I'm driving up Robertson after lunch today, on my way
back to the copy-bitching temp job I've momentarily
picked up in an effort to avoid welfare, when I see
it.
It isn't much--just the navy blue awning above yet
another LA eatery--but the sprawling white letters
declaring its name add up to Champs-Elysee, and I
nearly start to cry.
It's been two and a half weeks now since I returned
home, and at first I thought I was all right.
Seemingly I had avoided the dreaded travel withdrawal
that so many seasoned travelers had spoken of with the
same gravity as bedbugs and Delhi-Belly.
When, immediately upon my return, my eternally
wandering (or at least wanting to) friend Leah asked
me where I was headed next and suggested Thailand, I
laughed it off. Of course I'll get there someday, I
assured myself, but for now I am glad to be home.
And I am.
In a way.
But the twinges have started.
I find that I'm suddenly hyper-sensitive to stimuli
which can be associated in any way to skipping town.
When Star 98.7 plays The Metro by Berlin during their
80s flashback lunch--"I was on a Paris train, I
emerged in London rain,"--I actually miss (with a
capital M) all three cities. When I'm sorting the
mail at this ridiculous job, and there appears an
envelope from Prague, I curse the flourescent light up
here on the twentieth floor and long for the open air
of the Charles Bridge. An awning, a song, an
envelope--sometimes nothing at all, just a twinge and
the instinct to jump on a train.
So what does one do, then?
Last night, over tea and cookies with Ronit, she said
she thought that through the course of our friendship
she had given me roots, and I had given her wings.
Surely everyone needs both (lucky us), but the
question becomes how to healthfully and happily put
both our wings and roots to use in a balanced way. I
don't know about you, but I have never seen a tree
fly. Of course, I've never taken a stroll down
tornado alley...
I suppose that's the challenge I face now: to take
what I saw and felt and learned during my two winged
months abroad and use the seeds of that experience to
plant and sow and establish roots right here at home.
And as soon as this tree has grown, I'll climb it and
jump across the pond to Thailand.
Somewhere between Corfu and Athens I am entirely
overcome. The crowded overnight bus that I've
sardined into with fifty-one other hard-traveling
souls is dark, and the man in the seat next to mine
has succumbed to a deeply sprawled sleep, so I make no
attempt to break the wave of emotion crashing through
me. They are quite possibly the best tears I have
ever shed--pure and pristine--the tears of a heart
that is breaking not due to neglect or
misunderstanding, but rather as a result of having
reached an incredible fullness--like the jackfruit so
sweet and ripe it bursts.
I've spent the last two months falling in love, again
and again, with the most unexpected people in the most
unlikely places.
Five beautiful, female Cardiologists--contemporaries
of mine--at a cafe in Moscow who called me over to
their table and poured me shot after shot of vodka,
inviting me momentarily and without question into
their world, encompassing me in their warmth and
laughter.
The Italian boy who descended upon me as I sat alone
at the Termini train station in Rome and implored me
to swap headsets while we each awaited our respective
late-night departures, then left me, after a brief but
exhilarated conversation, with an album by one of his
favorite Italian bands and some adamant tips on
staying safe.
The Dane in Copenhagen who, on his first day of work
at the Museum of the Danish Resistance in WWII, and
despite a malfunctioning cash register, insisted on
opening up my city map and pointing out his favorite
works of architecture, the cheapest canal tour, and
the best bakeries in town.
And these, of course, are examples of only the most
fleeting encounters; testaments, more than anything,
to the kindness of strangers. The many people who
invited me into their homes and daily lives; the
people that I met in hostels and on trains and with
whom I spent hours, days, even weeks--they are an
altogether different story, each of them deserving of
their own tome, and they have changed my heart and
mind forever.
***
So I traveled from Moscow to Athens and covered as
much territory in between as I could in seventy days.
What did I find? That everywhere you go, there are
scores of people who want to connect and share. Among
locals and travelers alike, the common human desires I
encountered were for understanding and communion. No
matter how different our Cultures or how distant our
Homelands, conversations sprung up, bridges were built
and alliances were forged in an instant.
At home we generally operate in deference to the
assumption that we need to be formally introduced or
connected to someone before speaking to them. On the
road, that old habit dies easy, and the inclination is
to casually strike up conversations with anyone and
everyone. Internationals search for a common language
everywhere you go.
Romances are ignited through the trading of coinage in
Prague. Age and Nationality dissolve into a bottle
(or two) of Scotch in Berlin. Plans and routes are
altered so that friendships can be solidified across
borders.
Russians, Estonians, Finns, Danes, French people,
Germans, Swiss people, Czechs, Austrians, Hungarians,
Italians, Greeks, Americans, Canadians, Australians,
Spaniards, Costa Ricans, New Zealanders, Israelis,
Indians and everyone in between finds that they are
one people united by a common experience, and suddenly
all of the complications of daily life and human
interaction seem moot. Curiosity and affection become
simple, sincere and pure.
No matter how different we look, no matter how
different the foods we eat, no matter how different
the languages we dream in, no matter how different the
landscapes of our childhoods or the Gods we pray to or
disbelieve in, we all want the same basic things: to
give and receive love, to be appreciated and accepted
as we are, to be productive in some way that satisfies
and makes us proud. Incredible how when you leave the
context of home behind, with all of its blinders and
preoccupations, with all of the media's mental
manipulations and the fears and ignorances it provokes
and sustains, the world is suddenly revealed to be--of
all things--a breeding ground for friendship and love.
I daresay I received some interesting responses to my
last post. Don't worry your pretty little heads--I'm
not writing off my entire Italian experience because
of a spot of graffiti. And of course I understand
that those spray-can sentiments are directed more
specifically at the Italian and American governments,
rather than at individuals like myself. But I will
remind those who regard Italy as one of our oldest and
most consistent friends that they were an Axis Nation
who very willingly took up arms and fought alongside
the Germans from the beginning of WWII.
Bygones... :-p
I've spent the last few days in Rome, which has mainly
pissed on me, but the clouds parted long enough today
for me to check out what the Romans left behind, and I
have to give props.
Strolling through the Forum, exploring The Palatine
Hill, taking in the Coloseum and pondering the dome of
the Pantheon were awe-inspiring and eerie in the best
possible way.
Columns reaching into the sky in support of nothing...
Chills.
In any case, I'm taking an overnight train to Brindisi
tonight, where the plan is to catch the one and only
daily ferry to Corfu, Greece tomorrow morning.
Italy is so fabled, so widely photographed, so
touristed and celebrated, that I was almost
indifferent about visiting. I felt, I suppose, as
though there was no mystery left in it, so I was
suprised to find that my heart went warm (quite
literally a physical sensation) when I was awakened by
passport control at 5 a.m. while crossing the the
Austrian/Italian border.
The country is mythic and storied in so many ways,
with such a vast and unique history and so very much
to offer, but sadly enough the one characteristic
about Italy that stands out for me thus far (Venice,
Padua, Verona and Florence) is the embarrassing
quantity of anti-American graffiti scrawled
everywhere.
"Yankee Go Home," "Fuck You Americano." These and a
plethora of other expressions touting anti-American
sentiment can be found all over the streets of Italy.
Most striking for me is the fact that this is the
first and only place I've encountered anything like
it. Even Paris, which I was warned about and which I
explored in great depth, was free of such sentiment,
at least publically.
In any case, I'll see what I can find out from the
natives. Is it Iraq (of course it is, to a degree),
is it the avalanche of tourism? Whatever it is, I
feel immense anger and hostility directed at me by
virtue of my nationality. A strange new
experience--perhaps I've been lucky.
Sitting on a train to Paris, one very strong cup of French coffee supporting the cause, I am compelled to find words to share with all of you.
Words, coincidently, have been consuming my thoughts since I began this trek in Moscow. It was there that I realized the shared knowledge of a language, and hence the ability to communicate with another person, does not necessarily ensure that two people will be able to connect with or understand one another. Knowledge of a language and the daily experience of a language are two very different things. I learned firsthand in Moscow that a lexicon is very much more than words, and that we all rely heavily on intimate systems of infinite, subtle intricacies in our everyday speech to create and maintain a sense of unity, community, belonging and of course, understanding.
Slang, in varying degrees--from the widespread, to that which springs up between small groups of friends--continually cements and affirms our relationships with one another. In my opinion, the most powerful outgrowth of speaking a common experience is easy laughter. Being funny in your native language is hard enough--being funny across language barriers is a challenge worthy of David Blaine.
The easy laughter that grows out of our inside jokes and innumerable unspoken understandings keeps us going day to day. It lifts our spirits and provides a subconcious feelings of safety. Moscow was the first place I'd ever felt that that safety line was severed, and it was psychologically and emotionally disorienting.
This pseudo-crisis in linguistic consciousness was compounded by yet another idiomatic experience, so to speak (pardon the pun).
I am an eavesdropper by nature. I admit that it's a bad habit, but if there are conversations happening within audible distance, I am listening. After a lifetime of eavesdropping, my ear is trained to tune in, and acts as a free agent: I'm constantly picking up signals despite myself, and this might sound a bit twilight-zony, but listening to all of the different languages being spoken around me at the hostel in Copenhagen was an eerie, even nerve-racking experience.
Hearing human speech with no way of understanding it is what I imagine lunacy might be like. Lying in the dark in my dormitory bed, instinctively trying to make sense of the hushed, disembodied voices speaking intently and rapidfire all around me in Spanish, French, Danish, German--each conversation uttery incomprehensible to me--was like trying to find peace in my own personal tower of babel.
It got me thinking: English is not the language that my paternal grandmother was born into. That's how new it is to me on a cellular level. It is the language that was deposited into my head though, and it is the language that I identify with and am identified by. It is the legend by which the map of my cultural experience and identity can be read. It determines how I receive, interpret, understand and express my perceptions of the world. It's more than just sounds strung together to create signals. It's a system that encodes and transmits innumerable, subliminal intracacies of meaning and submeaning, text and subtext.
It's so immensely powerful, and so exceptionally taken for granted.
In any case, apologies if this was far too verbose. As Hamlet said, "Words, words, words."
It's a gray afternoon in Manchester--halfheartedly
punctuated by a non-committal drizzle. The weather
here reminds me of how I felt on my ferry from
Helsinki to Stockholm--a bit lazy, a tad wistful and
annoying to all those around me thanks to a relentless
sniffle. Still, I welcome this rain for its
authenticity--the sunshiny week that I've passed here
has been lovely, if not genuinely British.
I had my token, full English breakfast this morning
(the stuff that dreams are made of!) and have since
had time to reflect on the past 19 days.
My intentions (of course) had been to write--both for
myself and to all of you--as much as possible. I
didn't anticipate (though I am glad for) the intensity
of experience I've encountered and just how much
processing it would all take. Slowly but surely
though, the sights and sounds and stimuli of the past
three weeks are starting to sort themselves out in my
heart and head, and everything that seemed a blur
before is becoming lucid.
Moscow in itself was overwhelming. I may as well have
boarded a spaceship at LAX. For someone whose worldly
travel experience prior to this journey included no
more than an 8-day jaunt to Israel and the Sinai
desert to visit Ronit in college (an amazing, amazing
trip, mind you), it was like touching down on another
planet.
I don't know about all of you, but Russia has always
been an enormous mystery to me. The little bit of
information I was ever offered about it growing up
seemed more like a dim, propagandistic caricature than
a realistic vision of a (gigantic) nation. When I
thought of Russia I thought of Cold War, of Gorbachev,
of Communism and Lenin, of a hammer and sickle, of
Vodka and mail order brides and Siberia and Dostoevsky
and onion domes and ballerinas. I could never
consolidate it all in my head though, or pull it all
into clear focus. It remained far away and fuzzy,
dimly lit and intimidating.
Russia in application is much different than Russia in
theory (isn't everything?). We adjust so quickly to
new surroundings that I had to keep reminding myself
to be present and conscious and to allow every
experience and image to be distinct. Muscovites and
the city they live in are all so full of noise and
force--just a day in the city will leave your ears
ringing late into the night. They are fast moving and
unforgiving. Pedestrians do not have the right of
way, no matter what the light says. And yet that
force and intensity is contradicted by the strangest
details; innumerable couples everywhere--on park
benches, on escalators in metro stations, at bus stops
and in markets--holding hands, kissing, flirting,
snuggling. Never in my life have I seen so many
passionate, public displays. And then there were the
cars full of people reading intently on the metro.
In any case, this is just the tip of the iceberg in
terms of what I saw and felt in Moscow, but the
battery on this computer needs a good recharging, and
so do I (chicken tikka, anyone?).
"Travels from nesting space will take you to a broader cultural horizon."
What are the chances that on this, my last day of work before I ex-pat myself on the back and flee the country (all right, all right, so I'm not defecting so much as taking an extended vacation), my fortune cookie should look me straight in the eye and say such a thing? Confucius has spoken and it's a Go, folks! Operation Earth to Jupiter (or more to the point: Jupiter to Earth) kicks off in little more than a week...
