learning – An Accidental Vagabond

A Long Pause and A New Return

Published on April 28, 2022April 28, 2022 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

A friend of mine had asked to interview me for her podcast. I was truly surprised. Why would anyone want to interview me? I haven’t done anything that anyone would want to listen to. Even so, I agreed, because I felt so honored to be asked. During the interview she asked me about where I was currently living (South Korea), and where was it that we had met (Prague); and what brought me to Prague (the death of my mother); and what sparked me to travel (an old high school nemesis and a best friend); all the jobs I’ve had in my life (too many to mention in that podcast); was I in love (yes, happily so); and how do I deal with grief (not very well).

If you want to hear the podcast click here A Colorful Life to listen to my interview and the interviews of other travelers who all intersect in one way or another through my friend, Keiko, the creator of the podcast.

I had a lot of fun doing the interview, but soon after we had finished and said good-bye, I began to feel nervous about it. I worried that I had sounded like an idiot. Who was I to talk about travel? There are so many more people out there who are professional travelers and who can offer advice, wisdom, and know how about traveling, and how to live a full and lush life. My insecurity came rushing in and swallowed me up like Carrie from De Palma’s Carrie when she wanted to go to the prom. “They’re all gonna laugh at you!” I hear Piper Laurie’s voice often in my head whenever I want to do anything artistic and put it out there.

Once my friend texted me that the interview had been uploaded to her podcast, I felt my nervousness rise. I couldn’t share it with my friends until I heard it. I had to judge for myself. Did I sound like an idiot, or pretentious? Was I obnoxious? My worst critic, me, was ready to tear me up. But, it was okay. It was okay. Someone out there will hate it. Some troll will write something terrible in a comment to her about me, yes, that could happen, but it’s okay, because my internal critic who can be so mean was okay with it. In Keiko’s introduction she said the kindest things about me. She called me an inspiration, and said that although I had talked about how much I had wanted to be an artists my whole life, that even though it did not manifest as I had imagined it would, I was an artist. I had made my life the canvas. I thought that was so kind and sweet, and a generous thing to say. I don’t if it’s true, but it is true for her. It is her perspective of me and my life, and I have never lied about my life. I don’t lie because what’s the need to lie? I only have my friends and they know the truths, so I’d be lying to them, and they’d call me out.

I’m in the midst of change. My fiancé and I have decided that this will be our last year in South Korea. I just finished a teaching contract and I am in between jobs. I’m burnt out on teaching and want to do something else. But what? I’ve been teaching in one form or another for over 10 years. Yet, with all those years under my belt I only have a TEFL and working experience, but it wouldn’t be enough to teach in the states. I’d need a teaching certificate or a masters, and that requires more time and money for a job I no longer enjoy. I’ve been feeling useless and worthless. My partner loves me, my friends love me, but I feel that this world, that the societies we live in have no use for someone like me. So, I was feeling low. Then my friend asked to interview me for her podcast. She said, I had inspired her not to give up when she was trying to make a move to South Korea. Other people have told me I inspired them. Inspired them to follow acting, inspired to become a writer, inspired to travel, inspired to create a new business. I’ve inspired people, and yet, I’ve never seen it in myself. So, I thought, maybe I should turn some of that inspiration inside out and shine that golden light on myself for a bit. I said, I wanted to be an artist. I said, I wanted to write. So write. Here’s a platform. I have some content. I haven’t been on the sight for some time, and I was never very good at updating, and I never knew how to gain an audience. I never bothered to learn. I was too nervous for people to see what I wrote because like the podcast I thought; what if I sound like an idiot? What if they hate me and say terrible things? What if they call me out for the fraud I am? Public humiliation and shame. The worst. Yet, is it the worst? I can think of worse things. Still, my fragile little ego is, was, and maybe will still be, frightened.

Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time for me to really try. To get this out there. To clean up all my mess of random forgotten blogs and try to make this work. Perhaps, some of what I write can inspire others to do things they’ve dreamed. I have try.

It will take time, and I have to learn somethings, but I’ll be back. I’ll get this little Accidental Vagabond on the road again. I still have some time left to learn.

The Travel Limbo

Published on February 19, 2016December 17, 2023 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

Funny thing about this post is that it was posted before I finished writing it. No title, no tags, not even a complete thought, and all kinds of editing mistakes, and it’s had more traffic than most of my posts. Go figure. This is the completed post with an ending and a new title- well an actual title.

A couple of days ago I had to contact both of the schools I had applied to (one in South Korea and the other in China) that I was not able to attend the upcoming school year. It wasn’t because I had changed my mind and things are falling into place here in Portland. Things are exactly as they have always been for me here in Portland; nice, but I’m not doing anything that gives me call to stay put. No, it’s all because of the parts of life that I can’t control. Visas. Well, not even my visa, because I haven’t been able to apply for my visas because I don’t have the documents. I’m waiting for my Criminal Background Check from the FBI and some health insurance so I can take the necessary health test that China requires. In a funny way they’re both kind of silly things to have to wait around for. Oh, I get it, I’m going to work with children and obviously people want their children to be safe, but it is only required that I have an FBI check from the United States, a country in which I have not lived for the past two years. So, of course my record is clean, but all those crimes I committed in Europe are not even on the radar. I didn’t commit any crimes in Europe, I’m not that exciting. Czech Republic had a funny visa rule too. If I had come directly from the United States, I had no need to do a criminal background check from the U.S., but since I came from China, I had to get a criminal background check from China. So, again, I could be a criminal from the U.S., but not in China or any other country I had been living in for six months or longer. In a weird way, China of all places is easier in that sense then the Czech Republic because I just have to wait for the FBI, but to get a background check from China- is absolutely impossible. I mean, the Chinese people at the police station tell you, “Not Possible.” A fairly typical response in all areas of requesting necessary information for any kind of government paperwork.

The FBI’s been backed up. Seems that many people are trying to leave the country, and get jobs that require Federal Background checks. What in the past took 10 to 12 weeks has now been pushed back to 12 to 15 weeks. Three months has now turned to 4 months. This is difficult for an impulsive person like myself. It’s kind of like China, “not possible” to plan a trip in less than three months. Now I’m wondering what to do with my time and how much time I have here actually.

Now what? Well, it’s waiting time. Once the background check comes in then I can reapply for jobs and I’ll see from there. In the meantime, I’ll need to look for some work. A part-time noncommittal job in a city where it is difficult to find work in unless, of course, I was in the tech industry. It certainly gives me more time to research travel blogs. In a brief update, I’ve gone through 23 of 42 blogs, and really only managed to cut out two blogs. I have put them into categories, but I’ve slowed down in my research, which is totally my style.

Update: I finally got on the Oregon Health Care plan which means I can get the health check I need for the Chinese visa application.

The Trouble with Me in China, and Why I’m Returning

Published on November 27, 2015February 28, 2024 by An Accidental Vagabond2 Comments

It has been about two months that I have been back in the U.S. If things work out I will be back in China by February. I have all the necessary trepidations collected and percolating in my brain preparing for all the appropriate anxieties of “what ifs” and the “I don’t knows”. I feel quite prepared in that capacity. Some people, my friends who know me well, may wonder why I’m returning to China when I had expressed such a deep hatred for the place. The public, like my youtube channel and this blog space or even my Facebook, didn’t know I had such a hatred for the place, but I’m laying it all-out-on the line here people; I hated it. I think it is difficult to be truly honest about your feelings on social media and in a public forum because there is/can be so much backlash to everything you write. Honestly, I think it is okay to hate a place. The important part is to understand why you hate it and then to figure out if it is a fair reason to hate it, and if it is really something about yourself and your preconceived ideas that make you hate it, and again, is that a fair assessment. You know the: “It’s not the place it’s you,” effect. ETC…

I didn’t feel the need to express my true feelings to the great big world because it was too early. It took me a full year away from China to appreciate China, but while I was there it was difficult. It was difficult because I had culture shock. Part of the shock had to do with the experience of being, to sound cliche, the stranger in a strange land or to be more succinct, “the other”. It was difficult because I wasn’t used to being the only one that looked like me. I grew up in a white town with white people. America is a society that caters to white people even though America doesn’t want to admit it, it’s true. White people are everywhere; in the movies; in the magazines; on the news; everywhere. It’s so white when you’re white you don’t even know what it feels like to not belong even when you’re a misfit and you don’t belong- that is if you live in a white society. I also spent 13 years in Portland, Oregon, and Portland during the time I was there was voted one of the whitest cities in the United States. My point is, is that when you are the majority you don’t notice it even when you feel lonely and out of place, and yes, even when you feel cheated and misrepresented. You might think you don’t get any of the benefits of the majority because you are on the bottom of the heap of the majority, but you still pass as the majority and that passing is bigger than you think. Bascially, you don’t have to think about being white you just are a person (that by the way is part of what people mean by privilege: you are a person not a person with a skin color other than white). I had never thought of myself in the sense of “otherness.” Often I had felt like I didn’t always connect or fit-in with white America or even the American Dream because of what I felt internally (sometimes based on my experiences as a woman and as being raised poor and on welfare), but that is not the same as being “the other”. Then I moved to a place where I was the minority. Then I knew. No, to know is too strong a verb, you don’t know, I became sensitive to it; to skin color, to color and to race.

I’m not going to get into the conversation of racism in China versus racism in America or express some kind of kindred “I understand discrimination” because woes me I was a poor lonely white woman in China. Being white in China is exponentially different from being black (or latino, or native American…) in America, for one thing, a black person in America is an American (which I think some people have seemed to have gotten confused) while a white person in China is an American too (even when you are not) but you are also 100% not Chinese and nor will you ever be Chinese. The experience of white male versus the white female are different too and I’m not writing here to expose the great secret of the white man’s success with Chinese women, as well as there are many different nationalities and races of people who live in China and experience their own kind of foreigner experience. My point is to express the feeling of being a minority when you come from a world where you were the majority (even if not in actual numbers, but in power of a social system) and what that felt like to me and how it contributed to my experience of culture shock. My heightened sense of sensitivity and growing awareness and openness to listening to the words of American people of color (and new immigrants) is just a positive (I think positive) by-product of my experience, but it can never compare to what it feels like to grow up feeling like “the other” in a country that is supposed to be your home. When I use the word minority as applied to me in China I mean a minority by the definition of small in numbers: As in smaller less seen, and therefore standing out; not invisible; and a bit like a zoo animal. In my ignorance I had thought I would like the attention. As if I’d be like a movie star. But, I didn’t like the attention, and the attention wasn’t like being a movie star it was more like being a freak. Now, I’m just writing about the negative culture shock moments to build toward the positive ending in this post so hold your possible anger and go along with it…

The stares, Jim! The stares!

It was disconcerting. At first I tried to smile at people who stared hard at me, and occasionally someone would smile back, but most often a smile would only make the stare harder. I, of course, didn’t and couldn’t know what people were really thinking, but to me it was that I did not belong there. Not that people were going to push me out, but just that I was not a part of the community, and I could not blend in. I was noticeable everywhere I went. Some people wanted to take my picture, some people just wanted to stare at me, and children pointed and screamed. They didn’t scream in terror, I mean they screamed in delight, It was like: “MOMMY! LOOK AT THE CLOWN, MOMMY!” And, that was what got to me. Of course it was charming when a large group of school girls walked by and yelled out in english, “I love you!” But it wasn’t charming when a group of men would circle me and examined me like I was something to purchase, and yes that happened too. I will hands down admit I was not good at handling the attention, but I am also grateful because for the first time it made me feel, really feel (minus the violence) what it is to be a minority, and to be looked at for your skin, your eyes, your hair. Even though people thought I was beautiful or exotic it still made me uncomfortable because I was being examined. I have a rather extreme example of what I mean by examined: Once, I had to pee in a public restroom at the train station, and this bathroom was like a trough. It was open stalls where you would squat over this narrow little trench with the piss and shit running like two little rivers as if you were a giant straddling the land and defecating into the canyon below. I felt uncomfortable, not only because I sucked at the squat and because all this human feces was so close to me, but because there were no stalls, and I knew, I just knew someone was going to try to look at my vagina as I peed. How did I know this? because I had already been examined in a public shower before, not by everyone of course, but it only takes one person feeling completely fine examining you to make you feel awkward; but I had to pee. Most women walked by not caring, but then it happened. She saw me squatting, and she slowed down and tried to take a peek, but my attempt to gracelessly hide myself while simultaneously not pee on my feet or slip into the river of stench did register to her that she was violating my privacy, and dropped her head and quickly walked away, but the very fact that she would have felt okay trying to do it in the first place is what I mean about being examined.

At the school where I taught, huge groups of new potential students were touring the classrooms. There were hundreds of students. It was near the end of my year in China and I had already been accustomed to people being excited or surprised to see my skin and my hair, and my very American looking face. As I saw the large group of students walking towards the windows of my classroom where I was teaching, I could see some of the eyes of the kids light up as they saw me, and I knew it would be a matter of minutes till the cameras came out. I moved down off the podium as I was talking and into the thick of my class, as I did so the cameras began flashing. Many of the visiting students had pressed themselves up against the window to get a good shot. My own students, who looked at me like I was old news, and had had plenty of exposure to foreigners, gasped at the disruption, and a couple of the girls screamed in that very teenaged annoyed way, “Oh MY GOD!” And, some Chinese expletives were yelled as well. A few of them ran to the windows to lower the blinds.

“It’s like they think we’re animals in a zoo!” One of my students yelled.

I loved my students, even the students that would frustrate me. I wish I could have given them more. One day some of my students were telling me that if I went to a certain historical place, on a public holiday, I would be mobbed by the crowed because I was a foreigner, and a lot of villagers go there, and they may never have seen a white person or any foreigner before. So I said, “I’ll wear a hat and cover my hair”. My student shook her head, no. “I’ll wear a hat and sunglasses to cover my eyes”. My student shook her head, no. “I’ll wear a hat, and glasses, and a scarf around my face, and I’ll wear long sleeves and gloves to cover my skin”. “No,” my student said, “You’ll never be able to hide that nose.” (For those of you who don’t know Chinese people think foreigners have big noses. Some do.) It was difficult to be the only one who looked like me, but then there was the language too. Not only couldn’t I blend in because of my physical appearance, I also couldn’t communicate. I was surrounded by millions (literally millions) of people, and I was isolated. This was hard for me. This was just the beginning of the culture shock, then there was the actual culture- so different yet sometimes eerily familiar to my own; and then the pollution which was like the apocalypse (no joke); and the construction; and the population; and how education is conducted; and business is run; and the the shitty hierarchy of the work place for Chinese people; and so many nuanced things. And then, there was my mother’s death.

I sometimes think if my mom had not died, suddenly while I was in China, that I may have gotten past the culture shock phase, but because she did die, I was thrown into a despair that I couldn’t grasp, and with no close friends to turn to, friends who knew my relationship with my mother, and I felt lost. I felt an isolation I had never experienced before, an isolation that changed me, permanently. There were other things too: stress at school, and friendship loneliness, and just basic life stresses. When I was about to leave China I couldn’t get away fast enough. I thought to myself I fucking hate this country and I’ll never return, but I was lying to myself. I just didn’t know it.

It took me almost a full year away from China to finally appreciate it, and that appreciation first came through food and e-mails from a friend. I missed Chinese food. You can’t get Chinese food anywhere in the world other than China. That food you’re eating that you think is Chinese is nothing; it’s crap. Go to China, eat the food, you’ll find the food gods. It’s that good. Sure there’s crazy stuff like bird heads and tongues and testicles and yes some places still eat dogs and cats, and you’ll probably eat a rat thinking it’s chicken, but you don’t have to eat those things (if you know what you’re eating), there is so much to choose from so many amazing noodles, and spices, and broths, and vegetables…food ecstasy. The spices! Oh, the spices! Then there were my friends. The Chinese friends I had made who missed me and sent me e-mails hoping to not lose touch, and hoping that I would return to visit them again one day. And my foreign friends that stayed or returned and still sent messages and shared stories “of crazy life in China”. In all that isolation and loneliness and cultural shock I had made friends. Foreigner friends and Chinese friends. Good friends. I missed my students (who I will most likely never see again). Then there was Xi’an.

I lived in Zhengzhou. I can say, still, today as I write this, I didn’t like Zhengzhou. It wasn’t my kind of city, and the pollution was too much, and the construction was too much, and it wasn’t culturally interesting to me. I think maybe you have to be Chinese to appreciate the city, or maybe not, I don’t know why foreigners like it there, you’d have to ask them, it wasn’t the right place for me. If I had only spent my time in Zhengzhou which is where I spent most of my time, I may not have ever wanted to return to China, but I went to Kaifeng, Luoyang, and to Xi’an. All those places were just as polluted as Zhengzhou (don’t underestimate this pollution. It’s bad the world should care) but the beauty of the other cities and their cultural heritage helped me to overlook the pollution (to an extent). They were filled with history and were so exciting for me to visit. Then there was Xi’an. I had wanted to go to Xi’an since I was a little girl. Xi’an was one of my “before I die” places. I loved the city, and it was my last impression of China. China that is so huge and vast that I merely stuck my toe in the ocean of it. This last impression reminded me that I had wanted to visit China for a long time and there was so much to see and experience.

I am returning to China. This time to Beijing, and this time for the job not just China. My strongest interest is in the job. I’m not going to try to conquer China, to go back and say: “Yes! This time I made it!” I’m going because there is an opportunity for me, and also because there is so much more to see in China than Zhengzhou. I will be on the coast. In a new province. In the city of the last Dynasty. And, I’ve been to China, and I have a better idea of what to expect. It may be more difficult. I don’t know, but I’m not blinded by magazine articles and illusions of ‘What is China.” I find a humor now in the things that caused me stress. Not that I’m into people examining me peeing, but I also know that is not an everyday occurrence, and I’m mentally prepared unlike I was before. Plus, being able to tell a story about someone trying to watch you pee because you know they’re wondering if a white woman’s pee or vagina is the same as their own can be a pretty funny story to tell— afterwards, long afterwards. Beijing will be more crowded, and more polluted, but I won’t be arriving this time like a wide eyed idiot with the innocent thinking, “oh, it’ll be like I’m a movie star.” That was just a stupid thing to think. There are just somethings you can not know without experiencing them. I’ve experienced China once in one small part. This time I hope to do better. To feel better. To leave thinking, “Oh, I could visit again.”

Mental Preparations for the Next Journeys.

Published on July 26, 2015February 28, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

My life on the road is winding down. I’ve been away from America for nearly two years now. I had only returned for a short trip last year when my mom died, and let’s face it, that wasn’t a visit. I always think about how if I had only known that that one day in August of 2013 was going to be the last time I’d see my mother alive that I would have hugged her tighter, kissed her, told her over and over again how much I loved her. If I had known she was going to die I never would have left. It had been my fear since I was a child that my mother would die when I was far away from her. China couldn’t have been farther away.

Now that August is nearly here, and my time is rapidly moving toward my year anniversary of being in Europe things are again coming to an end. Last week my work visa finished and I am no longer legal to work in the Czech Republic. I have moved from working visa back to a tourist visa allowing to remain for three months in the Schengen before I have to return to the U.S.

So what to do for the remaining two months? Well, it’s of course difficult to live for two months without making any money. Anyone whose worked for Czech wages knows that you don’t exactly make a ton of money in Prague. So it’s off to Poland for two weeks as a volunteer teacher and then the week following that it’s back to the Czech Republic for one final gig and then it’s nothing but wandering time. Since I will be on the East side of the Czech Republic I thought that I would explore a little of the Southern part of the country and eventually end up in the beautiful little Cesky Krumluv. I’m really wanting some lakes or even better- the ocean. Perhaps I can squeeze in a trip to Croatia or Slovenia before I leave, but I’m not sure where I’ll be able to get to. I’ll have to just take it one day at a time.

It makes me a little nervous taking it day to day during the height of the tourist season, but I’m a little nervous all the time. That’s anxiety for you- a real buzz kill. Still, even with the anxiousness I’m moving forward in some kind of direction.

There’s so much catching up to do with this blog. Filling in the missing pieces of the past two years, but I’ve nothing but time at this point.

On to the final months in Europe.

The Interactive Arts exhibit in Melbourne NVG

Published on May 27, 2015March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

I’m sitting in a cafe in Prague as I write this post about an exhibit that took place over a year ago. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, when my mother died last year, I really felt like it didn’t matter whether or not I posted anything here about my trips. Especially my trip to Australia. This is because three days after I returned back to China my mom was found dead in her apartment, and I felt so angry with myself for not being there with her, or at the very least sending her that e-mail I had promised. The e-mail that would have told her all about my trip. I didn’t want to talk about the trip because I was so mad at myself for going. The truth is I had a great time in Australia, and I was really happy there and if my mom had lived, I would still have been happy with the memories. I would have told her all about it.

This blog is no substitute for sending an e-mail to my mother, but I feel a little melancholy with the idea that all my life experiences will just fade into obscurity when I die. I mean they could be lost in the obscurity of the web, but I’m okay with that because the illusion that I’m sharing something of my life makes me feel like I’m a part of the story. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I’m still working out this whole “what to do with my one life” thing. I think of Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day, and I wonder, yes, what am I supposed to do with this life other than love being a part of it. What am I supposed to do? Is it greedy to want more? Is it too much to request that I experience the best of this world and die with that? I hope not. So why hold back on sharing the stories even if obscurity is the future.

If I had to be asked what I liked more Sydney or Melbourne, I’d have to pick Melbourne. I know they’re kind of rival cities, and I know that there are arguments for liking Sydney more, but the best way I can say it is that Melbourne was more my speed. Sydney has better beaches, but Melbourne had something special. A vitality, and an energy like something was being created. Sydney had that suit feel: All business and then some expensive partying at night. Everyone is beautiful, successful, and making money. I understand that this appeals to people, but it’s not my thing. I like real spontaneity and spark. I like the idea that things are not finished yet and its all still a grand work in progress. A place where you can take risks because failing is only part of the process. I don’t think this risk taking and allowance for failure is in Sydney so much because it already has the image to upkeep and when image becomes more important than process, I think it gets a little boring. But, what do I know, I was only there for a week.

While I was in Melbourne there was an interesting exhibit going on at the National and International Art galleries of Victoria. I really enjoyed the National Gallery (NGV) because it was all Australian artists and all interactive. There was work from artists all over the country including Aboriginal art.

And, since it was interactive you could literally walk on some of the pieces, in fact, you were invited to.

In the International Gallery you had famous pieces from artists like Warhol and Lee Krasner. I was excited to see an original Krasner piece since a lot of her work has been overshadowed by her husband Jackson Pollock (mainly by her own choice since she wanted to foster him as an artists).

So much time has passed since I went to this exhibit, that I have lost the names of the artists. I have them somewhere in a journal hidden under piles of clothes in un packed suitcases. This is how I’ve been living for almost two years, unpacked and uncertain but moving, moving, moving- on. As soon as I find the names I will update this post.

I think some of my favorite work was the video work and of course the photography. I’m a huge fan of the film genre- moving and still.

I’m not the kind of person that can really tell you what’s happening in a painting. I lack the vocabulary, but something about the medium of film really speaks to me even some of the most abstract work.

I don’t know how long my friend and I stayed in the gallery, but it was an almost all day event. I think we did both the National and International one in the same day. It was well worth it. There were many pieces I didn’t take pictures of because I’m not really big on taking pictures of art. It isn’t a motto, it’s just that I forget because I’m more interested in just looking at it, and I rarely feel like I capture it well in a photo.

The final photo below is from an alleyway near the gallery. Melbourne has some of the most amazing and creative street art that I’ve ever seen. I took this picture while we were planning our next activity.

It is interesting how little of my trip remains in my memory especially since I had enjoyed it so much. I assume it has to do with my mother. I lost some of my joy. I think my mom would be sad to know that I had lost some of my joy because of her, but to her I would say, “what do you expect woman? I love you and you’re gone.” Still, I should reach back for some of those memories and those joys. I had never thought I would ever go to Australia. It had seemed so far away, and since I never have any money I had thought, I’ll never be able to go, but I was there. And, now I’m here in Prague writing about being in Australia. It’s ungracious to not revel in the memories of a joyful time of travel. It is ungracious to me and to my mother. So, a year after her death, I can say, “Mom, I had a really good time, and I’d like to have more.” I’d like to tell her all about it, but I’ll just have to settle with the ubiquity of the web.

So more tales from the travels of the past, as the travels of the future are dreamed about in the travels of the present. To the open road. No one can express the joy of travel more than Whitman.

You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

Song of The Open Road, Walt Whitman

2014; The End of an Amazing Year a.k.a My Year of Grieving

Published on January 1, 2015March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

At the time of writing this post there are six hours left until the New Year begins; for me that is. My friends in Australia and New Zealand have already seen the date change.

I think that if it were not for one event in my life, and a major event it was, I would chalk up 2014 to being challenging, but pretty thrilling, and damn- for lack of a better adjective: interesting. But, there was the main event that just broke my heart in a so-far-irreparable way: my heart was shattered. No one wants their parents to die (almost no one) and no one wants to know that that precious parent was found dead alone on a bedroom floor, and no one wants to know that that parent died of a drug overdose; prescription or otherwise. Yet, at the end of the year no matter how that loved one died, death is death. That life is over and you just have to let it go, and keep living.

In all honesty, I haven’t really dealt with it too much. When the thoughts of my mother rise, my brain goes into emergency mode: “You can’t think about it. Don’t think about it. You are not in a safe place. There is no passage here. Avoid it. Avoid those thoughts!” And so I mostly do.

Well, this is the New Year. I’m in Prague and the snow has fallen. Time is ticking and my year is nearly over- not that life is really gauged in years, but it’s a great way to write out a list.

2014

New Year’s Eve in Zhengzhou, China. The night starts out at Maddie’s with Bobby. We have too many drinks and go to Muse, a little smoky dance club next to Maddie’s apartment. Maddie leaves at a reasonable hour, but Bobby and I stay the whole night, have to climb stairs in the morning, and we wake up on Maddie’s couch. Bobby is covered in Gummie Bears. He fell asleep on them.

January
I travel to Ho Chi Minh City and meet a new friend who I had been communicating with via Facebook. We were on similar journeys. Took a trip on the Mekong River: One of my favorite moments in Vietnam.
Met up with a dear friend in Australia. We met new and great people in Sydney and Melbourne.

February
The 13th read a message from my mother. She was excited to hear about my trips to Vietnam and Australia. I wrote her back saying I would write on the 16th.
14th back in Zhengzhou.
16th forgot to send an e-mail to mom.
19th around 10:00 p.m. in Chico, California: Mom dies.
20th around 2:00 p.m. after school, Zhengzhou, China: Get a strange message to contact one of mom’s friend’s. Skype to find out my mother died.
21st Fly to San Francisco, CA. Stay a night with a friend before another, my best childhood friend, Rachelle, comes to pick me up and drive me to Paradise, California.
22nd another of my best friends, Rosi, comes from Seattle to help me with mom’s funeral arrangements.
23-24 We pick up mom’s things from the police. Have her cremated. I don’t see her body (not sure if this was good or bad since I haven’t seen her since August of 2013). We clean her apartment with mom’s best girlfriends. She had really loving girlfriends just like I do.
25th- My birthday begins with cleaning mom’s apartment: she had so much shit. A regular little horder. My best friend Rosi and my mom’s friends kick me out of the apartment. Rosi says, “what do you want for your birthday?” I say, “I want to go to the psychic, Madame Ruby, who lives across the street.” I’d seen her neon palm in the window since I was a little kid.
Rosi leaves, and Sara N. comes from Portland. We pick up mom’s ashes and Rachelle and her husband drive us to Eureka to spread mom’s ashes. My only knowledge of the place is that it was her only place of positive childhood memories. We spend the night in Eureka and then drive to Trinadad. We hike up the mountain and throw some of her ashes into the wind above a dramatic pacific ocean. I don’t know what she would want. She didn’t plan on dying so soon. Some things are hard to plan.
Dad comes to visit and drives me around Chico to the places where mom and him met and the first place they lived.
I give some of mom’s ashes to her girlfriends, and put a few ashes in Chinese stacking dolls for me.

March-July
One last night in San Francisco before returning to Zhengzhou, China
Shao Boa, and Xiang Kia take me to Hua Shen, and we hike one of the most dangerous mountains in China. I toss some of mom’s ashes off of the sacred mountain. Now that she’s dead she can travel.

Apple takes me to Luoyang and we visit the Longmen Grottoes and hike in a gorge outside of the city after being stuck in what may have been the craziest country Chinese traffic jam ever.
School ends.

My students take me to Kaifeng for a three day trip. Me and five 16 year olds on e-bikes.

CIMG5291 — Kaifeng with some of my students

July- August
I work at a new school.
Trip to Xi’an and meet a new friend: Leslie a fabulous scientist! See one of my childhood dream sites: The Terracotta Army.

August
Leave China.
One day and night in Seoul, Korea.

Arrive in Prague, CZ.

September
TEFL training and certificate.
Visit Viktoria in Switzerland.

October
Go to Cesky Krumluv and Ceske Budejovice
Can’t decide if I want to stay in Prague

November
Decide to stay. Begin visa process
Go to Poland for Angloville- 5 days

Go to Berlin for Visa application- 3 days meet another amazing woman.
Back to Prague and begin new job
Go to Brno, CZ for first teaching job

December
Malacky, Slovakia for work.
Trenčianske Stankovce, Slovakia for work.

CIMG7721 — Trenčianske Stankovce, Slovakia

Poland for Christmas.
Prague for New Year’s.

CIMG7822 — Snow on the Zizkov tower babies

The End of 2014

Musings From Ceske Budejovice

Published on November 22, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

Taken from a journal entry: October 10th, 2014

It’s a Friday, and I am in Ceske Budejovice- a city whose name I can not yet pronounce. I am sitting in the city square, drinking a cappuccino, and waiting for Carol and her boyfriend Lukas to arrive.

Carol was with me at the language house. She was one of the few students that had not planned to stay in Prague for work. Ceske Budejovice was home for her. It had only been a week since the course had ended, but it felt as if a month had passed since I had seen Carol. They had driven to Cesky Krumluv and picked me up and drove me into CB and left me at a place I had found on Couchsurfing. That morning we agreed to meet in the square.

I had ordered the cappuccino before finding a place to sit where I felt I could be seen. I had asked for the coffee in Czech, Dom si cappuccino prosim, but when she asked me a question I responded in Chinese.

“Shi…I mean…ano…ano”

I know a little of each language of each place I have lived or visited, but never enough to converse and in each new place I seem to regurgitate the wrong language. I can only ever order and thank.

The central clock tower chimes and it sounds like a children’s rhyme. It is eerie like the music from a horror film.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star
how I wonder what you are
up above the world so high
like a diamond in-“

I wait for the rest, but it never comes it only repeats:

“Twinkle, twinkle…up
above the world so high
like a diamond in-“

And the music hangs onto nothingness.

I am having many memories, not nostalgia, but distant memories moving like a train of dreams. I try to capture one and place it onto the paper, but they are too fast, too fleeting and they escape my ink. They are not meant to be permanent at this moment.

I’ve been traveling for three days, yet it feels like I have been gone from Prague for years. This is only a weekend holiday, but I haven’t worked for two months so do I really have any holidays? I must express with absolute honesty I love the freedom of time that not working gives me. I am free and belong to none. There has been work, personal work: getting the TEFl, finding places to stay and to live, writing (the only work I really want) and finding me. This is valuable work that comes with no income, but it is important that I recognize that it is work. I must remember that living fully is part of the work because in the past I did not see this. I had listened to the words of the narrow minded world. You are lazy. You are wasting your life. You do nothing. What do you do for a living? For a living; what an odd question. Am I really wasting my life sitting here in a square waiting for a friend to arrive? It is true, I can be in a cubical waiting to earn money, to buy myself something that makes me feel valuable, but is that living? It doesn’t matter living is living is living is life.

But, I will need money soon. I don’t worry. I’ll find it, I know this.

A spider walks on my finger. He raises his abdomen, and I can see his web leave his body and attach between my finger tips. He has decided to make my hand his home. I spread my fingers apart and allow him to crawl his tightrope from my first finger to my middle finger. I gently shake my hand, it is an accident, but he falls. His web supports his decent as he belays to the ground. My fingers move to much for him to call them home.

He is living too.

Traveling Does Not Erase the Loss You Feel, But it Sure is Beautiful

Published on October 13, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental Vagabond1 Comment

Today, I randomly opened my book Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and read a quote that seemed to answer a common request I’ve had of late.

Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you,
you must travel it for yourself.

The quote is from his poem, “Song of Myself”. An ex-boyfriend gave me the book nearly ten years ago, and his reason was specifically for me to read “Song of Myself”. It took me a couple of years after he had given it to me for me to read it. When I finally did, I couldn’t remember a poem moving me so greatly and causing me to pause with such huge sighs of awe. How could this man from the 1800’s know how I was feeling today? It is a poem of self empowerment, and a testament to the wonder of life, and what potential we all have, and it is more.

I had grabbed a few books with me on my journey to China. I’ve already left a couple behind when I came to Prague, and I will most likely leave the rest behind, but Leaves of Grass will travel with me. Walt Whitman speaks to all my life longings perfectly as if he had taken words from my own mouth, my own dreams. He answers my questions and soothes my anxieties as if he is here listening to me speak and cry out, but this is impossible because he had these thoughts, these ideas, these wonderments before my existence. Even so, I feel he speaks to me as if we were alive in the same time. Would we be kindred spirits? I like to believe that we would.

This journey, as wonderful as it is, and as grateful as I am to experience it, has been hard. As I look back on my life, I think in most moments I have thought things were almost always hard, and part of this is because there is something wrong with my brain. This is true, it is called depression, and it can cloud even the most amazing experiences. I’m fairly certain it is hereditary based on some of the behaviors and actions of people in my family. I’ve struggled with it since I was a teenager, and at periods of my life it had been pretty bad, coming with its wonderful array of self-loathing and suicidal thoughts- it’s truly a joy to have around. There have been periods when I was able to keep it under control through meditation, yoga, and other forms of exercise. It can sometimes be an extra challenge to the normal challenges of life, like a layer cake of challenge. This year is a great challenge: living in foreign countries, loosing my mom, struggling with the monsters called bureaucracy and soon to be dealing with the issue of no money, and plus this little brain thing. I’m beginning to wonder if I can handle all this shit. My life in the now is rarely happy. It is only in the past that places and experiences look better or they create longing. This is a thinking pattern that really bothers me, but I have yet to change it. There is one particular moment of time where I feel real contentment and peace, and it does involve traveling, but I’ll save it for the next post. I often feel bad about feeling bad, like I’m ungrateful or filled with self pity and misery and I don’t deserve to have these experiences- they should go to people who have a greater appreciation for the adventures of travel. The kind of people you see in photographs.

I had wondered before coming to Prague if it was really the right decision. If I had the strength to make it through the course, if I have the strength to make it through this process of trying to find work to get the visa to deal with the bureaucracies. I also wonder what I’m doing it for. If it is all so hard in the moment then why bother? Why not just go back? At this moment I can’t answer these questions. I kept hoping I would get a sign, something to tell me I am on the right path, that I’m actually on a path and not just flailing about lost in a forest that I don’t even know I’m in because all I see are the trees.

This year (who am I kidding I’ve done this multiple times) has made me throw imaginary arms into the air and cry out, “I give up. I can’t do this can somebody please do this for me? Can somebody else live my life?” But, no, no-one can. Like Whitman said, “no one can travel that road for you, you must travel it yourself.”

All I see are the trees.

It is not far, it is within reach,
perhaps you have always been on it since you were born and did not
know,
perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

A few days ago, for the first time, I had felt the prickling of missing China. It was small like I mentioned- a prick. I had wondered if I would miss it. If missing it had been too buried under my culture shock, my mother’s death, the pollution. I was kindly relieved to feel this small feeling of missing this place. It gave me some kind of hope that it wasn’t a mistake that I did learn something there and that over time I will grow from it. Time is never what we think it should be. We don’t heal or grow like we are told we should. We don’t become wise just because we grow older and we don’t get happiness just because we followed the rules. It is never what we expect. I had read Siddhartha while I was in China, and I had asked myself, and I still ask myself, will I ever see my life as Siddhartha saw his; that each experience was purposeful, and carried meaning? Will that self-reflection of one’s own journey- my own journey; will it be seen? Will I see the forest and the mountains, the land and the sea? Siddhartha is a little over a hundred pages, but years had passed in the story. Time is never like a book or a movie. Patience. That is the only word I can really say to myself in this moment. Patience, and perspective, and don’t panic, after all it’s just life, and mine isn’t so bad even with depression.

I know I am not alone in these thoughts. I also know I am not alone in feeling bad of feeling bad about being in a foreign place. After all don’t people dream about traveling? Don’t people wish they could pack it all up and start a new life in an exotic place? But, dreams are not realities, and nothing can be how you expect it especially if you’re bringing yourself along, and maybe yourself has some extra baggage. So, this is my final thought on the matter of someone else doing this whole life thing for me or maybe for you if you ever feel similar. No one can travel the road I’m on as no one can travel the road you are on. I know we are not traveling together, but with all these roads we must be crossing paths. So, with the baggage we carry, the pieces we were born with and the pieces that we’ve accumulated, I hope, that when all the roads converge, we’ll be able to drop our bags and converse before traveling on our own roads, but with our hands free.

Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of light and every
moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me,
shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

CIMG5921 — The Burial Tomb of Emperor Qin. Legend is that it is protected by a lake of mercury. Scientists have tested the hill and have found extremely high levels of mercury. It will be many years before the story is told.

Night Clubs, Russian Disco Dancers, and Hot Pot After Midnight in Zhengzhou, China

Published on May 3, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

I had been warned to never eat hot pot from a street tent. At the moment that I was picking out what bit of food on a stick to put in my boiling bowl of soup, I didn’t really think about the warning or even what ‘hot pot in a street tent’ meant. It wasn’t until I was on the bus heading home at 7:00 in the morning, after a ridiculously late evening out, that I remembered that I was warned.

The bus gently rocked and lulled me toward sleep. I had a thirty minute bus ride to get home. I stared at the few Chinese denizens sitting on the bus. A man was asleep in the far back corner. His head was slumped over his right shoulder. It hung like a loose button on a thin thread, and I wondered if a jolt of the bus would break his neck. I wondered if he stayed out to late too. It was a Sunday morning, not a work day. What were these people doing on the bus? Shouldn’t they be busying themselves at home? Shouldn’t they be just waking up? I still haven’t grasped China. I’m not clear if it is really a five day work week or if people are working on the weekends. Some do. I was trying to justify why I was so wrecked on this bus at 7:00 in the morning. Trying to find some partners in irresponsible crime. I was concerned about being judged. Which shouldn’t matter, but I’m always stared at and examined. I didn’t want to join the ranks of drunken irresponsible westerner, but like I said, it didn’t matter what anyone thought. My life was only temporarily passing through this place. Temporarily passing through many places it seems.

I ate the hot pot from the street tent. I realized this while my thoughts were on the strangers on the bus. It is because of the gutter oil. The oil that people dredge from the gutters and reuse in order to save money. I figured I would be sick later. I’m sick often after the street food. It can be anything. It took a few months before my stomach toughened up some. I can’t figure out if it’s my age or the food. Maybe, a combination of both.

I don’t go out much. I’ve turned into a sort of hermit a kind of recluse. It could be culture shock, but I know it’s a combination of many, many things. Things not worth writing about yet. The nights out are rare, but they always end the same- It begins with drinks at one place, and then a move to another place to have too many drinks and then to a club. Drinks are bought together because you can’t have a table unless you buy the bottle or a rack of beers. The crowd is mixed- Chinese, Americans, Mexicans, Arabs, Africans, English, Russians- mostly young, but sometimes there is a range in ages. After a bottle is bought (usually Red Label Whiskey) and the worst sweet tea mixer ever designed, the dancing starts. Dancing on spinning dance floors, raised dance floors, floors that have hydraulics- the works. At times I think the Chinese are absolutely crazy. There seems to be so little concern for personal safety. I’m aware that I grew up in a world of hyper-saftey concerns sometimes over the top, but I was raised in the 70’s and 80’s so I did experience pre-seatbelts and all of that, and I did live in Germany where there is a kind of ‘go at your own risk’ type of safety concern. I really liked Germany’s take on it. It allowed you to take personal responsibility for your own actions, yet you still could take a risk if you wanted because it’s your life, but you better be aware of the consequences. I liked that. I’d say maybe China is like that, but then again it seems like there is no idea of consequences. As if people go about their day never even thinking that anything bad could possibly happen to them even if they are driving on their e-bike at night with no lights driving the wrong way on a one way street while reading a text message. What could possibly happen? There’s never any helmets worn and people drive on the wrong side of the road, never give right of way cut people off. I’ve seen children as young as four standing on the shoulders of the front seat of the car with their heads out of the sun roof. This lack of safety concern is in everything. The way buildings are built, pavements are laid, toys are made, how a person crosses the street. The dance floors reflect this nutty wildness. It seems to me like the worst idea in the world to create a dance floor that spins in a club where people are drunk. I don’t know why we don’t see more Chinese people in extreme sports because they seem fearless.

The clubs and bars are smokey like America in the early 90’s. It can be hard to breath especially when dancing on the stage. It isn’t really a stage, but more like a runway raised four feet from the floor, and made of metal. I love to dance, but I find it difficult to get into the dance scene here. The crazy amount of smoke with absolutely no air circulation, the narrow dancing space, and the great noticeable distance from the stage to the floor. There are tables all around the runway dance floor so if you were to fall then you’d fall onto a table. I find it hard to relax even with too much Red label Whiskey mixed with the god awful sweet tea. The music, er, well, I’ll just say the music from one club to the next is not that much different, and in all fairness, to give a bit of perspective, bars and clubs in this part of China are still a new thing. I’m also a secret curmudgeon. I don’t really like clubs. I like dancing, but club scenes are not my thing (even though I continue to find myself in them). Still, in retrospect it is a worthwhile experience mainly because of the fact that I’m living in China. When my mind is in a state of complete discomfort which it has been often while living here, I’ll have this sudden realization that I’m in China on a spinning dance floor with a group of people from all over the world, and that this is just a moment; a rare blip of a moment that will be over in a couple of hours, and how strange that all sounds to me.

The hot pot night was a little different then the usual night out because it was morning with strangers and four different possible languages, but English was the one we all had in common. At five in the morning I could care less about the gutter oil.

What do you get when a Russian, a Chinese, an American and a Mexican walk down a dark alleyway… food and conversation about love. A red tent with a hot pot eatery. Five am beers are ordered. The soup is ordered. The noodles are ordered and we pick our own food. The soup is in a plastic bag placed inside a bowl. I don’t think of sanitation which is the best way to get sick. I only think of eating and then going home to sleep, but it is so far to where I live (another reason why I am a part-time recluse).

Outside the sun is rising. The smog is rolling into the city like fog off a bay. Pictures are taken and taxis are waved down, and I wait for the number 7 longing for my hard bed. I wonder what the hell compelled me to stay out so late. I give myself a little reprimand then think about how often I stay up till morning at a dance club with people from all over the world, and then stumble down a dark dirty alleyway to a double sized red tent to find a hot pot inside filled with Chinese men that work late or start their day early. Not very often. I forgive myself and look forward to sleep. This is a year in China. It won’t happen again. Not in this city.