station with my trusty bags and listen to the hum of those around me (are you sure you have our tickets, the Canadian woman asks her man) and music over the radio I'd prefer off. Waiting for the midnight train--my first train again since taking the night train to Bangkok in July.

What a day this has been, though! After weeks of too much work, I am taking a respite. This morning I enjoyed the great pleasure of sleeping in til mid-morning and then drove about 45 minutes through crisp air and rolling hills speckled with turning leaves to a farm where one of my friends has been working the last several months.

Seeing her was lovely in itself; working alongside her the whole day long was wonderful. What is richer than the immediate satisfaction of manual labour and the joy of deep conversation with a good friend?

We picked corn, then moved on to watermelons and from there to yellow squash, zucchini  and eternal rows of more kinds of peppers than I knew existed. Then eggplant and lettuce, stepping through weeds and overgrowth; over the rotting remains of produce that will be reborn next year. The farm is organic (not yet certified in ints general operations, and set in a beautiful landscape. Gorgeous old but renovated farmhouse overlooking so much land; fields of vegetables growing their last days, hours. Barns with calves, horses, goats, chickens and lots of cats. A huge blue pond. Dogs in a pen begging you to play, showing off their antics. Wild kittens growing tame, cows grazing in the distance.

We transplanted in the greenhouse tender little sprouts wanting more space, basketted cilantro and tomatos, and spent nearly the whole of a beautiful afternoon picking beans and pulling up the bean plans after: their season, too, at an end. And we lunched on sweet water, creamed coffee, dark chocolate, and toast topped with fresh eggs over easy. Delicious!

i try to think--how does one describe this sort of experience/ Could I be happier? Such a natural place for mankind, working hard with the earth, the animals, even (eventually?) with critters and creepy crawlers? I remember growing up, my favourite day Saturdays--not because of no school, but rather, that my older sister and I spent nearly those whole days outside with our father, hauling branches--working in the yard--even when merely hauling branches from his dump pile to aid our our fortress building in the briars he had yet to trim. Riding in the truck to the dump with him at day's end--unloading the (massive) haul and riding victoriously (with deep satisfaction) home again as he regaled us with either stories of his own days growing up in America and shoveling horse manure, or else talkes of Frankie the Talking Horse or The Flying Belly-Button Monster. Little was happier than those days, those moments.

So many times in my little rented flat, even with my paltry flower/herb garden attempts, I find myself missing the maintenance of upkeep--hammer, nails, paintbrush, wood varnishing--and I wish I had a yard to work on or a house to continually fix. I suppose only the idle can dream of work.

This evening in the city--a man nearby speaking Russian on the phone to what seemed a buddy of his. In the store picking up food for this trip and supper for myself--the cashier from Poland; we spoke together, in English, of our distant homes, our other foods, our lost words from school days back there. And I don't know how people content themselves never to meet new people, to capture a fragment of another's story, or to pass through another's life like ships in the night. Even our worlds--his Russian, her accented English--can move us. Give me a whisper of hope, a shadow of a smile.
We are not alone.
Adam and Eve in the garden.
The world before the brokenness of the land, the fracturing of people into echoless babel.

Checking out the Dead Sea Scrolls

I had the opportunity through work to drive down to Philadelphia over the weekend and help host an event centred around the Dead Sea Scrolls. I think most of you who might read this blog know about these scrolls--they were found in jars of clay in a cave by a shepherd in the near past, and are the earliest pieces of scripture found yet. Abrahamic faiths find them very important.

Driving the seven hours it took due to bad weather, construction, and moronic drivers (myself naturally not included in that definition) was still a lovely drive. I've driven that way so many times I think I could do it with my eyes closed--though I would like to say I have not ever done so. In fact, I've driven it so often that even with traffic, I can still predict timing to locations along the way (and the final destination) within minutes of accuracy. It is incredibly satisfying to be able to do that. I have my favourite stopping points (only 2!) and the same order. I should probably vary it up one day just to avoid too much predictability. The road gives me in itself a sense of home. Funny that should be, but so natural at the same time.

I don't know what I enjoyed most about the event we held. Last time I was in the Franklin Institute, I was 8 years old, with my parents and a sister, got sick at the I-MAX theatre, was horrified by the display of real babies, and was fascinated by walking through some kind of pumping red heart. This time, I skipped most of the institute, drove myself there (wandered around the streets in circles unable to find the right parking for a quarter of an hour!), and while I went alone, was not without good company. We had a lovely alumni event there, and it was so much fun to be in a lovely old library room with alumni from even back to the 40's--to have this kinship with people I never knew, and to wander around learning about other hearts--the hearts of all these people who attended the same uni that I did. There were members from every decade up through the 2010's! And while each decade was so very different from every other, there was still this same sort of rhythm beneath it all.

After our presentations in the library room, we made our way together to the scroll exhibit. I remember hearing about the Dead Sea Scrolls over the radio back when I used to live in the Caribbean. I don't remember what was said, just that they were talked about. Now I finally got to see them. It took me back to days in London, standing in the British Library and looking at the first press prints of the Bible, of the Magna Carta (the English always did mix Religion and Politics!), and of other absolutely beautiful pieces and many gorgeous illuminated scriptures and texts. The exhibit itself, full of pictures of countryside, of multi-screen video displays playing insinc; of endless patched-together clay jars and ceramics and bathtubs from cult places mentioned in the Bible and of earrings and old coins--all oddly enough also took me less to Ancient Israel and more to places I have been before--to the Roman ruins scattered across Austria and Slovakia, where I grew up playing or walking around and even over. To the island of Crete and the even more ancient ruins there. And to days in Kenya, my own experiences in the desert and with pastoral and nomadic tribes.

It was not wonderful, or thrilling, or exciting to see the exhibit. It could even border on the boring--how many clay jars patched back up do you care about seeing, really? How many deep and impressive voice recordings playing at you theatrically do you want to hear? And I can't really help but analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the exhibit and what I would do if I were the curator or whatever the particular term in this case would be.

But it was wondrous; it was slightly chilling--looking at these fragmented and fragile oh-so-ancient texts in a language I cannot speak, in someone's real-life long ago personal handwriting--their ink and sweat and effort. The holiness of the time they set aside to write at all these very words. These words which survive to effect so much of the world, through centuries. Words lost for so long, hidden remotely in clay jars, that when uncovered, still ring true--even to ring true to the copies of them from much later on in the years--that transcribing and copying them did not dilute their message. It was a goosebump moment to remember.

Night Train to Bangkok

Deep darkness has fallen; I ride the night train to Bangkok. Right now we we sit at a station somewhere. Leaving Chiang Mai to head south, we had to go up into the mountains and are only just now descending from them. It is junglesque in there; the colours all bluegreen and the full palate of avocado and deep shades of lime.

The conductor just lowered some of the beds in our compartment; we are riding second class with private beds; the bottom two seats slide down to meet each other and form one bed, and from above, a storage unit unfolds itself to reveal another, rather smaller little “bedroom.” Curtains then separate you from the aisle between sides of the train, and outside your curtain is the luggage rack where you stash your belongings.

This morning I spent the day at last in the market in downtown Chiang Mai. My concious hours here have been full of longing to be out and about; I think it is a unique form of torture to be in a place you have so long waited to explore and then be so entirely incapacitated. Freedom and energy this morning were beautiful in combination. I surely could have shopped forever, wandered endlessly through the streets. It is so fascinating to me, this place. I have never travelled before in Asia, and the last thing I expected was to feel familiar here. Yet, that has exactly been the feeling I find myself coming back to; a familiarity with this place so foreign to me in actuality. Nearly all the trees and fruits I know from somewhere else, with but a few exceptions, like teak. Nearly all the building structures and particular array of colours I have seen before, with but a few very temple-like places the excpetion—and certainly the discovery and variety of these structures surprises me in itself. I am more surprised by my familiarity here, perhaps, than shocked at the differences I expected.

Even today, in the market; the items sold themselves are new, and many of the more pungeant smells were new, but the arrangement and the chaos and the specific order of how it all works were all familiar from markets in Slovakia; on Crete; in Uganda.

I go back and forth one moment to the next here thinking ah, that's Rwanda! Ah, that's Uganda! Ah, that's so British it's ridiculous! Ah, that's like Venezuela! Whoa, that's so Caribbean! And that is odly like Slovakia. How does it happen that the world so big can be so small? Even the language; so very incredibly foreign to me, yet I am already accurately picking up on the grammar and some of the particular words—it's wonderfully exciting. (Especially as this shall be the first country whose script I do not know coming in and will still not know going out. That aggravates me greatly, I confess!!) So this small ability to crack the language gives me that much more enormous a pleasure. If I ever came for longer than a week and a few days, and were not sick most of that time, I would immerse myself into this language until I could wear it like an invisibility cloak.

It is also interesting to me to begin to comprehend a little of this place at large. When we come to a new place, we do first see it through the only eyes we have, and so we cannot see it for itself as it is for different eyes. We have to learn first how to see the place at all. I have enjoyed getting tidbits of history and culture in this short time here—again wishing so badly I had more time to delve!--and a bit better a view, as I said. I don't remember what started our conversation—some question I asked—but I got to learn this morning all about how Thailand has grown as a nation. It was never colonized, which I knew beforehand, but didn't really register until that moment. I don't think I have ever been in a country outside of Europe that was not at one point colonized (or still a colony)! And now here I am. Shazaaam—another new experience I wasn't even looking for. It was also pointed out how all the surounding countries (all of which were indeed colonized by the various European entities) have collapsed completely since that time in the redoing of themselves. Thailand, on the other hand, could perhaps be equated then with the old story of the tourtise and hare-- the Thai being the tourtise slowly but surely developing themselves. They have done an impressive job, it seems, maintaining their Thai-ness whilst still incorporating Western culture—other cultures at all, really—into their mainstream at their own will. Not to say that their own will has always worked out for their own best, but no one and no country always can make the best decisions for itself. Isn't that part of the adventure of life, the twists that we didn't see but have to work out?

(Authors interrupting note: When travelling, it is always more interesting to leave the curtains on the train open and not yet go into your private sleeping compartment when there are good looking people sitting across the aisle from you. We just decided we don't really need to go to sleep or sit in private for a while still...Alas, though, it seems the french eye-candy have decided to retire... )

 

We dined tonight on sticky rice and pork sticks that Candace picked up nearby the train station. So tasty! I am thankful to eat and enjoy taste again. It is a beautiful thing. 

[Next day...]

So at last we are arrived at our destination at the beach. The night train to Bangkok came into the station several hours late, but it was a lovely trip nonetheless. We didn't go to sleep right away even after the conductor came by and put down all our beds. Instead, the two of us and our charming french companion across the aisle sat on Candace's bed and watched Star Wars, A New Hope. I was informed that I'm much more of a "fan" than I realised previously. Haha. Oops... When the train finally lulled me into sleeping sitting up watching that fantastic movie, I went up the luggage ladder to my bunk, curled up, and fell asleep promptly. I think it must have been hours later that I awoke at some stop, and it took a long time to fall asleep again, but when I did, it was bliss. Morning and wake-up and bunks-up came far to swiftly. 

My first impressions of Bangkok were of congestion and smell. I'd like to add more to those impressions, but I am at least glad to say that they were insignificant enough as I quickly fell asleep sitting in my chair there, and slept the extra two hours of the trip away. 

Bangkok train station was massive and awesome and air-co'd a bit, and after purchasing our train tickets to the beach, we settled down for our 2 hour wait at a lovely coffeeshop where I actually ate a whole croissant! (I am feeling MUCH better!) Then we bookshopped, looked into how to get me to the airport from the trainstation on the return journey, and finally waited and waited and waited some more for a very late train to come.

2nd class on this train was a vastly different experience than the first. In the first place, not only did C and I not get seats together, we were in entirely different train-cars! Moreover, whereas the first train we took had air-co and individual, padded seats; this one was "padded" seats on a bench, with open windows and fans blowing and lots of noise and bustle and vendors coming down the aisle hawking all sorts of delicious looking and smelling goods. At one point there was icecream being sold and run around the train-car windows on lids and it looked so very delicious and cold, but... i'm not actually a big icecream fan. 

While our beautiful (I presume) beach is only 2 hours out of Bangkok, it took the train six hours to get there. (2 hours longer, again, than the ticket said...). So we missed our first afternoon on the beach, and arrived in the dark. But we did arrive, grumpy and absolutely gross from the travel, and I wondering if spending 3 hours on the beach would really be worth it before having to turn around next day and take the train back to take a taxi to get to the airport to spend the next 29 hours from that airport in transit. Hmm.

As frustrating as it was to spend extra hours on a train alone the time we had hoped to spend together on the beach, I confess the trip was absolutely beautiful. The night train veiled much of the scenery, being night and therefore dark for most of the trip. But those 6 hours of watching a more southern Thailand unfurl outside my open window, and smelling the air (sometimes heavy scented with beautiful flowers, sometimes with delicious food and thick spice, and sometimes with the pungeant smell of the canals and slums) and just breathing was wonderful. The hot and the sticky. The breeze. The wonder of "where am I?" and not even knowing the time to count the minutes or hours by, or listening to a language I'm left out of. 

The colours changed, too--much more the colours of lemon and lime. I got to see a pink sunset over fields, and harvested rice fields set to fire in the darkening twilight. The houses on stilts. The cities we passed by--some with tall fiercely modern buildings and some with sprawling older houses of concrete, of wooden stilts, and of metal-piecework slums. 

And the mountains! Finally I have seen what I always have wanted to see; the mountains that look like clay, rolled around and pulled and squashed and slashed jaggedly to look like dragons and hollows of mystery and I am in love with them from afar. Enchanted as I have always known I should be if I saw them; bewitched to come take a ridiculously long train ride just so I could pass them and fall for them and their  raw wonder. 

I wish so much I had more than but these few hours. Hours which I won't even spend in the hills or mountains, but will stay in the sea. Hide in the sea. 

When we arrived (and we both did make it off the train despite my being in a separate car from her and she not being able to make it to collect me!), we caught a taxi to our hotel, tired and as I said, grumpy and gross. As soon as we got cleaned up, though--and more particularly, as soon as we walked out on a beach with sand that feels the same as the sand I grew up playing in and I heard the surf breaking, it was all worth it. Even for just that moment, without the 3 hours of daylight tomorrow. And then we ate delicious, heavenly food (mine being stir fried asparagus and fresh shrimp) and it was even better! And now we found a way for me to stay here for longer than 3 hours tomorrow and ideally still make my flight. We'll see! Here's hoping nothing goes wrong on the journey to the airport tomorrow afternoon or I might be doomed. 

Well, it's time to curl up and get rested and continue being happy. So very happy. 

Gallivanting, Weddings, and General Happiness

My dear Nuk is married now, and my heart is swollen with happiness for her happiness. It's hard to believe how long it is since she first showed up in NY my last year of college. Certainly I never would have imagined then that she would become such a sister to me that one day I would come all the way to Thailand for her wedding.

A lovely wedding. Yesterday, I slept in late so as to continue to strengthen up in preparation for the long stretches of busyness ahead, and then started my morning perfectly: with avocado on toast. If I were a cat, that food would make me purr. Then the five of us girls met up at the Pink Tea House in downtown Chiang Mai. This tea house is actually quite, quite pink--slightly less flamboyant than a well-fed flamingo--and though it looks small when standing out front, the place is quite large! You step inside and are encased in tea and tea pots and ceramics and porcelain. My child-self was quite enthralled to be in that place. Then you can go outside and sit in these lovely seats alongside the river, or you can go upstairs to an airconditioned enclosure--which we did at the bride's request. That room is green. Green not like any Eastern-side North-American Green, but green rather more like a palm tree, and exquisitely filled with low rising dark-wood tables and colourful settees and chairs. 

I had lavender lemonade and pumpkin steak, which sounded like they would suit my stomach, but the choices were difficult to make as everything looked absolutely delicious! 

We spent a great deal of time there chatting and giggling and enjoying customary before-the-wedding girl-time fun, and then piled into Candace's song-taew (song-tao: a truck with a special thing over the back that makes for semi-enclosed seats) and went to a nail salon. Manicures and pedicures, if you please! My nails missed the point that being so painted, they are supposed to speak french to me. Oh well. Wouldn't do much good here... 

After that, we rushed over to the grand hotel downtown where Candace dropped us off so we could check in to our room and then get to the rehearsal. When you are putting together a Thai-American-Chinese-Canadian wedding, this rehearsal requires something more than the usual amount of coordinating, as you are not just coordinating a wedding, but navigating and negotiating between that many different cultures and each of their unique expectations. I deeply admire their ability to do so with such grace. 

Following the rehearsal, family and bridal party and other wedding ceremony participants travelled up into the mountains for the rehearsal dinner. This was also lovely. Up in the mountains, our special dinning room (all glass!) looked out at a view of the city stretched out beyond a lake with palm trees and an absolutely gorgeous garden with every colour of the rainbow splashed through it. The food was traditional Northern Thai, and I would have it on my menu every week if I could. 

After that, we went back to the hotel, where more wedding details were seen to and afterwhich, I was sent to bed. I think I must have slept over 12 hours solid. But I needed it!

Today was the day of the wedding. We spent hours leisurely preparing in our "bridal suite," and Nuk was a beautiful bride. The photographers and videographers were lots of fun to work with, and the make-up-artist did a great job enhancing Nuk's already lovely features (though we are not otherwise impressed with him or his company, so don't use them!). There were lots of last minute details to see to and then, it was upon us; the wedding itself. Suddenly we girls were leaving the room and taking the elevator down to the ceremony hall, and filling in before the bride and there it was, the admonishments to the couple and the saying of the vows and boom! they're ceremonialy married!

I think perhaps one of my favourite moments in the whole day happened when the grooms dad stood onstage to say his thanks and appreciation in chinese, which the groom translated into english, which the bride translated into Thai. I love that this is my world, and that these people are there to enrich it like that. I love that this is THE world, not just mine. 

The reception was also delicious, lots of curries and rice and general yumminess and lots of music. The cakes were each of them cut by the happy couple--with a SWORD! And the company was charming. It was especially neat to me, to meet people who know several friends I know from my Slovak world. It was also especially neat to talk with the father of one of my friends (hey Bethany, if you're reading this again!)--another girl I met my last year of college, and directed in a play. I learnt that her whole family was astonished that I had gotten her to do something like that. Now her brother works for me, too. I love this world we live in. It's so refreshing to get glimpses of the beautiful ways things work; of the relationships between people and how they shape our lives. 

In the after-party for the "young people" at the "imperial spa" which we had exclusively reserved outside on one of the hotel's rooftops, we had even more fun, which I  was happily refreshed enough for by then. (standing so long after being sick was an effort! I had several people on guard to catch me, but happily, I survived to the end and didn't have to distract from the event!) I don't know what my favourite part of the after-party was; if it was the merrymaking in general, the pictures we took with slow-shutter-speed with sparklers on the cameras (well, that the photographers took of us--I don't have any), the pool (which I didn't swim in, but totally waded in as consolation), the snacks... But I think maybe it was when we lit up floating lanterns one by one and sent them off into the night sky; kisses and wishes to the bright moon. If you want any visual of that, the floating lanterns in the movie "Tangled" are exactly what we sent up into the dark. One of the most exquisite moments of my life, I think. One of. :) 

So there you have two days of weddingness. Now I am back home with Candace, feeling even at this later evening hour so much better than I have all week. It's so great to feel alive again--mentally and physically. I am so sad to have sleep-walked of necessity through most of this whole week. It's almost impossible for me to believe right now that a week has already passed since I again left Slovakia, and that now already when I am only feeling like I have begun to awake from this malady, my main purpose in coming here has concluded. I have said goodbye to the bride. Not goodbye, but see you later--though who but heaven knows where that later will be with us. I think that is beautiful in itself, though. Now to keep healing and manage to maximize beyond imagination my last few days in this country! 

Look out, Thailand. I'm here, and I'm feeling better, and I have a lot of making-up-time to have at!

Ostriches in Österreich

On the train again today [Wednesday, actually. This is being typed and posted a day late]! This time alone and headed out of country. Time for a visit to yet another world I love--Vienna, where I finished school.

I decided to be sentimental and take the same route I nearly always went, and it is perfect. This train is vastly different for the ones of the last few days of the Tatra trip. It is this fabulous, slick, double-decker train that runs so silently you merely feel rather than hear its gentle chug-chug. It was always great for getting a start on homework over the weekends, catching a solid 50 minutes of sleep, reading, or as now; writing.

There is still a vast difference between these neighbouring countries, neighbouring capitals despite the EU, despite the fall of the wall--differences that touch heritage, speak of East vs West and of Slav vs German, and I love them both.

I suppose now that we no longer have even to check passports when moving one to the other, one of my more vivid and painful experiences would be unnecessary.

It happened just after I had lost my residency as a dependant in Slovakia and had begun school in Vienna, living in the city (not at a boarding school) and, as per the agreement with my parents, returning (most) weekends.

One evening officers came to my house in Vienna to see me. I wasn't there at the time, and had to report to their office promptly upon return. I did so, ,wondering why, what had happened? They put me in one of those interrogating rooms you always see on TV, with the bright light and the loud burly officers. Why was I in Vienna? What was I doing? Who was I living with? What was my connection to them? Was I sure I wasn't sneaking over from Slovakia to work in Vienna (much better wages)? And on it went.

My student visa hadn't come through yet, and although the Austrian embassy in Slovakia said to start anyways, my name still got flagged. We sorted it all out at the station eventually. But I remember wondering, what would they do with me? Deport me home to a country where I had no residency, no legal connection? Deport me to my passport country where I had never lived? How that? And what of my school and life?

This train just passed an ostrich farm I have never seen on this trip before. I did see wild ostriches when I was doing photojournalism in northern Kenya. For some reason I find this both hilarious and sobering. Ostriches in Österreich (austria).  So... perfect and yet odd--oddly suiting. I think perhaps I have always been my own sort of ostrich in Österreich; only I can come and go instead of finding myself caged in. 

And I do come and go! One year I came back from visiting friends and "hanging out" and wandering through the streets and eating my favourite kabobs and pizza just in time for Christmas Eve with my family. 

There is one scene where you can spy to two important Slovak castles (the Braistlava castle and Devin, which was lain to ruin by Napoleon), the Slovak Parliament, the Danube (Dunaj in Slovak, Donau in German), and a lovely Austrian castle (where we picnicked several times) all at once. That always makes me deeply contented. 

I think of this story we have of Babel, of how people came to be separate. One tongue shattered into many pieces, garble to each other. I think if there were only one language today, I should weep. The pain of this story lies not in the differences that grew up, but in the inability--no, in the unwillingness--of our humankind to reach through them to wholeness.

First Train Musings...

Our train rolls out of the city, matchboxes and trees and village houses peeling away from us, the stepped hills sliding softly by like green waves. And the train chuckles and sings to us. I have missed these trains. My sister and I, each with a notebook and pen, smile contentedly--not at each other, but from the deep gratification of contentment, of "this is the way it is meant to be." Together, training through to the mountains in this country we love. "Krajina moja srce," (country of my heart) as a fotobook of it I have at home says. Though, I think, it is not the only country of my heart.

I love watching the houses and flats as we pass by; buildings whose faces I would know in the dark like a lover; their lines, curves, and textures just right. Just right like being on a train at all. Weekends in highschool, taking the train country to country, home to home, german to slovak to german again. My world. A familiar world. In dreams I often wander and grow lost on a train, but the lostness is beautiful to me; the lostness I carry back out of my dreams with me, into the whole of my life. "To live without roads is one way not to be lost." (naomi shihab nye)

Once I tried to make sense of my world by mapping it out like the metro. Places I have lived or studied and the paths I moved on between them--marked time. Languages in subtext. They were to o equal for a painless answer. I am a child of many worlds, a voice of many tongues. I then decided that the map of me lies in the people I have met and known. My story, dissolved across the world into other lives and tales.

Just the other day, I returned to the church my family engaged in here, expecting to find three or four friends and instead, there was a convergence of time and people I know even from the very earliest memories of this place and people of my later years here came. It was like pieces of my life for a moment brought together. Such a lovely surprise.

How to describe to you my city? The last summer I spent here is five years gone. Gone Perhaps "ago" is better here, for I think of that summer still. Living in Slovakia. Working in Vienna. Making radio programmes. Writing intensely and trying to "find myself;" find how my selves from all thse different worlds were supposed to be one person living in peace when the worlds themselves don't get along; exist as polar opposites. Remember travelling by bus across the continent, ferrying across the Channel (white cliffs of Dover rising!), travelling to London for interviews. Remember the hot summer days when the air itself sizzled on the black cobbles of the city (Bratislava, not London), and burned my soles as I spent hours alone downtown, meandering through galleries, reading in the University Library, documenting in pictures I've since lost that world I loved. I love.

The buildings of downtown, old next to new. Old even to the time of the Roamns and before--Celtic farms once--new to very current and noisy, sweaty construction that smells like cold water somehow. A growing city. Moving and morphing. Do you know how many names and in how many languages this city has been called?

Shades of fading paint, peeling through to cement peeling through to old brick--layers and layers. The old old wall of the Old City, one length still standing. Remaining destruction from Napoleon--even to a cannonball still wedged into the tower of our Old Town Hall.

Art everywhere. Grafitti on most every surface (though usually, respectfully kept off the Old Town district buildings). Fascinating art installations--a display of Slovak wines through cask art. Who knew? Statues--Sir Roland. George and the Dragon. Hans Christian Anderson. Hviezdoslav. Famous poets and political saviours.The fomentors of Slovak national identity (which is relatively new and an ancient land. I grew up in the shaping and making of the nation itself.) One summer, enormous fotoraphs from around the world hanging like sheets around one of the squares. I wished then they were my fotos. I wished the resolution of my camera was good enough for such blowups. One summer I paced around searching for art institutes to which I could apply for study.

The old wall of the Old City heading around to the last remaining old gate--Michalska Brana--St Michael's Gate. My favourite part of the city. You pass through the arched gate under a beautiful copper topped tower and enter the Old City--opening before you is a cobbled streed lined up and down each side with cafes. People spill out like flowers from a basket, littering the chairs and tables with their colours and their lovely varied words. At night it is most beautiufl to me. Van Goh's painting of a city street of cafes by night always makes me thinkof this street. It captures just the right atmosphere, vibrancy, and glow.

From nearly every point in the city you can see the castle rising high on the hill, its largest tower facing west to Vienna. Crown jewels were once held there, in the time of teh Austro-Hungarian empire. Empress Maria Theresa (mother of Marie Antoinette) would come and hold court there, so the houses of the nobility drape the surrounding hills. The empress was so fat that she rode a horse everywhere, so when you are in the castle you will note how wide, deep, and flat the stairs are for the sake of that unfortunate creature.

Across the way is St Martin's Cathedral, where through history many Hungarian kings and queens were crowned. One of the villages where my family lived was most often Hungarian, so there all the statues and inscriptions are in that language.

I remember when the first shopping mall came to the country, a chink the dam. Now we have many, nestled new into the old. I took my youngest sister (whom I'm now travelling with!) there for her first salon haircut. We went after to the lake next door, rented a paddle boat, and jumped off in the middle of the lake. Our clothes so heavy clinbing back aboard was nearly impossible, and her newly styled hair washed flat... but our dripping and laughing moment was perfect.

We have another lake with crystaline waters to which she and I biked nearly ever day one exquisite summer I was home from university. 7 km. This week we plan to bus to that village and then walk out there as we no longer have our bikes here. But we want "our" lake. Apples and cheese and water and sun.

There are several mountain ranges in this country, and one is beginning to grow in the distance now. Beautiful. I forgot how blue the green here is, and in these hills and mountains and across the whole of this little country are over 180 castles and castle ruins.

Nature is iportant here. Even in the city, most everyone has a garden plot outside the city limits. No yards, just gardens. Land that is beautiful and will nourish you.

I love teh poppies here. The further we go today, the more I see them. So red and delicate. When we had to say goodbye to  friends moving away, it helped heal our grief to stand in a field of poppies--a field of bleeding red--the visualisation of our hurt like a balm, soothing us.

In the near distance right now are some smaller moutnains that I would almost swear I climbed a few years ago! No way to know, though. I didn't even know then wehre I was.

It's funny the way things affect you. When we were young, my olders sister and I lived to read. Books, and certainly english ones, were ahrd to find, so we read everything we could get our hands on--reading, as a result, things far too old for us. For instance, storeis of war and desolation and rape (which we couldn't understand except that it was dreadful) and pillage and torture in Europe. Reader's Digest "Drama in Real Life" and book excerpts were especially good for that.

When we moved here, those storeis ripe in our heads, and our parents' american-instilled fear of anything communitst filling our world, we made contingency plans. How to escape when war started, when the new country collapsed, when nazis or communists took over again. We gave our parents up for loss--with their terrible language acquirement and heavy accents, they could never hid, blend in, or escape. Taken away, tortured, and killed But we would survive. We mapped our various escape routs out of the country--over thsoe mountains, through that river, and then... We covered who and how we would be responsible for "the children," (our siblings). I made them practise scaling walls and walking fences, and tried to teach them the art of dodging bullets (though, in retrospect, I realise mudballs shoot very differently than bullets and shrapnel.) In my dreams our parents secured us in an orphanage right before being taken away from us.

It didn't help those wild and rather uneducated speculations in that time that the government here was, in fact, still sorting itself out and rather unstable, relatively speaking. At elections iwthin our first year, there was widespread concern over a coup, we were given to understand. Many expatriots had their bags packed and emergency exits and rendezvous planned out. I remember climbing up my apple tree in the orchard of our first house wondering what morning would bring the night of elections. Fortunately, it brought none of those negatives.

It also didn't help that within our first year and a half there also occured the impeachment process of Clinton (causing our vulnerable and imaginative minds to disbelieve our parents' claims that the USA was safe and stable) and the nearby war in Yugoslavia. By the time of the bombing in Kosovo, we had friends there who were hiding in basements and shelters. Friends who didn't evacuate and we stopped hearing news from. Our house constantly shook as bomber jets from a nearby base in Hungary flew over our hosue on their way to unlaod issiles (on our friends!) and traffice was stopped in the streets from long lines of tanks filing by, achingly slow, along with supply trucks and red cross vehicles.

it is so funny in this odd way to recall all those fears.

Political scientits talk of how soccer united Germany after the wall fell, off if not for taht, what would have happened, who knows. Here, we ahd a similar experience when the Slovak hockey team won its first gold medal. Of course, we had played long and won games before, but not as Slovakia separate from Czech Republic. it was the single nation of Slovakia's first win, and the country went crazy. We all went crazy. It was really the first display of nationalism by the new country, according to everyone. Even to the 1800s, the Slovak language wasn't considered much more than peasant speak as opposed to a national language. Ludovit Stur was one of those behind the birth of Slovaki nationalism through the language. I think that is something very special about my experiences, something difficult I wouldn't trade, and something of the bond I share to this place; that I was shaped into my person with teh shaping of this place into a nation.

I was thinking again now of Bratislava, and of the peeling pain, and the old with the new, and even of teh buildings you still find bullet holes riddling the walls of. And I think, one of the reasons I love that place so much is its story. Hours of reading its history, years of walking through its history in the streets, and a life that is part of its history, however unrecognised. I love how my story is wrapped into its larger one. I love the way that its deep history enriches my life even now, when I live so far away from it.

I don't know that I would ever again live in this place; I have too much of too many other places in me so that this one always has and always will be just a little two small to fit right--but I love that it has a place in me.

One of the lovely things about here is the code of courtesty. It has always been awkward to mein the States how you are in waiting rooms, for instance. Here, you say good morning or day to everyone before sitting down. Here also, on the train, before entering a compartment (if you need a visual here, recall the Hogwarts Express and how Harry and co are alwas in their own compartments), you ask for permission by those already in there.

This one woman who just sat down in ours saw me writing here and complimented me on "what lovely handwriting you have." I am quite delighted by this (though my sister says it has, in fact, gotten worse!)

I was thinking how long has passed since last I wondered here. 10 years now since I was up in the peaks of the Tatras. 7 years since last I travelled deep into the heart of the country, up towards Poland and east towards the Ukraine. This, I believe, is poetry. That last summer, I stayed with some14 others in the Fatra mountains (smaller, rounder mountain range) at a chata (pronounce the "ch" like a voiceless "k") (chata's are like a rustic cabin or cottage). One afternoon one of the girls and I took a long walk, losing ourselves deep in the fields picking wild blueberries and mushrooms, and then looking out for bears as we found our way slowly back through the black forests, our mouths blue and happy. The mountains themselves were shades of blue and the fields bright green and the valley golden and deep green. Beautiful. I think there is a degree to which this place is like the Sea; it gets into your veins and runs through you so you can never forget it; never quite catch your breath from wonder when you're by it.

Other-Worldly Encounters

I confessed at work today that for me, people are a matter of life or death. I think more particularly, though, I simply could never live without the possibility of strangers. It is what I love most about living in cities; the constant surround of faces you have yet to meet, of people whose each and every world is a universe unexplored, full of fascination and wonder. I could wander in strangers forever and not feel more at home than with a thousand faces I do not know; do not know yet.

When I flew up to Sacramento, California the other week, I chatted briefly with the man working one of the shops. We spoke of weather, of what brought him to that place (he was not a local), of where he would rather live and why. And I asked him if this was not where he wanted to be, what kept him there?

I love the endless questions you can ask the stranger, and how the answers colour the world a little more fully.

When I picked up a rental car recently, the manager sent me to meet the car agent. She introduced herself, and I heard in her immediately an echo of me. While talking over the car and making sure it had no dents I need worry about, we talked over the world. We had both lived at some point in Eastern Europe, and it was just beautiful, that moment of meeting someone with whom you share a whole other world--a language group neither of you currently speak in, but both dream in. Food and the lilt on your tongue that taste the same. And she, looking at me, said, "and of course, you are an artist." I did not disagree. It is one of my many me's.

I think if the world doesn't hold those moments, when strangers are kindred, when people carry worlds like a narnian wardrobe door, when one foreign being can see your own being and be seen in return--truly seen--then it would be so much meaninglessness to me. So cliched and wearied.

In a day and a half I'll be in an airport again, moving back into other worlds--places and people alike--and I can hardly wait for all those beautiful encounters.w