before understanding

My pen is nearly out of ink. I turn to my laptop to press some of my imagination into its 10 inch screen.

This is the longest night of the whole year. Winter Solstice, the weight of the quick coming night, the stone houses with smoking chimneys and those dogs always barking. Cold came fast when the sun went down, just behind the pine scrub hill, the village's border. When you stand up top the whole Mediterranean is laid out sparkling and massive. I have seen it on several occasions. We had been sitting outside, drinking nescafes with milk (from the neighbor's cow), watching the new door be put in; I was knitting an endless hat. Suddenly I could see my friend's face without squinting, without that gleam in my eyes. Our bodies grew cold and we moved inside to sweep and unroll carpets, shaking off the chill with industry.

So, I have not written on this blog much. It turns out that I dislike the pressure of what I think should be 'perfect produce'. Then I don't produce even imperfectly.  Rebelling against my own cause. But a friend of mine said "you should write more" and I am taking her seriously.
There is no lack of things to say. Just how to say them.

I have been in Turkey 3 weeks now.
It is completely different to be somewhere committed. To be somewhere with no short-term exit plan. Faithful in my desire to remain, willingly. I don't know if I've quite felt this way before. It's not like being an exchange student. It's not like home. It's not exactly travelling.

I am staying until further notice because I want to be here.
Where exactly am I going to stay? What am I going to do?
Starting to long for the comforts of residence. Personal space to create.
I am tired of making everything fit inside my backpack. I have dreams about it--always too much stuff, weird things  (religious icons, paintings, too many nice socks, snorkel gear, and an inflatable kayak on different occasions), which I struggle to fit inside again.


I want....I want that shimmering, dancing Life which is mine all the time but takes different forms and colors depending on where it lands.

To give you some back round, I've done the math. I am twenty years old. I have not lived in one house, one solid place for longer than 5 months in approximately 3 years. This has been by my choosing. From 11 years old to when I moved out at 17, I lived in 11 different houses. I packed and unpacked my shit as many times. My mother, my sister, and I were always moving. The numbers seem a bit startling when I count them out on my fingers, trying to keep track of each one. I don't think of myself in terms of houses anymore, though my memory is defined by them. Fortunately they were mostly all in the same town.

Movement is integral to balance, and frequent shifts have been the norm for so long that considering a full year in one locale honestly disquiets me...(this is actually a factor in why I haven't gone to college or university). And yet, I do not wish to spend all my life on the road.

The past two weeks have blessed me with my first own room after 2 months of travelling. When I arrived I hung up my clothes in the closet and felt like crying because Selma had left me a pair of pink flannel pyjamas just like the ones I wore at ten years old, and I didn't have to go anywhere. Her son, who's my age, is away at school in Hungary. The room is his study. There are two guitars, a couple stacked book shelves, a desk with random little things on it.  On the wall are teen rock band posters with yellowed tape, and one of Che Guevera (whose Turkish headline I translated as "believer in impossibility"). And there's an aged red wall hanging of Russian communist symbols.The mustard fold out couch is far too big so I just sleep on half of it with colorful wool blankets.  I never had a place to leave my stuff like that.  There was never room or time for the layers of my youth to accumulate. No posters to remind me of what I liked, or who I dreamt of. Every move heralded reflection and recycling.

The past few years my worldly possessions have spent nearly as much time layered in boxes as they have decorating the places I inhabit. I miss some things now: my cowboy boots, my embroidered dresses, my goose down comforter, and books of poetry. When will I see them again? This question crosses the sea...the Mediterranean, the length of Europe, the Atlantic, across the north American continent. Unless it's faster the opposite direction: all of Asia and the Pacific? It is a long journey, that much we know. Too far to dwell on frequently.

The longest night, no howling wind. No snow. The sun will shine tomorrow and I won't see it rise (though the call to prayer might wake me again). 1:11AM. An acquaintance of mine posted a poem  today--before light comes dark. One line stuck out for me: before understanding comes ignorance.
I feel it every day, not knowing how to say my heart in this language, and learning the questions. Still laughing in humility, new in my ignorance, in my freshness & difference in this place which is far from home.
The process: before understanding comes ignorance. To the learning, I turn.

Planetary flowers

While I am contemplating (read: procrastinating) what to write, here's a fun fact I learned from a bottle of cooking oil: the word for sunflower in Turkish is ayçiçek, which is literally "moonflower". Curious, isn't it?

Glasgow

My experience in Scotland began with a janky (though not greyhound standard) overnight bus to Glasgow, where I arrived in the dark, and passed an hour curled on a metal bench at the coach station. It seemed people were staring at my gigantic backpack with the peacock feather sticking out and my boots hanging off the armrest. Tired and cold, if anyone cared to bother me I would have told them to fuck off. 

          At 7am I hit the street, and with uncharacteristic gratitude, found an open Starbucks. While drinking some weak filter coffee I met a guy named James. He looked to be in his thirties, and was wearing coral pink trousers with matching collared shirt, a red knit hat with an enormous ball bobbing at the top, and toting a plastic bag stuffed with Friskies cat food (which I noticed because the boxes were a complementary bright purple). He had an odd way of saying something and then staring straight ahead, whilst I struggled to comprehend his Glaswegian. Apparently, he came to Starbucks every morning. A regular, as we would say in the restaurant business, all the baristas knew his name. Between incomprehensible guidance, I gleaned that to walk to my friend's house I would simply need to go down Sauchiehall (saow-kii-hall) for half an hour till I saw the Kelvingrove Museum. Fortunately I didn't need ask directions, because I would have pronounced everything wrong.

          No matter how hard one tries to sleep, night buses mess a person up. My first afternoon in Glasgow was tinged with exhaustion, and a feeling of displacement (cities do this to me anywhere). Despite staying with my friend Essi and her sweet flatmates, it took awhile for me to regain my balance. After several weeks in rural Wales it was a ridiculous contrast to go from staying with 4 guys to staying with 4 aesthetic Scandanavian girls in a high-ceilinged, urban apartment. I felt rather bucolic. 

           Getting dressed to go out dancing that night: make-up, hair, dresses, tights, red wine, lipstick, necklaces, mirrors, chatting about birth control and periods, and singing. I used to do this every weekend, when Essi and I lived in Lisbon. Going out at 11:30pm. Two am at the retro dance club, I finally ran out of steam, had danced myself out. My friends wanted to stay another half hour and I thought, Fuck, and stood outside with the smokers wondering how long the walk would be. Was questioned by a drunk ginger who had some odd opinion that Americans dislike Scots. I told him I liked Scotland, I just didn't like him.

         When I went back into the bar, Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al came blasting on the sound system in all its random eighties South African glory. Everyone was singing and starting to dance. I entered the fray, belting the well-known lines with the rest. Yes, I thought, isn't this strangely perfect and right? 

A man walks down the street

It's a street in a strange world

Maybe it's the third world

Maybe it's his first time around

Doesn't speak the language

He holds no currency

He is a foreign man

...

He looks around, around

Sees angels in the architecture

Spinning in infinity

he says

Amen! and Hallelujah!

Wales

Rain. Hills. Holloways. Hedgerows.

Acorns. Sheep. Beech Trees. Crows.

Mud. Mares. Mushrooms. More hills.

....

I stayed in a village ( I suppose it's either a large village or small town) in west Wales with my old friend Scott. Lampeter is the name of the town, and I was informed that historically, it was a place where nothing ever happened. Population is about 3,000, including the students who attend its small university, Trinity Saint David. Nestled into the loping green hills of Ceredigion, Lampeter was famous for having a ridiculously large ratio of pubs to people, which has sadly decreased since its heyday a couple hundred years ago.

           My friend's home was a proper 'house of trousers', (aka bachelor pad) of 4 male inhabitants. Music, mild disorder, dishes, cooking, eating, dishes, and a steady flow of entries and exits through the front door at the bottom of the stairs. Most days we sat on the living room floor or on floral couches watching the mutable weather, and noting the going-round of arms on the clock tower. There was always tea, and if not tea, cider. In that lovely way of good roommates and friends, there was always company. Even if people were going about individual pursuits, we had constant communal breaks for conversation, food, Breaking Bad, going to the shop, etc.

          The greatest affliction in this town is a pervasive malaise, locally termed “Lampathy”. One would rise at noon, drink tea, eat toast, then realize it was 2pm and raining, and because it was raining (it rains everyday in Wales) decide to drink more tea. If the rain stopped, one might go for a walk out through cow and sheep pastures and beneath twisted beeches and along roads spattered with acorns. Then one might return, stop by the veg shed for some produce, wander up to the door behind the pub (for my friends lived above a pub), tromp up the stairs, yank off one's boots and jumpers, put on the kettle, and think about making dinner. Clearly, I am joking about the dreadfulness of this lifestyle. I found it quite pleasing.

Up to date

Well my friends---
I have been writing. Mostly on long distance bus journeys. It is difficult for me to move my writing into publicly legible format, but I am trying!
          The next two posts are an effort to document the scenarios in which I've found myself the past many weeks, written quite awhile after the experiences. Since I have now shifted to a completely different country (and continent, depending on who you're talking to!) I better post these up before too much time has passed, and get on with the present! I tend to be a bit obscure in relation to my actual surroundings--the folks I meet and visit, the funny exchanges and burning images, the beds I sleep in. I'm attempting to give more emphasis to the relationships with people & place that fill the bulk of my days. The beautiful, noticed, taken-for-granted living breathing road.

Cheers!

the highway

Jai Jai Jai Jai Ganpathy Deva

Pure afternoon sun a blessing in this part of the world

Riding on the M8 out of Glasgow, Scotland.

Auric grasslands and towns

sight-seeking mountains, but there are just clouds,

scattered woods of small trees, violet hillocks, seagulls.

Eating dried Turkish apricots and listening

to an album of chants from Skanda Vale.

When Scott put it on my external drive, I thought:

I probably won't listen to that.

We left the ashram only a week ago.

I smile remembering the red-white stripe and spot on my forehead

ash and turmeric, they said. I sang a lot there, cross-legged

on the wooden floor, elevated by a couple

flat cushions. Sounding out new combinations of vowels.

Letting the mantras sway me. I do

miss it.

Landscape is changing now: stone castles perched on stone

outlooks. Sheep at pasture. Bird's nest chalices of twig in empty

beeches. Windmills. A clear November evening. No matter where I am

in the Western Hemisphere, this time of day and time of year--

I can feel it, smell it. It's the same in Port Townsend, Portland,

Portugal, Perth. Crackling leaves, wood smoke easing

out of chimneys, smell of dinner, cold hands

seeking pockets. Steps on the pavement. 

Street lights on, though the sky is

full of beautiful colors and

the moon is going to come out later.

Heading north to Aberdeen this fine evening,

peeling a grapefruit the exact same color as my corduroy trousers.

Kali Kapalini Durga Laxshmi Saraswati

I left my boots in Glasgow, for my friend's Swedish flatmate,

having bought a new pair at the Salvation Army

5 quid only. They may not be

as good with the rain. So far they seem

more comfortable. Cream suede with teal laces,

flat soles. Don't think I will get blisters. Traveling

moving through places—towns, villages, cities, pure

wildernesses. You see

all the lives that could be

Yours.

They are.

They are all

yours. And they will never be

yours. 

Motions

Aberystwyth to Birmingham train.

Wet dark evening. Glowing eyes of houses.

No home for me. Traveling across the country tonight.

Slide guitar in my earbuds (John Fahey//Railroad), distracting from gibbering male university students--cold war politics and film dissertations---which I have no care for but listen anyway, sitting a row behind them.

I am dressed in my pendelton hat with its garnish of cherry bark and feathers, poncho, roper cowboy boots, blue jeans. 

My rucksack sits on the bench across from me. I smile at it, pretending to converse: how are you finding the road today? 

Happy to sit on a warm bright train going by stations with weird Welsh names?

Well, I feel more self-sufficient than I do most days. Everything I need is in that backpack plus a bag of fruit and cheese and bread. Remember Mary Poppins pulling a lamp out of her handbag? I feel a bit like that.

        I was going to hitch to Aberystwyth, but Max's mum (name unknown) offered to drive me if we could go looking for a difficult-to-pronounce trailhead outside Tregaron. Driving in the countryside: white sheep, wet wind, ancient beech trees all fat and twirled, and hedges grown up like fortifications on either side of single lane roads. We acquired directions from two old men getting into an equally old landrover. In tweed and wellies we figured they'd know. We drove into the sticks for awhile, talking about waterfalls and the peninsula where I live. Hills to the east of us were high, shorn grass cut with rock walls and a few creeks and farm houses. It would be pretty to go walking in the Spring, I said. Meaning it with a slight regret. God knows if I'll ever see it again.

       We turned back for Aber, eyes on the clock, without reaching the terminus “....Left after the kiosk, right turn before the bridge...”.but figured out on the topo map where she would need to go next time. I spotted a hawk perched on a phone pole and pointed to it. She stopped the car, reversed with the hazards on and said “take a picture!”. White and gray/brown sort of dappled, turning its head about. High enough above us not to be bothered, close enough for us to see its eyes. It vaulted off grand and slow when another car approached and we had to negotiate who would pull forward on the one-lane curve.

        Though I was unsure about depending on Max's mum for a ride, she was a fine driver and quite sweet. Had a love of nature and pastoral life. I didn't foresee anything nicer hitching, and she drove me right to the station and gave me some pears from her garden. Little kindnesses.

The train came in 20 minutes late, everyone shuffling about on the orange-lit platform, buffered by chill winds and intercom announcements. I'm glad I didn't buy back-to-back tickets after all!

El tren: I'm going to the end of the line.

Why is it that we can make lovely friends in beautiful, hospitable places,

and leave them? And leave them again and again and again? 

I wander with this question in my heart.

Not everyone moves around like this, like I am doing. Three weeks gone by in such a flash; no doubt three months will feel the same. And then six, nine, thirteen.

While I'm sitting on this vacant train, a whole night of traveling before me, I am remembering the overnight journeys I have taken (airplanes excluded):

Santo Domingo  to the Pacific Coast, Ecuador----lush night air, red frindged curtains rattling through the magical night on an ancient crimson chariot, windows open, the long-awaited smell of the sea.

The Coast to Quito---when we had our pockets searched before getting on, and broke down on a country road in the middle of the night with the moon shining, and spent hours in different rest stops trying to find the missing part, and one place with hot food at 3am where we watched adorable raggedy dogs and the mujeres bathroom was done up like a pink plastic shrine. Then we drove the familiar cloud forest road, saw flames of a crash and the black jungle on all sides. Caught the sunrise coming down the hills in Quito so golden and profound.

Göreme to Trabzon,---11 hours from the holy outer-space rock lands of Cappadocia to the shining Karadeniz Black Sea. The first station we stopped at, Kayseri, I almost missed the bus going to the toilet. On and on, all the films dubbed over in Turkish, but they had some nice music too. Confused at rest stops in the middle of the night. There was a woman who looked like one of those ottoman women from old harem paintings. She didn't sleep on that bus either. At 6am we reached the sparkling coast highway, seeing hazelnut plantations and tea fields for the first time. Bought fresh warm simit (like sesame pretzel pastries) and ate them with the special relish of a sunrise after sleeplessness.

Batumi to Tbilisi and back: which was on a rumbling clanging train. We had beer and fatty salami and the compartments had bunks and sheets and pillows. I put a scarf over the light and it was even nicer then. Thick Georgian men stood in the corridor smoking out the windows, fresh nocturnal air sliding in, bumping along through the night. Our taciturn compartment-mate snored. Both times. Till gray terrifying Tbilisi. And then till sunny Batumi when we went back to Turkey.

Samsun to Istanbul: I may have actually slept on this bus, because what I remember is the slate dawn and how it took hours and hours from when we entered the city to get to the bus station.

Istanbul to Thessaloniki: Sad to leave Turkey after three months. A big bus hurtling through time and space. Met a very amusing Chinese marble trader who called himself “Kevin” and sat behind us chortling “hohohohoho!”. He shared about life in China and gave us the highly-quoted, accented phrase “In China, no have you-tube-eee. You know, you-tube-eee?”. Waiting at the border with Greeks, and then everyone went to the Duty Free store to buy alcohol, though it was 3am. Pink dawn, half asleep, looking out to see postcard coastal towns with empty stone streets or a few late-nighters going home.

As for my experience driving overnight, it's mostly been in the passenger seat in the wild deserts of Southern California and Arizona. Coyotes, moonshine, reservations, cacti, No Tire Basura signs glinting on the roadside. Catching an hour of sleep in reststops that hum with snoring semitrucks. A sunrise in the desert is an experience like no other. Grateful to say I've seen a fair few for a northwestern girl. Nothing prepares you for that color and clarity: the slow rainbow transformation of the sky. Nothing shelters you in open space.