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.
It was midnight when I decided to visit the Krumlov castle. It was dark and cool. I only felt small twinges of fear as I ascended a curving stone staircase that lead from the medieval village toward the castle. There wasn’t a need for this fear because the castle grounds were safe. It is not a common experience, for me, to feel able to wander alone in the darkness safely. I stopped to look through the black bars of an iron fence that was on both sides of the small bridge that preceded the main doors to the castle. On either side of this bridge 6 to 7 meters down (roughly 20 feet) were the bear pits. The famous bear pits. Not just famous to the castle but famous to me personally. To myself and friends from Garmisch, famous to the memory of a lost friend. Alex had fallen into the bear cage over 16 year’s ago.
I had been living in Germany at the time. Alex and a few others from Garmisch had taken a trip to Cesky Krumlov. I’m not certain exactly what had happened, but what I had heard was that he had been climbing on the wall and slipped and fell into the pit. He had broken his back, and it was amazing that he had survived. As I stared down and tried to gage the distance of his fall, I thought about the the bears’ reactions to this young German man falling into their dens. I felt a sudden wave of sadness. He had survived that fall, but five year’s later he would die in an avalanche. Too many young people from Garmisch had already died. Alex, Carley, Stephano, Sue…my dear friend Sue. There had been others.
I left the pit and wandered aimlessly the length of the castle. I thought of ghosts and history. I had the castle to myself for most of the evening aside from one couple that had followed behind me. They had their arms wrapped around each other for warmth and affection. They passed me as if I were invisible. I was an apparition silently standing in a haunted the palace. While I walked the streets of Krumlov after midnight, I felt like I could lose my fight or flight awareness that I had to carry with me when walking at night alone. It was exhausting always thinking of an escape route. Here I could just be with myself in the peaceful evening. The night itself is not bad, many beautiful things live in the darkness, it is man that makes the night terrifying.
The streets were narrow and each pathway took me through a a sliver of history that I did not know. I reached a church and began to walk the steps. Fresh urine dripped down the top of the stairs, the scent pungent and the piss was still inching over a step. It could’ve been a dog, it could’ve been a man. I heard a noise. I had a eerie feeling. I was probably being paranoid, but I decided to save the church for the next day. Still, my nervousness did not ruin my midnight explorations. I stood on a bridge and took pictures of the castle under the lights. Two drunk musicians were laughing and singing. One held out a beer to me. “Ne” I said with a smile.
In Czech he said, “you speak Czech?”
“Ne?” I said.
“Come have a drink with us!” He sang joyfully in English.
“Ne.” I said with a smile.
They shrugged and continued to weave and sing down the street toward a hidden pub.
I took one last night photo of a saint with the full moon in the background.
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.
A cool night. 8:30 p.m. A full moon. Dark. An empty train station. The ingredients to a horror story.
I came without information. No direction, no reservations, no contacts. I could have taken this moment to berate myself on my lack of preparation, but what was the point. I was here now, and self degradation was a waste of emotional energy. Just walk, I told myself. I didn’t worry about injury just the cold. I walked toward a dark tree lined street, but something told me that I was moving in the wrong direction. I heard the sound of wheeled luggage on pavement behind me, and I turned to watch the silhouettes and shadows of people leaving the train station head down a steep hill. I decided to follow the other passengers.
I could not see the city center or the castle. I knew it was a sleepy city, and that I might not be able to find accommodations for the night, but I felt somehow I would be okay. The moon was full, and a bright rainbow of light cast a ring around the moon. There is a wise tale that say’s if you stand under the moon with a ring it means that you will find true love. In this wise tale you need to be standing under the ringed moon with another person, and that person is your true love. But, what does it mean if the person you are standing with is your mother or father? My mother would have loved that. The last time I had seen her before leaving for China (not knowing I would never see her again) she had been looking at me lovingly, and with a longing that made me feel uncomfortable. “Oh honey,” she had sighed, “I wish it could just be you and me forever.” I had looked at her with scrutiny before I spoke. “That’s great, mom, that’s what every daughter wants to hear from her mother.” “That’s not what I meant.” She had said in a huffed and insulted tone. “Yes it fucking is.” I had said. There were times when she would hug me and I felt that she was trying to absorb me into her flesh till she was pregnant with me. I’d push away from her during those embraces. Now that she’s gone I only feel sadness at my inability to give her what she wanted, but I had desperately wanted to be my own person. I didn’t have to think about it any longer. I could just stand under the ring of a full moon in Cesky Krumluv, that’s all there was now. So, what did it mean to stand under the moon alone? Perhaps it meant I would love this small village?
I was at ease. I was at peace. I didn’t always feel this way. I embraced these moments of calm. I longed for it to stay. There were more days’ of anxiety, and a heavy shadow of worry then there was this feeling of bliss. It would come in strange and unexpected moments. I vowed to find a way to bottle this feeling.
I cut through a park with a cobblestone path. The first leaves of fall sprinkled the ground like an autumn carpet. Although the park was dark and foreign I wasn’t afraid. The woods are not always haunted. Through the trees I saw the castle illuminated and glowing. Lumière chiaroscuro. A painting floating against the canvas of the night.
I stood for a moment staring at the castle taking in as much as I could in the darkness. It was built on a cliff of rocks, medieval and, yes, fairytale romantic.
I walked on till I was out of the woods and at the beginning of the village. I walked toward what looked to be an old guard’s gate, and to the right of it was a huge sign that said “Hostel 99”. That would be my first try. I followed the signs to the hostel over cobblestones, and down a backstreet that lead to a closed door. A light was on in a room, and I looked through the window as I passed. Inside I saw the face of a man that I had seen before. We did not know each other, but I had seen his face many times over the course of many years. He was the friend of my friend Gregg who I had lived with in Prague many years ago. I knew a few stories about him, I had even met his girlfriend briefly at the Clown and Bard the week prior to my trip. His name was Zezo and, because of social media, I had seen his pictures many times, but he knew nothing of me.
I rang the bell. He opened the door. I smiled like I knew him, and even though he did not know me he returned the same smile.
“You are Zezo.” I said.
“Yes.” He said surprised.
“I am a friend of Gregg’s from the Clown and Bard.”
“Oh, hello.” And he hugged me. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you have a room available?”
“Oh shit. No. Only a double for 700 koruna.”
“Do you know of another hostel?”
“Oh, yes, but man it is really fucking far away.”
He grabbed a map.
“How long are you staying?”
“One night.” I said.
“Oh shit. I can take care of that.”
-and he did.
I had shelter for the evening. Zezo directed me to a vegetarian restaurant where I could find some thing to eat. I had a limited time to find food because he told me that things closed early in Krumluv. He also told me that the castle was open for 24 hours so I could walk through the gates if I so chose.I thanked Zezo for his help and hospitality and wandered into the night and medieval city to explore and to find food.
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest- in all its ardor and paradoxes- then our travels.
Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel.
My connecting train to Krumluv was not going to arrive for two hours. I took my pack and wandered into the square near the Ceské Budejovice train station. I was hungry, and had to pee, but I had no idea where to go. I walked toward a sign that pointed to a restaurant in an alleyway. I didn’t know why I picked this particular sign to follow, maybe it was the alleyway or maybe I liked the flowers and stenciled tree on the sign. The sign did not match the restaurant. It wasn’t really a restaurant as much as it was a watering-hole that wanted to be a restaurant, but gave up on the restaurant dream years ago, and kept the sign.
When traveling I always feel awkward. It doesn’t seem to matter how many years or times I have wandered into a strange place in a strange city— that feeling of insecurity of place lingers. I live in a perpetual state of uncertainty, yet float in a state of constant awe that I’ve made it as far as I have. I’m fairly certain there are three of me living inside this one body. One is the great believer and spontaneous adventurer and the other is attempting to return to the cave where the ignorance of fear feels safe. The third is the observer wondering what the other two crazy me(s) are doing and how it is possible that we are still alive. I carry these thoughts— they are steady companions. My observer self is always amused, thankfully. What would I do without that part of me? How can one be concurrently so confident and so frightened? It makes no sense. I think that when I die maybe these three, my personal trinity, will finally become one. Until then I live with this triptych personality; sometimes open, sometimes closed, but some how we make it. I make it. I don’t think this is all entirely on my shoulders. Other humans can make life feel awkward, and more times then not it may be a case of: it’s not me it’s them.
It was a divey little place. Smoky and filled with men having beer during the early part of the day. The only women in the place were a lady in her sixties sitting near the entrance, and a woman, also in her sixties, working behind the bar. As I stepped inside all conversations stopped and all the men turned and silently looked at me, only the smoke moved. I hesitated wondering if this was one of those places that women did not go to, but the woman behind the bar smiled at me and the other women gave me a nod. I sat at a table as two men at the table beside me turned in their chairs to watch. I can never understand the blatant staring and examination of strangers. Do people not know it causes discomfort? Is that the intention? Have they never experienced it? I sat with my back to the men, but I could still feel them staring. The man closest to me leaned toward my shoulder attempting to get a better look at my face. Again, this was a moment of uncertainty; I was uncertain as to why I was still sitting there. I felt the men turn away from me, and the conversations started up again.
The bartender told me the specials, goulash and something I couldn’t understand.
“Dom si goulash prosim e pivo, prosim.”
All I can really do in Czech is order food. As I ordered, the man closest at the table again turned to watch me. He turned back to his friend said something and they began laughing. I pushed aside my discomfort. I had had many Chinese people watch me order food and eat when I was in Zhengzhou, but I still had not grown accustomed to the examinations. Also, there is a difference in feeling when two large men are staring at you like you are not a human being, but an exotic animal and when a small Chinese woman is staring at you like you are an exotic animal. I’ve become increasingly aware of how easily people disassociate themselves from the humanness of others. The examiner is the human the visitor is the strange animal— the other.
I drank my beer and ate my goulash slowly and in silence. The men at the table behind me slowly began to lose interest in my existence. ABBA’s, Fernando played on the radio. Smoke filled the room. Men chatted in Czech and ordered more beers. The carpeting was red and worn. Carpeting is never a good idea in bars, and I wonder why it has ever been done. The lady behind the bar had a tired face and the other woman finished her cigarette and then walked out with a wave of her hand. There was a man at the bar all in black with Motorhead stenciled in white on his black leather. His hair was stringy and died black. He could have lived in Portland, Oregon. I was still hungry after eating the goulash and I resisted the urge to lick my plate. I received a text message from Carol a new friend from the TEFL program. She was now living in Ceske Budejovice with her boyfriend. I had sent her a message earlier that I would be visiting CB. Through serendipitous timing she said she happened to be in the mall very near to the bar. We agreed to meet up. I paid my bill and went to the bathroom. When I returned the bartender handed me a shot. The two men at the table beside me had bought it for me. They could not speak any English except to ask where I was from.
“Ameriky.” I said.
“Na zdraví ” they toasted to my health.
The shot was sweet almost like a plum. I said, thank you and grabbed my pack and walked out of the bar.
I met Carol and her boyfriend Lukas in the mall. We sat in the food cart chatting and discussing my return to CB and what we should do during my visit. They walked me back to the train station and helped me to find my connection.
“It is only 20 minutes to Cesky Krumluv from here, but who knows how many stops the train will make.” Lukas said.
“Hopefully, I will get in before dark.” I said, “I have no idea where I am staying.”
They wished me luck and put me on the train. It took an hour to get to Krumluv, which reinforced the fact that the student agency bus would have been the better choice for travel.
It was dark when I arrived. This sentence was the first line I used to describe my first moments in Prague 14 year’s ago. It was dark when I arrived and I had no idea where to go. I had many memories of my first time in Prague as I traveled on the train. My first journey alone into the Czech Republic was on a train. The train, the darkness, and the blank almost meditative state of mind was a similar sensation to how I had felt all those years ago. I carried caution, but simultaneously moved blindly forward. There is never any way to go except forward.
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, 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.
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 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.
An Accidental Vagabond 