In all honesty, I didn’t do any research before going to Australia. My friend sent me a message about how we should meet up in Australia, and I said yes. I bought a plane ticket, I reached out to my few Aussie, and Tassie friends, they hooked me up with places to stay and recommendations and then that was it. My friend Lisa did much of the research on what to do and where to stay. I felt like after spending six months in China that a trip to Australia was going to be so easy- and I was so right.
I’m happy Lisa put more into it because without Lisa’s research we may never have stayed in what I consider the best part of Melbourne. St. Kilda is a little distance from the center of the city, but worth the commute. It felt like a place completely separate from Melbourne, which I imagine it is to some extent. I’ve already mentioned that I liked Melbourne, and there were many great parts of the city, but St. Kilda was my favorite.
It wasn’t just because of this creepy fun park with the nightmarish clown mouth that you walk into, Sydney also had a Luna Park, but it helped with the setting. I had heard from some people that St. Kilda was once a pretty aggressive area. It makes me think of Dog Town when Southern California beach towns were tough and surfers weren’t the pretty groomed boys and girls of the magazines, but actually more gang like and territorial. I don’t know if that’s really what it was like, but you can tell that it’s still a little rough around the edges. I personally like that; the rough around the edges part. I tend to think rough around the edges is another way of saying creative and edgy.
No one wants to live in a place where they feel unsafe, but you also don’t want everything to look like the cookie cutter idea of happiness. I think you always need a little bit of wild to remind yourself that life is unpredictable and chaotic; everything else is just a facade. I guess to be more specific, once money and image comes into a neighborhood the rules and regulations get tighter. That once awesome muralist that would paint amazing paintings on the wall is suddenly a criminal, all because one person with more money moved into the neighborhood and doesn’t like the way it looks. Or the local market that would once give away food that was going to go bad to homeless people is suddenly fined because that new posh business that just moved into the neighborhood doesn’t like having homeless people around because it’s bad for business, or that local rock club that has been around for decades has to shut down because some real estate mogul has come in and bought up the property and wants to build condos for vacationers and he doesn’t care what happens to the local neighborhood because he doesn’t even live there, Â and so on. There’s still homelessness, there’s still crime (or new crimes have been created through new laws) you just can’t see any of it because they pushed it into another neighborhood. That’s what I mean about the facade.Â
I suspect St. Kilda will head the direction of tourist and vacation destination and price increases. I imagine it has already seen some price increases. It’s too bad it couldn’t stop right about where it is just floating between once rough and now up-in-coming that’s always the best time.Â
Judging by the architecture and some of the old photos of the area it was originally a pretty  wealthy place, a fun palisade for the wealthier folk of Melbourne to come and visit for their summer holidays. But as happened to so many places at the turn of the century, it went from a Victorian playground for the rich to a red light district. Something happens and it falls into neglect and disrepair and eventually it becomes dangerous like Coney Island or Santa Cruz boardwalk. Those places were both scary in the 70’s and 80’s just  watch The Warriors. All they wanted to do was make it back to Coney Island. Maybe it’s all just a crazy cycle.
One thing that we got to experience while we were there was the St. Kilda festival. Nine days of music and art. It doesn’t get more spectacular then that really. We watched several bands, and wandered into many galleries. To me music and art are basic fundamental parts of life just like food and shelter. We need it in order to really feel alive. We are nourished and then we express ourselves. If you really want to see what’s happening in a city check out the music and art scene. Is it exciting and new, refreshing, and surprising or is it something you can see on vevo or any manufactured pop scene?
I didn’t take many pictures of the bands, but I loved this colorful girl group that called themselves We Love the 90’s or something like that. I didn’t realize the 90’s were so bright and poppy, but maybe I wasn’t paying much attention back then.Â
And, of course we had to see some metal. We stayed about three nights in St. Kilda in a nice hotel just a few blocks from the beach. Even after we left and stayed in another part of town, I returned to take a final walk on the beach. I mean, just take a look at that sunset. It’s like it’s something straight out of a last days of summer motif.
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of
the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
Walt Whitman
The name of the restaurant escapes me. Names escape me but memories flood. It can be the smallest rainstorms. Perhaps a long frozen winter, a warm spring day, small rain, and then a flood that washes out the reality of your current moments and takes you back, drifting into your past. Anything can do it: a sound, a touch, a taste.
***
Zezo had recommended the place, and I remember it began with the letter L. It was down a narrow pathway like every place in Krumluv. All the roads are cobbled and all the roads are winding. A beautiful maze.
I sat outside under the bright light of the moon, and ordered something called Dragon Tongue made from tempeh. I had bulgur on the side and a small green salad. It had seemed a year had passed since I had eaten anything so healthy. It bordered on bland; low on the salt, and very clean and healthy. It sounds by my description that I didn’t like it, but I did. It reminded me of the eighties when the first of the vegetarian places were popping up here and there. You could get carob, and vegetables, but not much variety in flavor. Again, it sounds like I didn’t enjoy my dish, but I did. It was simple and relied on the natural flavors of cranberries, and tempeh, and bulgar with very little salt or spices. The way vegetarian food used to taste when it was just food and not a cuisine. It was quite nostalgic. My first experience with vegetarian food was when I was in seventh grade. I don’t think I had ever heard of anyone not eating meat. I was more in awe of the idea then anything else. I had a fairly typical response in my head: if you don’t eat meat then what do you eat? My mom and I would go many days without meat, but only because we didn’t have any money. Then it would be pickle and condiment sandwiches which I never equated as vegetarian. Oddly enough, my first vegetarian food experience was mixed with getting saved by Jesus. I’ll end the suspense right here and now, and let you know, I’ve been saved more than once, but it doesn’t seem to stick. When I was twelve The Heinkes (yes of the California fruit juice family Heinkes Fruit Inc.) made one of many attempts. This time they had sent me off to a Seventh Day Adventist church camp. Cowboy camp. I had slept in covered wagons; rode horses; learned that I was way behind in shaving my legs (and subsequently something was wrong with me because of that); had prayer meetings every night where secretly a newspaper article of Simon Le Bond’s sunken yacht was passed around and cried over. As we were meant to pray to Jesus for forgiveness the girls’ begged god to save the lead singer of Duran- Duran. Their prayers were answered, but I’m not sure how many of the girls were saved. I learned that some people do not eat meat, and I also learned who was Simon Le Bond (I pretended I already knew just like I pretended I could ride a horse). Seventh Day Adventists’ do not eat meat, and so it was my first experience with fake chicken nuggets, and fake ham served at the fake luau where I learned I would have rather had been in the fake surf camp then cowboy camp, because there was a real blonde boy in the surf camp who was real cute, and I didn’t like riding horses. In all honesty, camp was a kind of hell, except for the food. All that bullshit rounded out into pure curiosity towards vegetarianism.  All these random thoughts triggered by eating Dragon Tongue under the light of a full moon. This is exactly the kind of thinking that can happen when you are traveling. You are in new places, and yet there you are with you. You in your past and you in your future. Look up from your meal, and hello, it’s you. It is also very hard to lie about knowing of Simon Le Bond and knowing how to ride a horse- you will be found out.
It amazes me the power of the sense memories.
As I sat silently eating my meal, the Vltva continued it’s ceaseless flow around the base of the castle’s bluff, and my mind continued to flow into strange and far away places. The tempeh began to taste how I imagined a dragon’s tongue to taste. The more I chewed the more I imagined I was eating the actual tongue of dragon. I suddenly felt ill, and slightly crazy, since it was impossible to eat a real dragon tongue. I blamed it on the castle, and The Game of Thrones, and my freakish imagination, and of course the moon.
I had ordered mead which was served very hot, and I drank it erasing my image of chewed tongues. The waiter had warned me that the mead could be very strong and to let him know if I needed to add more hot water. It was strong. A hot honey alcohol that made me feel a little tired. I really just wanted the mead to go with the dragon tongue because it made sense to me. Very Beowulf, I had thought to myself. I sat and listened to the river roll and drop into rivulets and swirling pools. I stared up at the castle lights that threw a blonde shine over the small medieval village. It was already ten thirty and I contemplated walking to the castle since Zezo had said it was open 24 hours. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for me to walk alone in the night to an empty castle. The village seemed safe, but I was trained by the very nature of being born a woman to be cautious.
The restaurant cleared out and I ordered a cappuccino. The waiter was extremely friendly and his English was very good. I suspected he had lived somewhere native English was spoken because he had even said one or two colloquial sayings, like ‘gotcha’, and ‘you know’. Could he have lived in America or Canada? I wondered. His name was Marek, and as the evening slowed he stopped and chatted with me. The usual small talk that you make with customers, but the more we spoke the more the conversation drifted from polite fiction into real life.
And how easily we can get to know something about people, when we are open to truly meeting them. And how much we can learn about ourselves. And what did I learn from Marek? The beginning of an ongoing gratitude, because while people may have traveled similar paths with similar intentions you quickly learn that governments can control the path you are on, and not every government is so kind- and my birth country has many boarders.
As I grabbed my pack and left the apartment for the final time, Cat Steven’s “Baby it’s a Wild World” played on repeat in my head. My spirits had been low as of late, hell the spirits are all over the place, for reasons and no reasons at all. It’s tender footing and walking on eggshells in this brain. Having Cat Stevens as a companion at the moment was encouraging.
Leaving the apartment on Kublelikova in Zizkov, Prague.
Oh Baby, baby it’s a wild world. It’s hard to get by just upon a smile girl.”
I sat on a Czech train gently cruising deeper into Bohemia. It has been years since I have ridden a European railway. At first I was confused to where to sit. In China the seats are open and similar to the seating arrangements as Amtrax, America’s rail line. This train was compartmentalized by little rooms with sliding doors and eight seats to a compartment.
I sat in the darkness with an older Czech man as the train went through a tunnel. We had been silent because I don’t speak Czech and he cannot speak English. The light in the train car was dim and I could barely see. It gave me a moment to think on how rarely I travel so impulsively on my own. Although, many people could say I do this all the time, but more often then not I have a place to stay at my destination; this time I did not. I suppose I did the same thing in Ireland many years ago, but that’s another story.
The train to Cesky Kumluv
Originally I had planned to make this trip with my new friend Keiko. We had met during our TEFL training at The Language House in Prague. Most of the other students had found places to live, and jobs, but Keiko whose final destination was South Korea, and myself whose final destination seems to be god knows where (due to visa and passport issues) were left to our whims while we had money. Keiko had been using couchsurfing a website that connects travelers to people who are happy to open their homes and host them for a night or two. Keiko suggested we should couch surf together for a week. It was decided. We had planned to go to Kunta Hora for a day and then the next day we would head for Cesky Krumluv.
It is amazing how quickly things can change, literally things can change in a mater of five minutes or the click of a link. Keiko has a love affair with Poland. She had been there before and had a friend who was a DJ in Warsaw (I think Warsaw). As we sat on my bed looking on our computers Keiko read a link to her friend’s radio show. He told her to listen because he had mentioned her. She sighed heavily. “I wish I could go to Poland. The only thing that is keeping me from going is money.” She sighed again and then clicked on another link- and there it was an offer for her to volunteer teach in Poland. All she had to do was get there, but the weeks accommodations and food would all be provided. And like that, a wish and a click, plans had been changed and Keiko headed to Poland.
I was solemn for a moment, but only because I knew I would not see Keiko again in person or at least not for many years. This lifestyle brings lasting strong friendships that are maintained through social media. In the past you knew you had to say good-bye possibly forever, but now we can always look at each other’s pictures and send a message on birthdays and on those occasions when we realize it has been years since we have said hello to that dear friend you met in that foreign place. If I am going to be entirely honest with myself another reason for my brief but somber mood had to do with my newly developed and increasingly uneasy anxieties. I would classify it as a fear. Fear of what exactly I’m not too sure. I’ve always struggled with anxiety and worry, but since China, since my mom’s death it seems to be stronger. Although I feel like there have always been twinges of anxiety- after all I’ve had more than one panic attack, I suppose it is fitting for it to manifest itself in new and exotic forms.
With all these nightmares It’s a wonder that I ever made it out from my childhood bedroom. – Annabelle, Zizkov
There has always been potential for me to be someone who hides and lives in books and television series, and movies. In a way it was how I was raised. Mother and I always watching movies together. The last few times I had visited her it was hard to get her out of the house at all. A lot of it had to do with the pain that she was in, but she had always hid from the world that was so often cruel to her. The movies and the series, and the books were better, safer, they eased her pain and they helped her forget her sorrows. I know this life very, very well. I grew up with an overwhelming feeling of being trapped. Trapped in poverty, trapped in a small town, trapped with her, always looking out at what other people do. I was afraid if I left she would die, and eventually she did. We all do.
I pushed these feelings away as I watched Keiko do the necessary planning to make her very last minute bookings to Poland, plus her Skype to her concerned mother. Keiko turned to me before she called her mom. “Just wait she’s going to warn me that I could be sold into sex slavery.” That is exactly what her mom worried about. I chuckled remembering my mom having the same worry when I was in Prague fourteen years ago. It must be so hard on parents with their children dashing around the world when the news produces images of such terror. As she spoke with her mother I decided to do our planned trip on my own. I looked for places to book in Krumluv, but for some reason I was not able to book anything. So I would just have to take my chances and hope to find something once I arrived.
Running through the train station with only five minutes left to catch my train, I stumbled through incredibly broken Czech asking people to help me find the platform. Miming in the Czech Republic had been far more successful than my miming attempts in China. Through the assistance of strangers, I found my platform, and my train and sat down in the compartment with the nice older man who shared in the silence and the darkness of the tunnel.
“Oh baby, baby, it’s a wild world, I’ll always remember you as a child girl.”
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, Â 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, Â 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, Â 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.
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.
I had been back in Zhengzhou for four days before I got the news. I’ve been living here for about 5 months teaching English literature to high school age children. I’m not a teacher. I think I have the knack. I certainly have the ability to be in front of people and talk, ten years of theatre training makes that a possibility. It isn’t my passion. I’ve avoided my passions because my passions are not “practical”. I came to China because my life in the states was stagnant. If I wasn’t going to throw my life into writing and theatre than I could at least travel while doing a practical job. It seems ridiculous now. Everything does.
I love my mother. I love her very much. It was just her and I. My parents divorced when I was one or two. My dad wasn’t one of those men that bailed and never returned, but he wasn’t always around. As I grew older he would come once or twice a year to pick me up and take me to my grandparents. I loved these trips because I loved my dad, but as I grew older I realized it was my mom who struggled to raise me day in and day out, and dad, well in my youth he was entertainment. Mom raised me. I would say that our relationship was not always healthy. There was often a role reversal where I would play the part of the mother and she was the child. This often caused anger and resentment on my part. I’d constantly rail against her behavior. Wondering when my mother was going to grow up. It wasn’t an easy life. My mom’s life was filled with a painful childhood, the loss of the only person she really loved (aside from me) her sister, and many bad choices in men, and some bad choices in lifestyle. My mom was an addict. She could be addicted to anything. Food, drugs, shopping (but she never had any money), men, anything. She said, about going to the casino, “Oh honey, I have to limit myself.” I had asked her why. “Because, Adrienna, I’m an addict, you know if it makes me feel good you know I’m going to do it till it kills me.” Then she’d laugh. She knew how to laugh at all of her pain. In her fifties she became homeless for three years. She had been homeless, addicted to meth, addicted to heroine, had a stoke, high blood pressure, issues with weight, diabetic, and because of the use of needles she had hep C. Still she was resilient. She’d gotten into a housing program, off the meth and the heroine- unfortunately she had to use methadone, she had to take tons of pills, but she was good with her eating (mostly). After her stoke she taught herself to read and write again, and she was trying to retrain herself to draw. My mother had the natural ability to draw. It was her neglected talent. There were two things she could not kick. Her cigarettes and bad men. She was down to one or two cigarettes a day then maybe one or two a week, but a diabetic person with high blood pressure and a stroke victim should not have one a week. Then there were the men. Those men. I called my mom the bum magnet. If you’re a man looking for a woman on welfare and raising a child on her own my mom’s the one for you. I hated them. Since I can remember there was some man coming into our life sitting on the couch trying to play the overbearing father while my mom worked under the table to support me and the man that was living off of her welfare checks. There wasn’t a being I hated more except perhaps child molesters, and I met some of those too. Even into her later years they’d come sniffing around. “Letafae, darling, won’t you take care of me?” There wasn’t anything she wanted more than the traditional family. The mother, the father, the child, the house, the picket fence; hopeless happiness. Since the moment I left at the age of eighteen and for the following twenty-two years, I agonized over my mother. How do I take care of my mother and also have a life for me?
From the moment I can remember wanting to be something I wanted to be a performer. First it was dance, then singing then finally acting. I wanted to be on stage. Starting at age thirteen until I was twenty-four all I wanted was to be an actress. But, self-esteem, and insecurities and the “impracticality fear” won out in the end and I abandoned my dream. I later moved to writing because it felt safer and hidden. No one tells a writer to straighten their teeth or loose weight or rejects the body as it stands in front of them. It’s just words on paper, but impracticality fear won that one too. I wanted to be an artist, but through strange mental manipulations from who knows where poverty maybe society maybe self-esteem maybe, I believed it wasn’t for me. We believed our dreams were not for us. “I was born poor and I’m going to die poor.” My mom would say in her moments of despair. She’d look at me with love and say, “but not you baby, you’re special. You’re not like me.” But, I was like her. I am a part of her, and I couldn’t shake the thoughts that a life of art was not meant for me. The words impractical, impractical, impractical- you’ll never make money- what will you do when you’re old- and how will you take care of mom, plagued me. So I floated from job to job to job trying to find something that fit something that could make me money something I could stick with till I made enough to go home and take care of mom. Take care of mom.
I told both my parents that going to China would be good for me because I could travel which I loved, and get the chance to see if teaching is right for me. “I already have a degree I could go back to the states and get my teaching certificate”. I could be a teacher a steady breadwinner. I think I was trying to convince myself more than them. I stayed with mom for two weeks before I left. She drove me crazy. At times I felt I wanted to push her away because her love was almost smothering at times. Once she had said to me on a visit. “I wish it could just be you and me forever.” She had been lovingly staring at me. I don’t even know if she was aware that the words came out of her mouth. I looked at her incredulously, “Thanks mom, that’s what every little girl wants to hear from their mother.” Her face changed from her distant revery to surprise, “Oh Adrienna, you know I didn’t mean it like that!” “Oh yes you did.” I said. She started laughing. “You’re one of those crazy ladies like Betty Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.” I said. She laughed, “Oh, Adrienna, I am not.” My goal on that visit aside from just visiting her was to get her set up on Skype so that we could talk on a regular basis. I had given her a computer, but by the time I got down to her home one of her male friends had convinced her to take it apart and rig some stuff up so she didn’t have to pay for internet (she was well below poverty level). I suppose it was a helpful thought, but he was a strange guy who had his own time frame and plans and control issues and he used that computer among other things to control my mom. I was angry, and frustrated, and I left without getting her on Skype. She managed to e-mail me in the first few weeks, but then two months went by without a message or response to my messages. Because of the homeless stint ten years prior when I couldn’t find her anywhere, and because of my huge fear of her dying and me not knowing or just her being in the hospital and me not knowing (because that happened once), and because I promised her I would be there for her in her old age and that she would not die alone, I’d be there; going two weeks without hearing from my mom sends me into a state of panic and anxiety. When I lived in Portland, I called her every week. For twelve years every week I’d call and we’d talk. I contacted friend’s and mother’s of friends to ask them to check in on her. She’d always be fine and she’d laugh about my concern. My friend’s mom said, when she checked in on my mom this last time I had asked for help, that she was giving some food to a homeless guy, and she was in super high spirits.
China’s been hard for me. I won’t get into it, but it’s been a tough adjustment. I have six more months on my contract and I’ve decided not to return to Zhengzhou after my contract is up, but I didn’t want to give up on China. I wasn’t sure what to do next. Vacation time came in January and I tried to decide, do I go home to see mom, or do I do some traveling? I weighed the points. My contract ends in August so if I go on a trip now then I definitely will go home in August to see mom then maybe come back to China and work somewhere else for a year. Maybe I should apply for grad school be a certified teacher. I didn’t know. In truth nothing excited me except the idea of traveling so I decided to go to Viet Nam and Australia. I had hoped maybe somewhere in those two countries I’d receive a sign something telling me what to do next. Mom’s internet and computer were working so I told her I was going to Australia. She was excited. She wanted me to tell her all about it. My mom’s birthday was on the 26th of January, but I was in Viet nam without access to a computer so I had to wait a few days to write her. I wrote her from Australia wishing her a happy 64th. She wrote back with glee in a short badly spelled e-mail. Her typing wasn’t very good because her hands would not always work. I wanted to send her a postcard so I asked her if she could get into her mailbox. She had broken the key and then lost the key, and only my mom could not get into a regular mailbox. I know there are still letters and postcards I had sent her from China sitting in that damn mailbox. She wrote to me, “Oh baby doll, that damn mailbox causes me such hassle. I’ll tell you more later I gotta go to Winco and my rides here. I gotta catch that ride.” Then she left me with a Janet Joplin song, “Bye Bye Baby Good-bye.” I wrote her that I would send another e-mail on the 16th when I got back from Australia.
I forgot to write the e-mail. I went right back to work and four days into being back in China, I thought, oh shit, I need to write mom. After class, I walked home and turned on the computer, and that’s when I found out mom was dead. My mom’s dead. She was found on the floor of her bedroom. She had been dead for a day. It was the 20th of February, and I flew to California on the 21st. I’m an only child and there were things to do.
There were friends. Lots of friends. My mom’s friends who I call the ladies, and my friends who came down from Portland and Seattle to support me and help me with all of the details of death. We cleaned her apartment, and got rid of her stuff, gave things away, I took the paperwork and photographs. Talked to police, and funeral parlors, and banks. Mother was cremated, and I got the ashes and my friend drove me and mom’s ashes four hours to Eureka so that I could scatter them in the place that my mom said she had her only happy childhood memories. Then more paperwork. My birthday came and went and my friends had to go back to their lives and mom’s girlfriends’ grieved, and I had to get back on a plane and fly from Chico to San Francisco, to Hong Kong, to Zhengzhou, to a bus to my apartment to my bed, and now I grieve.
My entire adult life I have thought almost daily about how to help my mom. How to help my mom while trying to preserve myself. My goal in the end was to be there for her. “You will not die alone.” I told her. I will be there. I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. I was here. In China. Thousands of miles away. When I climbed into my friend’s car that hot day in early August of 2013 as she was about to drive me to San Francisco for my flight I had no idea it would be the last time I would see my mom or hear her voice. She had health complications and I was prepared to fly home in an instant if she got sick, but it was still a surprise. She had just been to the doctor two days before she died. She knew I worried about her. “Oh, Adrienna, don’t worry, I’ll be around to torture you for years. I’m not going anywhere.”
It has been five months since I’ve seen or spoken with my mom. Five months that have suddenly turned into the rest of my life. Gone, just gone. There was no viewing, no body, only ashes. I had always thought I’d get a message a psychic message of sorts. I thought we had to be connected in the way that I would know. I’d always get these feelings of concern thoughts about how I needed to contact mom, and find her to make sure she was okay. When I was a child I used to be terrified on my visits with my father. I’d lie on the bed in my grandma’s house and listen to the sounds of the city and have bad dreams about coming home and finding my mother dead. I’ve feared this moment for as long as I can remember. I’d get the feeling and contact her and she’d be fine, but this time there was nothing. No psychic message. There never were any messages it was just me like playing Russian roulette with my anxieties. When my mom’s sister died, I was five years old. I still remember the flashing lights, my mom crying, but I don’t remember my aunt. There were years of crying and I remember holding my mom, but not knowing what the crying was about. My mother told me that after my aunt died that she spoke to their mother and my grandmother had said to her, “It should have been you.” There was so much pain in that family. My grandmother said once to my mom, “No one will love you and you will die alone.” I was very protective of my mom. You won’t die alone I promised. I’ll protect you I promised. I was little when I made those promises, but they never left my mind.
I read there are five stages of bereavement. Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and then hopefully finally acceptance. Supposedly, a person feels these in no particular order except number five comes last and not everyone gets to number five. I feel like I’m hitting all five at once. I can’t believe she’s dead, I think if only I had been there, if I wrote that damn e-mail on the 16th, I’m a bad daughter, a failure, I’m angry, all of the stages simultaneously. There are even glimmers of acceptance. It’s still too soon. I’ve been back in Zhengzhou for less than 24 hours, I was in Australia not even a month ago, I cradled my mother’s ashes in my arms as I cried myself to sleep days go. It’s all just happened.
I sit in my empty apartment looking out at grey smoggy skies the color of my mothers ashes, thousands of miles from all that is familiar and comfortable, my sleep is racked with sudden panic attacks, and I think, oh my god what now? My mother’s gone. What now?
I was accepted into The Attic’s Antheneum program, but I don’t have the money to pay for it. It is an alternative to a MFA. It is still not an easy program to get accepted into, but it is a lot more affordable than a MFA program. However, I still don’t have the money to pay for it. After speaking with a friend, she suggested that I have a fundraiser. I felt a little uncomfortable at first asking people to give me money for a program that would only benefit me. It seemed too selfish a request, but my friend convinced me that I could do a fundraiser for myself. That it wasn’t an extraordinary thing to do. She also offered to help.
What Kind of Fundraiser
I am producing a variety show. A real vaudevillian callback. I have an opera singer, a burlesque dancer, some music, a comedian, and I will be performing three readings. I will be reading one spoken word, one monologue and a bit from my novel. I put together the program, the schedule, and found people to donate their talent and time. I also found a place that was willing to offer up their space.
Promoting When You Feel You are an Imposter
Promoting is a huge part of the process and I am not the best at self promoting. Yet, I have to promote in order to get people to come to my fundraiser. How else do people know what you are doing ,and what it is they have the opportunity to see.
I have terrible imposter syndrome, so having this fundraiser and promoting it is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. If I wasn’t the main star and the subject and the needy, I could do it no problem. Since I am the star and it is about me, its more difficult for me to promote, because, and I’m sorry to admit this because it reveals the depths of my vulnerability, I just don’t think I’m worth much. I know, terrible to say, but I have a near zero level of self-esteem when it comes to my writing, art, photography– anything I create. Which I suppose is the definition of imposter syndrome. I’m trying though. I’m posting it all right here.
This is the first time I have ever done anything like this. A show about me for me. However, I have a lot of talented friends who will also be performing. Through all my insecurities, I believe the audiences is going to get a good show. For the promotion, I did a bunch of tongue in cheek promo pictures for my invite.
The writerWhat does a writer look like? A photo shoot for the Fundraiser invite
Don’t Short Change the Muse
The name of the show is, Don’t Short Change the Muse. It comes from something William Burroughs once said. It is on the 22nd of June and will be happening here in Portland. I’m not sure how many Portland people read this post, but if you want to come you are invited. The info is at the bottom of this post.
The writerWe narrowed it down to these four.
The Final Invitation
In the end we decided to scrap the profile pictures and go with something else.
Don’t Short Change the Muse
Come join me and guests for one night at Bar Carlo for a variety show of readings, poetry, music, vaudeville, a couple loose cannons, opera and burlesque. Help Adrienna raise tuition money for the Attic’s The Atheneum. There will be a silent auction with donations from the following artists: and businesses:
Help make a great writer and help support a craftsperson. Writing like all other arts is a craft to be cultivated and nurtured. Writing done well is about community, it is about life.
We stayed about three nights in St. Kilda in a nice hotel just a few blocks from the beach. Even after we left and stayed in another part of town, I returned to take a final walk on the beach. I mean, just take a look at that sunset. It’s like it’s something straight out of a last days of summer motif.
An Accidental Vagabond 