Seagull and Sparrow

My best friend, Eleni, and I got through the cold winters of our undergraduate studies by fantasizing about the things we would be doing if all of our time wasn't consumed by studying and writing papers. One of the things we talked about was making a zine called Seagull and Sparrow. Seagull and Sparrow because birds are travelers who have a different natural vantage point than humans (a good place to make observations from), and because both seagulls and sparrows are underrated and overlooked. 

Seagulls in cities (and even on beaches) are the rats of the sky. They fly over parking lots and eat junk food. Once I saw one chasing another, and it appeared to be a life or death question for the seagull with the donut in its beak. Plus, any animal that's not afraid of humans has to be fierce and/or intelligent (I don't have room to expound here, but you have the internet--look into the history of the relationships of whales and humans and bears and humans). 

Sparrows are underrated because they're little and plainlooking and fat, but they stick out the winter. It's no easy feat, as we all know. Almost any human with the means flies south in the winter. And sparrows are the ones whose voices you always hear. If you ask someone what a sparrow song sounds like, they will say they don't know. But sparrows are always singing in the background. They are everywhere: fat and tough, simple and brown, and so Eleni and I feel like they are in our corner. One seagull. One sparrow. Fierce. Intelligent. Will eat anything for survival. Little, but with compacted strength. Always singing. Not afraid of humans. That's us! 

Buffalo Flavor

I forgot how ugly Buffalo is. Or, I didn't notice before, because it was my home. Towards the end of my time in Europe, I was looking forward to what I thought of as Buffalo's 'neutral look.' Not good or bad, just blank and grey. I was looking forward to this because being in Europe can be a little exhausting on the eyes. It is too attractive. Being an American in Europe for an extended period of time is like staring at someone with a perfectly symmetrical face: the beauty is overwhelming, and then boring. I needed something off center to focus my lens. A crooked nose, or a strip mall, a hairy mole, or a street in trash and dirty snow. 

Buffalo greeted me with rain and wind, and that weird smell that it is: wet diesel and fried food and smoke. The flat road seems to get flatter. You are hoping it's going to be one of those nights when the scent of Cheerios is blowing all over the city (Buffalo is home to a very aromatic General Mills factory), but it's not. There's just that heavy air that pulls you in. I started to feel a little nauseous. I was quiet, but feeling cranky inside, when I remembered about the food thing. How the eggs don't really taste like eggs. And I know some people who would disagree with me. About the food thing.

Buffalonians get notoriously defensive on behalf of their city, and with good reason: people are always telling them just how much "it sucks." I'm not here to say Buffalo is what it's not, and there are a lot of aspects of the culture I just can't get into. But there are some beautiful things happening in this city too. 

And on the other side of that link are people who will not be in the paper, and projects that will not be advertised. We have so many unsung heroes. It's not that other cities don't have a lot of grassroots energy, but the bleakness of the landscape in Buffalo makes our projects pop. I swear, you've never met people like these people.

Dear America

I. Eric Margan in the sugar shack, Cambridge, NY.
II. Country scene.
III. Irish the horse.

Is the U.S.A. cool or what? We have Esperanza Spalding, and hip hop, and true stories of people who come to their death by chocolate chip cookies (it's as terrible than a death by cigarettes or booze), and words like "snarky" and phrases like "peace out." I'm rediscovering things I didn't know I missed: This American Life, my love/hate relationship with New Yorker fiction, the gray, bare look of March in upstate New York-- the ugliest, calmest time of year here. And, I'm diving into the things I missed quite consciously: bluegrass, peanut butter, hot sauce, and wearing dresses.

And to my friends of the great and varied countries of the EU:
Rest assured, I got a hero's welcome. I stepped off the jumbo jet and everybody in the airport immediately sat down to a hamburger eating contest and the winner, an eleven year old boy wider than he was tall, took off all his clothes and wrapped himself in an American flag (which, despite it's size, didn't quite cover his protruding stomach). We all shook hands and congratulated each other that evolution doesn't exist. And then we drove very fast in our SUV's...in circles...around the mall.

Just kidding. From JFK, I took the A train to the Amtrak train to Hudson, NY where I was greeted by my parents. In my very extensive experience on Amtraks, I have come to the conclusion that only two kinds of people travel by Amtrak: incredibly pleasant ones and horribly cantankerous ones. I lucked out and sat next to one of the former. My new friend, Steve, is a NYU Biology Professor and we spoke for two hours about traveling and riding bikes and genetics and stone masonry and the beauty of the brains of small children. And then I spent a slow week with my parents, eating vegetables and playing word games and learning how to make maple syrup out of sap. All I can say is that there are no hippies like New England hippies. Oh. And that no one does lawn decorations like Americans ("Hello!? Was that a seven foot blow-up leprechaun? Really?")

I happened on an old friend of my parent's, running, and he said, "You've been home for a week?! Are you sick of it yet!?" And I said, "No! I feel fantastic! I think I go away so that everything is new again!" (People from small towns in upstate New York state speak with exclamation points at the end of every sentence when it is cold out or when we are busy or when we are excited--we were both experiencing all three when we met--just imagine!) And so it is. I don't feel like my trip has ended. I'm meeting America through the eyes of a pseudo-foreigner. I was away long enough to forget some important things about my country. I feel like someone from somewhere else who has read a lot about America, and so it appears as a dream I had once, hidden somewhere in the recess of memory, that I can only remember the feeling of. Appropriately, this is exactly how I felt when I arrived in Ireland for the first time.

Somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of Americans hold passports. And I don't know how many of these passports are used only for going to Canada (no offense, Canada--I love you) or for partying in Mexico (no offense, Tijuana--I pray for you at night). In our defense, Americans have to fight a few hefty battles to get out of the country. First there is the cost. Photos and fees and postage all told, it can cost upwards of $300 just to get a passport. That's money that a lot of Americans just don't have. And it can be time consuming.  (Here's a sort of interesting little commentary on the subject: http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/10/20/debunking-passport-myth/). But as great as the financial burden is the geographical and psychological isolation. From the place where I live, I can easily go to Canada, which is, yes, another country, even if a lot of people don't see it as one. Still, the culture that lies just across the border does not vary greatly from my own. To get anywhere else in the world, I have to fly for at least 7 hours. But it's not just the time. In two directions there is an ocean of land, and in the other direction is an ocean (the other direction, obviously, is Canada). There's a conceptual distance that's much bigger and lasts much longer than the flight. It's not nothing to overcome. I don't want to make excuses for the insular view of the world that some of my countrymen have. I just want the world to develop a little sense of empathy for North American isolation, which can be pretty lonely.

Americans, if you can afford to travel, don't go to resorts! And world: visit. I met a few Europeans who had no interest in traveling to the U.S. because they felt they already knew what it is through movies and music, (and the world mostly gets our artistic poop). Alternately, people only want to see New York, Las Vegas, and LA. I don't want to give the impression that New York is not wonderful, and if I was a different sort of person, I would live there in a heartbeat. But there is another America. The America that hides, like men worth dating, under rocks and leaves. It's the draft that sneaks around plastick-ed windows in Buffalo and the gardens that grow in places where there are smokestacks not far off. It's the 60 year old guy you meet on the street in San Francisco who is homeless, broke, and hungry, but doesn't know it because he is still reliving this amazing acid trip he took when he was 17. There's El Capitan, and the redwoods, which I still don't believe, which I still dream about. There is the vast, bizarre, beautiful and warped world of Utah. If you're American or not, go eat red-hot peanuts and wander around the strange playground of the Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama. I dare you to go and not feel something. New Orleans--dear lord, there is New Orleans--everyone's vacation should start, or end, there. I imagine that Alaska makes the A list too, although I've never been there.

Mark Twain wisely said,"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness," but he didn't mean just any kind of travel. He meant the kind in which you are awake, and he meant the kind in which you take yourself outside your comfort zones.  There is no reason to stop traveling just because I am home. In fact, it is more important to think like a traveler at home, where it is easy to get lazy and intellectually soft.  A traveler must be easygoing and adaptable, but quick to react. From the west side of Buffalo, where I live, to the east, where I work, I pass through a few worlds. 

Sometimes America really does feel united (when we elected our 44th, or on the days when I walk clear across Buffalo and meet more different kinds of people than countries I've been to in my life). Other times it feels like each person is a different country. I think both perceptions of our country, (which, because it has made itself everywhere, also belongs to everyone), and of my city, are true. 

And the quote above--like most of the things Mark Twain said--is not just a quote, but can be applied as a life philosophy. Excuse me if I get a little over-excited. I really love Mark Twain. I need to go re-read Pudd'nhead Wilson. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. That is what I need to do!

Taking stock

I left New York on October 10th, 2009 with the following:

two pairs of jeans,
two sweaters,
four tank tops,
two t shirts,
two long sleeve shirts,
one rain jacket that makes me feel like a superhero,

one city jacket,

one bathing suit,
one pair of waterproof hiking boots,
one pair of street sneakers,
7 pairs of underwear and 2 bras,
one bag of toiletries,
one tent,
one sleeping bag,
one pocket knife,
one compass,

one flashlight,
one yoga/camping mat,
one blank notebook,
two books, and,
two dictionaries (French and Italian).

I returned to New York on March 2, 2010 with the following:
one pair of jeans,
one sweater,
two t shirts,
one tank top,
two long sleeve shirts,
one rain jacket that makes me feel like a superhero,
one bathing suit,
one pair of not-so-waterproof hiking boots,
one pair of Italian leather boots,
one pair of rock climbing shoes,
9 pairs of underwear and four bras, (I may have crushed on Italian lingerie even more than I crushed on Italians),

one pair of Italian stockings,

one (Greek) cotton sundress, 
one bag of toiletries,
one tent,
one sleeping bag,
one pocket knife,
one compass,
one camping/yoga mat,
four notebooks, full, and,
four books.

The weight of my pack was between 12 and 15 kilos during the trip, depending on how much food and how many books I was carrying. I traveled through four countries (Ireland, France, Italy, and Greece), and five if you count Sicily (which I do), and six if you count Northern Ireland (it's technically the UK, but in my heart, Ireland is one green beautiful island, united by Guinness and literary genius).

A History in Books

In the interest of carrying less, and moving more quickly, it was common for me to leave clothes or a towel, or disinfectent spray, or what have you, behind. Clothes were easy to leave, and if I met someone who needed my flashlight more than me, that was easy to leave too. The books I read, however, were difficult to part with (with the exception of McEwan's very whitey book, Saturday, which I found unengaging and insular). I was so attached to my notes in one book (Elizabeth Bowen) that I mailed it home. Another book I carried for 4 months without reading. I found Primo Levi in Torino, which was where he was from, and I read If Not Now, When? nearly three times in a row.  It changed my relationship to the world, while Italy was busy changing me, or perhaps more accurately, reminding me of who I am. My books traveled with me for thousands of kilometers. My journey can be told in a lot of different ways: chronologically, by languages, through the pictures I took, or the people I met, or by differences in food culture. I can also narrate the whole of the journey through the books I read, and how they influenced me along the way. 

Example :

You say "The Last September," and I recall a flood of human heads in the streets of Dublin, a moment of tearful  idolatry at Paul Leon's breakfast table in the James Joyce center, St. Stephen's Green with swans and a bower of falling leaves.  Becoming lost inside a snowy Monet at the Hugh Lane Gallery. The time I spent in the National Library: the most beautiful, round reading room I've ever been in (in such a place I will meet my true love). Greens, blues, greens, blues: I felt strangely like liquid in Dublin. Fireworks at night in Phoenix Park. Fireworks all day like gunshots. Spitting in the Liffey for good luck. The smell of the Guinness factory, which can be best described in facial expressions. Walking and walking and walking and being really truly honest to goodness lost, and the conversations that this (the loss of myself) brought to me, brought me to. In Dublin I was lucky because when I was lost, I always seemed to be in the right place.

 

Here's the list, just for fun. If you ever see me on the street and want to hear a story about Europe, just mention one of the following titles, and you'll have a hard time shutting me up. They are more or less in the order I read them in, although some were re-read and one (Ciaran Carson) I don't think I'll ever finish. I can't guarantee I am not forgetting something.

The Last September, Elizabeth Bowen
Saturday, Ian McEwan
For All We Know, Ciaran Carson
If Not Now, When?, Primo Levi
No one belongs here more than you, Miranda July
Power Politics, Arundhati Roy
The Curious Incident of the dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Places In Between, Rory Stewart
White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
Life of Pi, Yann Matel
The Double, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Full Circle

I returned to Belfast to say goodbye a second time (I like 2nd-time around goodbyes because they are always more lighthearted than 1st-time goodbyes, and all the ones that come after). I came full circle, geographically speaking. And, I ended my trip with the rush it began with: rock climbing--it's like a discovery every time, like theatre, every time it is new.

On my very last day in Europe, I took the bus to Newcastle, a little seaside town an hour south of Belfast, overlooking Dundrum Bay. The weather was so good, I felt like a VIP. In Italy and Greece the mountain air was clean and fresh, but every country has its own smell, and nowhere in the world is the air so sweet as it is here. At bookends of my vacation, I took day-trips to the sea in Northern Ireland, and I noticed it last time too. As soon you get out of Belfast, and walk uphill, there is sugar in the air. Actually, I have this idea that the sweet air and and wet, hilly earth (moors) in Ireland makes people calm and sweet in disposition, the same way that the dry earth and strong sun in Greece makes people bold and friendly. 

I walked up Slieve Donard, which is the highest mountain in Northern Ireland. Near the top there was snow, and the waterproof on my boots had worn off some time ago. But I was very close to the top, so I had to continue. The even, moon-like look of the snow was deceiving. My feet kept sinking through the snow and ice into caverns of bog. It was terrible, my feet and pants were soaked, and before long I was shivering all over, but the day exquisite and I had to continue. I kept making excuses to continue when the really sensible thing to do would've been to go down the mountain and have a cup of tea in the town. 

I stopped to eat my sandwich. Then I remembered something I learned about equilibrium when I was climbing in Piemonte. It's not about muscle, it's about balance. You don't begin with movement. You shift all your weight, carefully and evenly, to one hip before moving to the next hold (or patch of snow). I applied the tactic, and while I looked very funny, it was very successful. I stopped falling into the bog. It felt very good, smooth and slow. I had to give it up at the very top, where it got too steep, and I gave it up on the way down, but it was a nice little exercise in patience while it lasted. 

There was an old ice house, partway up with a plaque. It read:
"Until refrigeration was generally available, people lived on seasonal fare, knowing that the abundance of one season had to make up for the deficiences of the next."

Walkers on hills nod to each other like bikers on the road. Ah, our eyes say, as we pass, I see you are one of us.

Ireland Part Deux

In Dublin, the whole world happens in a taxi. It is the thrashing point for the world: politics, city gossip, X Factor gossip, philosophies of love and sex and suicide bombers, stories about city birds and country punks and people who get drunk and lose their shoes at rock'n'roll concerts. In Dublin, if you are going with the right crowd (and I was), you spend your evening thus: you walk somewhere, you drink Guinness for dinner, you pay for your drink in a currency called jokes (someone else might pay in cash, but you are a guest, and you pay in jokes), and, in fact, that is the currency of the evening, and maybe the currency of the country, and then you dance a little, and drink another Guinness, and laugh a little more (someone told you a really good one), and then you spend a little time in a taxi, which is another world, where the money is peripheral and the important thing is how hard you can make your cabby laugh, and then you spend a little time in a taxi, which is another world, where the place you get to is peripheral and the important thing is how hard your cabby makes you laugh, and then you wake up, and you dream you hear birds and a car starting, and you are on the cusp of morning. You fall asleep.

For months I'd been worn out by conversations in which so much energy was spent just understanding the words. Now I was in Ireland, I could understand all the words (and the order!), but I was exhausted by the infinite number of things I could say. And I was also tired because while I could express anything I wanted, this didn't necessarily mean I would be understood. I could understand everything that was being said, and this didn't always make me happy. Being able to speak the same language as someone else doesn't mean you can communicate with them; I had been romanticizing English speakers. I found myself missing Gosha, and Ilir, with whom I couldn't speak, but for that reason, couldn't miscommunicate with. Ilir and I could say so little to each other: only that we wanted to take a walk, or a nap, or to eat, or that we were going to do the dishes tomorrow, or that we were tired, or that we felt good, and hoped the other person felt good too. We could only express simple things, and mostly, we expressed to each other our mutual good will. I think knowing Ilir made my heart bigger and my cheeks wider, just from smiling so much. And I didn't always smile because I wanted to, I smiled because there was nothing to say. "Tikanis, Maura?" (Big grin). "I'm freaking great, Ilir!" (Big grin). "Ti? Non capito."  "Puli kala, Ilir! Puli [big grin] Kala!"

Ilir is the kind of person who makes everybody at ease. He comes from a country full of bad luck (go Wikipedia the history of Albania). He's 23 and he looks 30. He walks for three hours and passes through a checkpoint just to go to work. But he smiles a lot. He pats everybody on the back. He laughs in spite of the fact that no one in Greece pronounces his name properly. (They insist on making it Greek, calling him Illias). We bonded over this because no one could say my name either, although I did get a few pretty great nicknames out of the deal (my favorite being Meow-ra). Ilir might not be perfect but he's got a big heart and that's all I'll ever know about him. Meanwhile, in Ireland, I could overhear rancid anti-Semitic jokes, and find myself in claustrophobic arguments about what women are and aren't capable of. In Ireland, as in Greece and Italy, culture is dominated by a sense of hospitality--in which countries is this not true?--but the emphasis is on alcohol instead of food, and this changes the course of everything.

There are people you meet when you travel that you will think of for the rest of your life. There's an exchange: in shared moments, you leave a little bit of yourself inside someone else, and vice versa. There are people who, if you lived in the same place, you would be friends with, and meet often, and some who you would even love and get the opportunity to fight with--but you will never know. I spent two days in Dublin, with some of these people, and one old and very good American friend. Then I took the bus north, to Belfast, where my journey began in early October.

Getting there III

Airplanes are like magic. In The Soloist, Jamie Foxx's character, Nathaniel Ayers Jr., looks up at the sky where an airplane is flying and says "I don't know how that works." I feel that way. But from the inside. You are somewhere (Brindisi) and moments later you are somewhere else (Milano) and then you tear up a little because you are leaving Italy for the second time and and nobody is hassling you and maybe you are a little bit tired and then you blink and you are back in Ireland.

You being me, of course. The ease of leaving Milan was sad and sweet. How could the airport of such a big city be so calm? Everywhere I went, it was queueless. At customs they grinned at me, as I had been told they would, and waved a hand. (Don't you want to ask me something? What if I am a dangerous criminal? Are you still doing your job if you don't humiliate someone?) I wandered through Duty Free to test alcoholic perfumes, which make me nauseous and high at the same time. Airport gates have proven time and time again to be the best places to sit and stare (you have to get there so early, and then you have to wait), and to take part in the sister activity of sitting and staring: people watching. I tried to eavesdrop on the people sitting to my right, but I didn't speak their language. Wait. I did. They were speaking English. Only it was country English from Northern Ireland. I think. It was strong, whatever it was. They were talking about mustard. I tuned out. The couple on my left was speaking French-inflected Italian. (Based on the parts I could understand, it sounded like they were speaking about the digestive tract of their younger daughter). A national identity. Does any country have one? The beautiful women began to arrive. Why are there always so many well-groomed women in airports? Wealth. I imagine them flying around the world just to show off their skin. I was suddenly very hungry but unable to spend seven euro on pretend-food and I began to hate the people who were munching things. Ha! Who do they think they are. Sandwiches! I was saving my last pennies for a pint in Dublin. On page 316 of Life of Pi, Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger, walks away from Pi without looking back after they spent I don't remember how many days stranded in a lifeboat together. And Pi tells us (Yann Martel writes), "What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell." I feel like I'm not botching this, and neither is Italy. I'm looking at Italy, Italy's looking back at me. I'm leaving part of myself here. I'm splitting in two. I'm watching her--she's on the tarmac--that ghost of myself--she'll be the me that walks south and doesn't look back. She is the wild me, who doesn't return to responsibility, but she is also the mother, the one who knows what is good.

It was raining. I wanted to get on the plane, but I didn't want to depart. A contradiction and an impossibility. My feet glued to the ground. Does this have to do with my blood? Why did I feel so at home here, even in the most homeless of circumstances?

I find it hilarious when flight attendants mime safety instructions. First of all, they are not mimes, and they are bad at it.  If you look for it the next time you fly, you will see the suppressed twitch around their lips: they just want to speak. The second hilarious thing has to do with the safety instructions themselves. They say that if the oxygen masks should drop, everybody should take care of themselves first, before their children. As if airlines can control maternal instincts! Or paternal. Nonsense. If the shit hits the fan, what mama would put her own mask on first? You must have to really love order to be a flight attendant. Can you imagine someone going to school for that and having a messy kitchen? Do flight attendants even have kitchens? Or do they just flit around the world like matter in pumps, blowing in and out of hotel rooms? We took off in a light storm. Streaks of rain, illuminated by the lights on the wing, looked like double yellow lines on a road we were traveling next to. Turbulence like little hiccups. I truly love turbulence. I am thinking of home. I am eager to be there; I am not ready to go. Sometimes you have to pay for a little autonomy. I paid for it. I am "more than one remove away" (Carson, For All We Know, 5).

Getting there, being there II

Greeks are comfortable in their relationship to tourism and English. They don't seem have any hang-ups about the presence of English in their lives, as some French and Italian people do (I don't blame the world for having baggage about English, but it's also relaxing to not have to negotiate it). My Papigo brothers were an anomaly--the majority of Greeks speak English with ease. And yet, there are enough non-English speakers to have a few of those guessing game-charade 'conversations' that every good traveler relishes: the adventure of communication against all odds is one of many reasons a traveler travels. 

Greek people know how to wake up late, and take it easy. And they want you to relax too. I went to get my hair cut at a modest salon, and was offered coffee during the haircut. I almost refused, because I thought, how will this work? My hands are under the smock, my face is covered in hair. But you just relax, then everything works.

And yet, when it's time to move, who knows how better than the Greeks? The day I left Greece, transportation workers were on strike in Athens. The situation was this: I had to catch a bus to catch a boat to catch a plane. Why? I don't know. Playtime was over. I was broke. I had to return to Buffalo to finish a project I started a year ago. I woke up in Athens at 8 am, left Dimitris' house at 10, and it took me nearly four hours just to get to the bus station in Athens (should've taken just over 1). I've never seen so many people so well organized in my life. Exception: The March for Women's Lives, Washington DC, April 2004, which, while an impressive and important display of feminist voices, did not outline a set of demands. It was a loud, defensive action, and it was beautiful--a reminder to ourselves as much as our enemies that not all of us are asleep--but it was ultimately non-threatening to the powers that be.

I waited for a commuter bus into Athens. The buses were full of people who would normally be taking the metro, which was not running due to the strikes. Inconvenience is effective. People were cursing, and either cramming onto the few buses that were running or giving up and going home. In an hour and half, two buses passed. I didn't get onto to either of them because I was not willing to shove an elbow in another person's face. I called Dimitris, who graciously picked me up and drove me into the city. 

The traffic was ugly because there were more cars on the road than usual--another reminder of how unpleasant life could be without the metro. Dimitris dropped me at the road block in the center of town, near a bus stop I knew, but my sense of direction was thrown by the masses (thousands) of workers and supporters. I got lost. If I didn't get the bus to Patras within the half hour, I would miss my boat, meaning I would miss my plane. I asked a police officer directions and he told me he had no idea where the bus station was and turned his back on me. Er...thanks. Within a minute, four Athenians, (who, based on dress and manner, appeared to be from four completely different walks of life), surrounded me and joined forces to get me to the bus station. It was very sweet, and also the second evidence of the day that Greeks know how to organize best of anyone. Four Athenians deciding on directions is the antithesis of four Italians deciding on directions, which is to say, Italians don't decide on, but disagree about. Conversations in Italy usually aren't about the question or the answer, but about making music and noise. If it weren't for Greek organizers I would not have nearly missed my bus, nor would I have made it. And everything you do is an experience.

I arrived in Patras at 4:30, ran from the bus station to the port, in the rain, to buy my ticket, ran to the other end of the port to pay my port fees, and then ran back to the other end of the port to board the boat. The boat left one hour behind schedule. I amused myself by taking pictures of the sea and writing Greece a little note. Goodbye Greece, your yellow flowers and fat, un-pruned olive trees, your haphazard parking and sunny balconies and ceramic everythings. It went on and on, and was sentimental and useless. I won't bore you.

The boat was soft and warm and squishy, like the inside of a giant traveling womb. I put my pack down in a dark corner of the deck room, sat next to it, and took a deep, grateful breath. For the time being, I had arrived. Three men and a woman entered the room. The first man looked about fifty, was short and fat and smug, and was on his cell phone (speaking Italian). He wore well-pressed gray pants, a black shirt, and a gold cross around his neck. The woman, who looked as if she'd be on his arm if it weren't for the height disparity and the fact that the aisle barely accommodated his girth, followed him. She was as tall as he was wide and thin as a rail on a diet. She wore red leather stiletto boots, and a matching bag of fake red snakeskin. Otherwise she was in skin-tight black. Her face was stuck in a pouty frown--only her lips were too thin to really pout. The result was the look of someone for whom just existing is very uncomfortable. Her hair was long and (not naturally) straight. I thought she would have been very beautiful if it weren't for her apparent misery. She might have been about 40. 

She glanced at me briefly as if she felt sorry for me and my lack of red snakeskin stiletto boots. I felt sorry for her too, so we were even. The man sat next to me, directly across the aisle, and she sat next to him, out of view. Their henchmen/wolves were two 20-somethings who wore track suits, gold chains, and clean white sneakers. Their heads were buzzed. They looked vapid, attractive, and dangerous. One sat diagonal from me, in front of the "daddy" character, and the other sat in the seat directly in front of me. It's important to note that we were in a large room full of empty, identical chairs. So why had they surrounded me? Because they were the mafia. I mean, look at them. There really isn't another explanation. I don't know what they had planned, but I didn't stay to find out. I collected my stuff, oh-so-casually. Only the henchmen/minions stared at me as I cleared my throat silently and went off.

Being there, Getting there

I left the island of Paros by ferry on February 21, 2010. That morning, my hosts, Mona and Yannis, insisted that I taste the bread from their favorite bakery before leaving, so we drove to the sweet little town of Marpissa. At 9 in the morning in the winter on the island of Paros, it was too early for bread. We waited for ten minutes before Mona remembered that the same bakery had a shop in Parakia. On the drive, we passed Lefkes, an inland city that was the original capital of Paros. The first inhabitants made it the capital because they wanted to be far from the shore because of pirates. Now Parakia, the port town, is the capital because of tourists. I bought my bread, we said goodbye, and then I wandered Parikia in the sun and walked barefoot along the sea.

The ferry didn't rock, but went gliding along like it was on ice skates, or a tram line, suspended. Because there is always an island--just there, out the window--I had this sense that I hadn't left land. 5 hours passed like 5 minutes. I re-entered the buzz of Athens, I felt familiar, I made my way by bus to Holargos, where Eleni's family lives. I had the wrong phone number written down, and no one was home, so I settled on the stair to wait and read. Cooking smells drifted out windows at me.

Behind the voices of neighbors--kitchen voices, people speak differently in kitchens--I thought I could hear the sound of water boiling. The black cat meowed and rubbed her head against my notebook, and I forgot, for a moment, where I was. It smelled, not specifically like Indian food, but like my aunt and uncle's apartment, which, partly had the smell of Indian food, and also something else entirely. My aunt's apartment collected cooking smells the way that espresso machines collect years of coffee flavors. They layered over one another, cumin and tumeric, black mustard seeds, potatos in oil. The cat tried to catch, and then eat, my pen. Then she sat still, watching and studying the pen. As I got colder, the smells increased, and I got warmer. The smell of the food was the food of my fire, the cold air was my yogurt. The cat rubbed her head on my notebook. I felt close.

I wandered Athens the next day, climbing up rocks in the park next to the Acropolis and buying trinkets in Monastiraki. I listened to street musicians play with all the skill of the pros and with love that only street musicians can muster. I sat across the street from a Pakistani duet (violin, accordion) for at least an hour, and before I left, paid them for the concert. I always wonder why we put a lower value on street musicians than we do on those in concert halls. I watched a mime doing his make-up in a public bathroom, yelling at himself in the mirror. It was warm; I ate ice cream in the sun, and thought, there are a lot of things Greeks do very well, but ice cream is not one of them. It was chalky. I got a haircut. I ate dinner with Eva and Dimitris in a little Greek restaurant and we talked about the trips we'd taken (Egypt, South Africa), and the ones we want to take (Alaska, Cuba, the American southwest). You have to travel like you'll never be in that place again. And you never will. Never in the same way. I slept on my stomach--and dreamed strong dreams--like the bed was all of Europe and I was hugging it goodbye.

The next day I began my (ultimately successful) attempt to leave Greece, amidst transportation strikes that deserve history books, and will probably get their due.