Catching up on imagery

I have not posted a single picture to this point, of Portugal or anywhere in between. Here are a few from Krakow. I suppose I should note at this juncture that not a single one of these blogs will appear in chronological order, neither the photographic nor the written, since I have a tendency to enter things into my notebooks as they come into my brain; this last to say that I can't think in a straight line...

KRAKOW, POLAND or: In which we get our hair cut in the bathroom of Hostel Yellow, Stare Miasto (my favorite place) and other shenanigans.






In which Ezza cuts everyone's hair in the bathroom and Stevie mixes up some vodka punch...in a saucepan...and pours it into empty pasta jars...



Sky view, Barbican Gate, Krakow



View over the river from Wawel Castle



All the apostles carved in stone


Kitchen jam session (right before we got yelled at for being too happy and loud) at Hostel Yellow





Main Square, Stare Miasto, Krakow, my favorite place

St. Mary's Basilica, Krakow, Poland

Everyone here sees something I don't.

It's a Thursday afternoon in Krakow and it's pissing rain, as it has been since the day I arrived here from Warsaw. I've made it to Stare Miasto (the old city) and paid 6 zloty (roughly the equivalent of $2 US) to duck into this massive old church, preferring this reverent kind of sightseeing to being wet and cold, although it's no less cold inside than out.

A well-dressed young Polish guy, seeing my camera slung over my back, informs me that it will cost another 5 zloty to be allowed to take pictures. So I don't. Somehow, to interrupt all the prayer and worships around me with a camera flash or its insistent clicking seems intrusive and full of the kind of mouth-open-finger-pointing-posing for snapshots tourism I hate.

Because you are, in fact, still allowed to worship here. Certain areas, lined with smooth, old-wood pews and flanked by plaques and dedications in chiseled stone or bronze are cordoned off, and behind those cordons, in the pews, sit elderly women, heads bowed. Or sometimes a couple, the man in a black peacoat, the woman in her long gloves, leaning against each other quietly. Still fewer are the people seated alone, listening for something. Their pleas are so strong I can feel them, can feel the kinetics of forcible thought. I know what they're asking for, having once spent every waking minute of my life doing so myself.

They are asking the ornate golden figures of Jesus and Mary. They are asking the priest who's just snuck into the sacristy, through its heavy carved door. They are asking God to hear their prayers, but not only that: they are asking someone to answer. Not the prayers themselves, but to answer back. To prove that that amorphous divine entity exists. They're all asking for answers, but more than that, they expect to hear only themselves.

The basilica has a high, high ceiling, covered in intricately painted and carved gold stars, a few comets across a brilliant blue background. There's a towering monument directly behind the altar, depicting the Ascension. Each figure portrayed is at least a foot tall, and along the walls, there are bas-reliefs of former popes and Polish bishops looking on. The candle holders are gold, the chandeliers are brass and crystal, there are alabaster statues and votives between the pews. Velvet seats beside the tabernacle. The entire place seems to suggest that through this decadence of tribute, one might hope to find salvation, or at least some favor from this God, having gone to the trouble of offering up all this stuff. It is unapologetic in its opulence, much as the worshippers it contains are unapologetic in their fervency of belief. And it is this I envy:

Observing these worshippers, I feelt what I have always felt. As a former professed Catholic, I spent hours doing exactly as they are, to no avail. Sitting or kneeling, or lying in bed, reaching out for what I had been to was so certainly there. Sometimes I was convinced the Archangel Michael was responding somehow, leaning down over me from whereever he lived. In time it was clear: I was talking to myself. Or to thin air, or to no one. But, today, since I am here already, and it seems as good time as any to try all over again, I sit in the very last pew, staring first at the giant statues, at the candelabras, at the tourists taking pictures of it all. I can see why people are drawn here, nevertheless, because it is beautiful. Candle light glints off of everything. It all shines, giving the impression of what its architects must have though that their heaven, that salvation and redemption and ressurection were all about-having a place in all this, amongst the riches, up in the sky.

A sky unclouded and full of stars which are eternally bright. A sky forever blue.

Yes, I envy them this, these devout people, waiting to hear that which I've decided will never be uttered, will never come, because they appear never to waver, that they can sit or kneel here without looking up for hours, convinced in their eventual right to be heard, convinced they'll be saved. And so I sit with them, the believers, and I ask for strength to continue my travels. I ask for courage, and I ask what it is that they know, what it is that I don't. What inexplicable drive is it that keeps them coming here, to talk to no one, to talk to themselves? I ask for that same ability.

I ask these things of myself, and of something larger. But I don't genuflect for it, or avert my eyes from it. I don't know how to invoke it, but I'll try, sitting on these pews worn smooth from years of the same kind of trying. I continue to despair that I'll never truly know what it means 'to believe'.

And I stay there, under the blue painted sky, staring into the faces of the statues and likenesses, and I cannot say what or whom it is that comes to me. I don't know how to say it, what I'm asking for. I don't give it a name.

Four Part Harmony: Poland, 2009

I. Stare Miasto in the evening, Warsaw, Poland

Karol says it's all been rebuilt
and it looks it, the colors blown out,
reds & blues too bright,
souvenirs for the eyes, for the cameras.

Off-season, the square seems quiet.
A flock of pigeons,
an old man with his cart full of whistles & postcards,
an artist selling paintings

whose tints are faded
in comparison with the buildings they represent.

And now Karol is saying
this is where the pictures were taken;
you know the ones,

Warsaw in a rubble,
triptychs in black & white & gray
of nothing but dust on stone on bare,
hard ground,

and sometimes a face in one corner
or the next. Yet here we are now,
discussing the finer points of Polish beer,
and a group of girls

goes before us, laughing.
It was raining before, but it's not now, and they're shedding
hats, scarves, gloves, hands full.
and one of them drops

her green scarf, oblivious, leaving a bright
banner, sodden, on the still-wet ground.

II. Day of the Dead, Lodz, Poland

Reconstruction is, here, incessant.
Today's a day for the dead-as last night was for the living,
all of us costumed, dressed to the nines-and there

are a million candles lining the walkways,
ornate gold & red, sunset-variegated roses on headstones,
huge wreaths around the necks of the statues:

Mother Mary, St. Christopher, and Arthur Henkel, whomever
he is (father, beloved son?).
Behind Arthur's gravestone they're rebuilding a church,

old bricks & ironwork obscured on one side
by construction, platforms & rebar crawling up the walls.
It's not done yet, but it will be.

They'll install plaques to tell us how it was built,
& by whom, & when, yet for now it's off-limits,
so instead I watch a Polish woman showing her small grandson

how to dust the yellow leaves
from his grandfather's grave, how to replace an old bouquet
with fresh white chrysanthemums,

& the old church blocks their uncovered faces
from the wind, & all of it is here tonight, in this cemetary:

the past, the present,
and the dead are here too,
with us, with the scaffolds we build
to hold it all together,
to hold ourselves up.

III. Central Park, Stare Miasto, Krakow, Poland

They're always feeding pigeons here
and this park is no exception.

There's an elderly man with a whole bag of bread,
throwing the crumbs out into the path,

dozens of pigeons crowded around.
On the corner there are groups of students,

waiting for a tram; across the street, old women
vending pretzels and pierogi and flowers.


Someone is playing the accordion; unseen,
his voice echoes out into the center of this park.

The sun has just come out
from behind its cover of cloud for the first time

in two days. Behind me, the open-air market,
bins of russet apples, the smell of ripe tomatoes, brewing coffee.

One man sells mulled beer, & I'm surprised
when it's good, permeating everything with orange & barley & clove.

It's the noon hour.
It's not too early here for this beer

or these people, for their lives,
for living.

IV.

Imagine all of this.
Now blow it all up.

Campismo Grande de Lisboa, Outrela Portugal

We've been here three days. Everything is soaked, in the fragrant, repressive way of temperate forests. Eucalyptus trees surround us but they're a poor cover against the torrential rain and driving wind. It stops and starts; none of us are brave enough to race downhill and check out what's been affectionately been dubbed "Expat Pirate Camp." Instead, we're huddled around a small fire, started with Kleenex and twigs, under the campsite's picnic shelter. It is black and liquid and not yet 8 p.m.

I should explain 'us'. After days of delays and mix-ups, and with the unexpected and unprecedented help of several Couch Surfers, I've finally met up with Brandon. Here at the campismo, we've accumulated others: Tommy, Glastonbury's finest, big and blonde and somewhat clueless, who's been working for room and board and fresh veg on a farm in Porto; Paul & Jacky, young Australians who've been at this for weeks and are headed to Greece next. By virtue of the English language, we've found each other. Tommy, beer in hand at 3 in the afternoon, comes out of his slow meander as soon as he hears Brandon and I speak. Paul and Jacky are tented up behind us, heads perked up when Tommy laughs out loud, exclaiming "Fuckin' Hell, man." Soon, we're all crowded around a picnic table, sharing two liter bottles of Super Bock (Portugal's favorite beer), a large bottle of tart, cheap white wine, chips, plastic containers of bacalhau com batatas.

The rain is blowing into the fire. We can't get the lights to work, so we've rigged a flashlight to hang over the table, and cut apart water bottles so their bottoms can serve as candleholders. Before the rain started, Paul, Jacky, Brandon and I set out across the highway to a local market. There are pork cutlets, chicken breasts, cloves of garlic. A bag of huge black grapes. More Super Bock. A slab of beef. Butter, a huge, round loaf of pao mistura (bread, its crust still dusted with flour). For days we've been scrounging the campsite's tiny store and over-priced cafeteria for things that aren't too pricey, unsatisfied, and no less wet nor cold for it. Tonight, we are going to make a feast. Brandon and I pick over the groomed ground and find enough small logs and fallen branches to get the fire roaring. Over it, we gingerly place the grill grate left behind by some other campers. Paul and Jacky cut vegetables and open bags of chips. Somewhere in the night we lost Tommy; he resurfaces the next day, having sensibly taken the bus into town to stay the night, high, dry and warm in a hostel.

The total blackness requires Paul & I to alternate roles, one of us holding the flashlight, the other using dirty hands, a plastic fork or our single knife to turn chunks of meat that have been slathered in butter, salted from a twist of paper, and sprinkled with chopped fresh garlic. The smell is killing us. Hunger is a constant but not unbearable thing, has been for a week or so, since none of us can eat more than we can carry or afford, and the two are not mutually exclusive any longer. From somewhere, there's music: Coltrane, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan. (Brandon has his laptop, an incongruously lush accessory in this place that smells of eucalyptus and wet clay, that's slowly filling up with woodsmoke. At least here, between the four of us, there exists a companionable silence about what this entails. Although there are hot showers, none of us has worn a completely-clean or dry outfit for days. Our shoes are caked in clay and mud. Everything we own, collectively, exudes a bit of dampness at all times, and most of this time, we are indescribably but triumphantly weary. On the tram or bus or on foot, we're set apart by our heavy packs, by the half-purposeful, half-wayward way we walk. In the campsite, we have anonymity-no one here is concerned with much but protecting their belongings from the rain, or finding a hot drink or meal, as are we. In the campsite, we have each other.

It takes 20 minutes for the pork to finish, and we rip it apart with our fingers, sharing out pieces blackened by the fire, seasoned with the rusted grill grate. In another 25, the chicken too is done, though by that time we've made our way through half the bag of grapes, two rounds of a sharp sheep's cheese, a bottle of Super Bock, yellow peppers, an onion, some tomatoes. Jacky and I stand quietly around the fire, watching the beef cook, listening to Paul and Brandon delve into politics-they're discussing Obama and his healthcare reform and the recently-awarded Nobel Peace Prize. The fire's smoldered down further, the light from the candles blocked by our bodies, and instead of joining in, Jacky and I stay silent, the warmth and presence of other people a deterrent rather than an encouragement to conversation. To point out the differences between our cultures, our countries and ourselves might spoil it, might force us to remember that, rather than a patchwork and somewhat soggy solidarity, what we have is a strange combination of disparate politics, of nations who do not get along, whose expats, even, may never see eye to eye.

By the time the beef is done, we're all too full and exhausted to handle it. Brandon produces a single round Tupperware container. Everything-chunks of chicken, pieces of bread, large strips of steak, garlic-is swept into the container, since we are loathe to waste anything. It will become breakfast. The rain has let up just slightly, so we don't bother throwing garbage bags over our heads or shrugging into raincoats. Jacky is the first to say goodnight, then myself, and we leave Paul and Brandon to finish the last of the Super Bock. Back in my trusty REI tent, I find everything as dry as I had left it, although the two lea sides of the tent are wet through, the rainfly plastered to the tent walls, rivulets draining down between them. I don't brush my teeth. I climb into my sleeping bag with my winter jacket on, using a folded sweater as a pillow. I have no sleeping pad, so my body must adjust to the hard, flat ground, and yet, within minutes, I am asleep.

I sleep without dreaming, and must sleep well. When I wake up, everyone else is gone. Brandon tells me later I have slept until noon. As I crawl out of the tent, the sun is out, and the leaves of the fum tree above me are starting to dry.

Joao's Party & Crazy CSers

Or: In Which A Brasilian Stripper Crashes Our Party

I'm not making this up.

There's a Brasilian stripper making her way on all fours across the tatty, waxy linoleum floor of the loft in the old district that we've rented for Joao's party. We're upstairs, all us CSers, foreign and Portugueuse alike, hands in pockets or folded across chests, sipping cautiously on Super Bock, water, mixed drinks. Some of us are still wearing the wigs we were instructed to bring: Ana's is a Cher-like straight, shiny black; Dea is Cruella De Ville, black with a white stripe. Cassandra and Andre sport long, curly, gaudy yellow and pink.

And we've all just gotten done giving poor, blindfolded Joao lap dances, the odd textures of wigs and hands making it impossible to tell how many of the bodies gyrating up against his chair are actually female.

Cameras are everywhere. Someone takes a picture of myself and Jaako, the seven-foot-tall Fin, his beer resting on my head. I don't even come up to his chest. This is what we do, pleasantly lost in a country where we don't speak the language. Find other expats. Speak English, because it's common between us. Drink beer. Laugh at what's funny anywhere you go, a giant of a Finnish guy using the short Indian girl as an end table.

One of the 'Portuguese' guys turns out to be a transplanted Dubliner. He meanders up. Amiably, I say, "Boa noite, meu amigo. Como estas?". He unleashes a stream of Portuguese against which I'm helpless, forced to admit that I don't speak the language all that well.

"I'm sorry," he says, "I just thought you were Brasilian."

Is this, too, the story of my lif? To always be mistaken for something I'm not? The stripper has a great body, but a mean, hars face; Joao is sitting with his hands thrust forcefully over his head. He will not touch her. Nao meu quero. He is not, he is saying, this kind of guy anymore. Everyone else hoots and whistles, rented strobe light and green tinsel streamers mixing the light crazily across their faces. The stripper kicks a leg out, hovering over Joao's face with her breasts. She cracks a long whip, pulled from nowhere, it seems.

I sit on the corner of a table, sharing another Super Bock with Jaako and talking to Sarah, a German girl who comes to me out of sheer relief at hearing me speak English. We are one in our need to rest just for a moment, to lapse back into the blessed partial-trance of the familiar. The conversation dies out and soon we are all just sitting, watching the dancers out on the floor. Joao leaps up and changes the song-he puts on 'Jeremy' by Pearl Jam and suddenly everyone is on their feet again, bellowing in the unselfconscious, unintelligible way that indicates no one knows the words.

Joao pulls us all out onto the floor with him and we form a rock concert huddle, jumping in place, all of us singing as loudly as we can, and although the music's loud and some sing in Portuguese, some in English, some nothing but the one or two words of the chorus they remember, in this instant, I am aware that we have understood each other perfectly. Pearl Jam ends and next is Nirvana, and we're all familiar with Kurt Cobain, too, so we keep right on jumping and huddling and singing, and in the middle of the floor, under a blue and green disco ball, Pavel and Agnes, wrapped up in each other, are dancing alone to a song no one else knows.

10.18 CS Party and Joaos birthday, first days in Portugal

Ive arrived. Airport in Lisboa is packed with people, mainly Portgueuse, but I am relieved to hear, all around me, words and phrases in English. Nine and a half hours from Paris. A million miles from Alaska and yet there are no butterflies. In the back of my mind, at all times, I hear myself as I must have sounded to Dominica, my seatmate on Air France flight 1624, I cant believe Im doing this.

But, priorities. I need to get to my first Couch Surfing hostess. The damn payphone! I had no idea, or had forgotten that, foreigh phones dont ring. They beep. I waste almost 5 Euro on this fucking Portuguese contraption before getting it right. Finally, friendly voices. I call Luis. Tell him, Ana is busy but could he pick me up here? He waits nearly 2 hours while Air France mucks up our baggage.

The first of a million thanks. He is standing outside with a sign handwritten, my name on it in black marker.

Ana radiates. Meeting me at the door of her cool, cozy apartment, she bestows kisses upon me (this greeting I will have to learn, for its standard in Portugal) and is immediately so gracious that right away I feel at home. I can see myself standing on her balcony, leaning out. Shes on her lap top chatting away, and lifts it so the face on the screen is pointed towards me. Say hello! she tells both of us. This is not jut a gesture, but an invitation. Gestures, the offering of coffee, of tea, handshakes, tours of bathrooms and backyards, say to the guest You are a guest, and welcome, but this is not home.

Ana doesnt sign off. Insted, I do go out to the balcony, taking in Lisbon, the Vasco da Gama bridge, and she finishes her chat. She has made me at home in the way an ignorance does, invited me into her life. Yes, I am her guest, but my presence doesnt interrupt her activities, wont derail her day. Already weve laughed together, shared a piece of her life that others may not know about.

She takes me for my first really Portuguese meal, what she calls a gourmet hamburger, a burger more like a steak really, with no bun, garnished in cream sauce and piled with thick potato chips. Its delicious. Around us, the breeze picks up, blowing in the smells of the gourmet burger shop, charcoal, a womans perfume, a mans cigarette. All the way home, we talk about our men. Giggling, I emote to Ana about John, finding this common thread between us, gushing about how smart he is, how good looking, how I dont know what to do when I return to him.

Ginginha. Fat ginger berries floating in these tiny plastic cups of it. Jaako, the tall Finnish Couch Surfer and I trade drinks. Were all standing in Al Fama, in the square, backs turned on hustlers and beggers alike. I float a little. Around us are more expats, Pavel and Agnes, the quiet Polish couple, he dreadlocked and cheerful, she blonde and demure. Pedro, scarf at the ready around his neck, jumping about from group to group. Susanna and Emmi, the stylish Finnish students. Its warm. Were all picking the berries from the bottoms of our cups, waiting to head to the old part of town, to a birthday party for Joao, another CSer. The ginginha stand is close by. The night is only begun.

August & Everything After

...which is, in fact, the title of a Counting Crows album, and so I've marked myself as unoriginal.

I am officially unemployed as of Friday. For my entire adult life, I've been employed/employable/an employee; the revelation of unemployment hangs over my head like a skewed tiara on a doll: It shines, appears important, and is expensive. Liberating is not the word for it, although I suppose it to be the most accurate descriptor. At the moment, it's difficult not to feel like a bum, a burden, not a contributor but a walking rucksack, an empty stomach wandering about from meal to meal.

My budget for each month of this two-month excursion is around $400 US. What that might amount to in Euros, I've no idea. I lack direction upon arrival in Lisboa. Brandon can't make a ferry off the island (Madeira) until Saturday, so I am muito sozinha em Lisboa for two to three days. This will give me a chance, I hope, to experience the other side of CouchSurfing: This time I will be a surfer rather than the host. The only problems remaining may be navigation, the language barrier, and finding a string of pay phones by which to contact Brandon.

I worry. Rather, the residual parts of me accustomed to structure, to planning and itinerary, are worried. I grew up traveling as the head of a ragtag convoy, my family racing hand-in-hand across airports and bus terminals around the world, a chain of paper dolls, oldest to youngest, our suitcases numbered off digits 1-8: 1. My father, 2. My mother, everything following attached to a kid. Now, I have a giant, ugly blue packframe, crammed to its tattering gills with clothing, notebooks and Handi-Wipes. Two flashlights, a Ziploc full of dryer sheets (helpful as fire starters should I need them), several soft sweaters, a package of Orbitz Bubblemint gum. A picture of my family. Several memories of John. Extra socks. I count the hours until the plane lifts off. I count the hours until I return home.

A myriad of other adventurers, predecessors and colleagues alike, tell and have told me that this can be done. That one can wander the world alone surviving on nothing but the occasional hearty meal at the invitation of strangers, on air and water and the hard ground under a sleeping bag. In August, two months from departure, I still didn't believe I'd purchased a plane ticket, decided to quit my job, or that I would relish the idea of traipsing a foreign city, attempting to make my way on a rudimentary knowledge of its layout and language. The years I've spent clawing through things: bad relationships, too much snow atop my aging car, my own fear, books and books and books on the way to a degree, are all falling away now, and the openness of it all reminds me of when we were kids playing outside after a blizzard, one of those dumps of snow that piles up in feet, not inches, grazes the rooftops, buries the yard:

One tree, hidden in the woods past our front yard, bent over with the weight of snow and its own age, makes a perfect arch, eight, maybe ten feet over a pristine patch. We struggle into snowsuits, pull on mittens (the kind with strings through our sleeves, the ones Mom can't believe we lose anyway), force feet into boots. We are going to scale that tree. We are climbing to the top if it's the last thing we do.

We each shimmy up, padded knees clinging, until we can sit with our legs hanging over the trunk, feet dangling. My brothers are the reckless first: They stand up slowly, balancing on the curved-most part of the arch, then flail out into the cold air, arms tucked by their sides, eyes slammed shut. I wait in the space between their disappearance and my own hesitation, then do the same. The air rushes by. It's strangely warm- perhaps the friction between my body and its chilly surfaces becomes a kind of warmth, and then the air itself is gone, replaced by the soft crump of my body hitting snow, and though I've held my breath the whole way down, I suddenly realize that I can breathe, and the air I've passed through becomes crystalline, saturated with the taste of bark, dry and fresh at the same time. I can hear my brothers, and my sister laughing, but most of all I hear everything living in the woods all at once: a woodpecker landed several trees away, ice melting into a bucket beside the house, and breathable air is indistinguishable from cold, solid snow, and I am not afraid to drown here.

Time moves forward. I remember now how, two weeks ago, I kissed a man with a mouth like the sea and left him to catch his own plane. In three days I'll catch mine. I may be sleepless, jobless, homeless, but it all rises up around me now and I am not afraid.