Tourism ends

There comes a time when you are no longer a tourist. Hauled and herded from ruin to church to mosque. Pointing your camera at the same scene as hundreds of others. Listening to the same lecture delivered a hundred times in a hundred languages. Watching the same demonstrations. Smelling the same sweet scents. Always amazed and amused by the friendly and accepting faces of the local people who live carefree in such a beautiful place. There comes a time when the traveler arrives. A traveler is different. They wander alone or in very tight company. The hypocrisy of religious iconography dismays, annoys and angers them. So much time, energy and money used and still people starve and need and want. “What divine being elicited this?” the traveler asks. The postcard view has no value. His, hers, theirs are all alike. It is looking without seeing. It is fixed and photoshopped and devoid of life. A vision narrowed and closed, a self-imposed glaucoma. The traveler needs to broaden their view to see behind the curtain, under the table and behind the walls. Pushing to the edge and taking in the scene. The viewers and themselves an all encompassing whole that does not distort, until there is no edge. Mars, blemishes, age, grime, rust, dirt and scratches are the guts which make the beauty shine brighter. A traveler knows this and will not accept a polished view. Stories for children. Fairytales for adults. The 90 minute lecture. This because a tourist is on the clock and cannot stand to be without the sound of their own voice. The culture of listening is lost on a tourist. Caring to hear not just the words but the subtext and inferences. The unasked question. The way things are done without thought or question because, “That’s just how it is done. It’s our way”. Travelers take the knowledge of a lecture but only as assistance. A way to fit in and stand out less. A way to disguise their difference and put the locals more at ease in their presence. Travelers are uncomfortable with demonstrations. They do not want an artificial display. They want the pulse increasing, perspiration inducing, laughter inflicting moments that come when a child first attempts to walk. They want to be that child making mistakes and learning from the errors. To have their hands held and guided by a proverbial mother or father. To watch and be shown and make an effort and fall down, and laugh with, and at the clumsiness until achievement is made. Or not made, but the effort was good and in an honest and legitimate attempt a new found respect gained for those who can do a thing well. Travelers know that life stinks. Rot, decay and putrefaction are part of the lifecycle. Those smells are also a form of creation. Roses need fertilizer, mushrooms grow in darkness, wine is the sharp tang of sugar destroyed and transformed. Bowels and bladder empty at death and blood smells coppery. A tourist does not want these things. They want only the warm, soft comfortable scents that carry memories of home and hearth and so create a false sense of sameness between this world and the one from which they come. And they can return and nod knowingly, “They are just like us.” And their world is made smaller and more comfortable by that belief. Travelers know the world is huge and we are tiny specks and the sameness and difference is not in shit or roses but in our exposure and understanding and acceptance of each. At the heart of a traveler is the knowledge that a tourist is an intruder. An alien guest that must be watched and guarded and saved and protected and cannot cope with the reality of life in a world outside their own. This need creates a burden on its host. A burden that offends and annoys the tourist when it is acknowledged. How dare the host live in a world so different! So the host smiles and agrees and offers alternatives and compromises in an effort to be polite. And a mask is worn and civil decorum is taken as the norm in the face of insults and obscenity and rudeness. But a traveler knows the host is not on vacation. The people here are living real life. A life with pain and illness. A life with anger, annoyance, death and birth, marriage and separation. A life with rent, dishes, laundry, dusting, children to raise, spouses to accommodate, parents with expectations to meet. Friends and family that will not be gone in a day or a week or a month. A traveler recognizes these burdens and responsibilities and asks how can they share and lighten the load. A traveler stays lean in their demands. A traveler inquires and commiserates and sympathizes and celebrates. Not ever deluded they can assimilate in full but because being neighborly is the point of travel. And so a traveler is neither one nor the other but also part of both. And they revel in the sameness and the difference and only ask, “What more is there?”

Nepal reincarnated

Kathmandu
Tribal garb, cell phone and Hello Kitty socks.

Dust everywhere- sidewalks, streets, air and people covered in a thin gray film.

One shopkeeper sweeps his sidewalk and the next splashes water from a drinking bottle then closes his door in surrender.
The courtyard of the guesthouse a mass of construction noise, a pack of dogs rescued from the street and among it we drink masala tea.

We pass quickly in conversation through the women and children begging at the taxi window.

Horns honk and beep to announce their presence.
I sit still in the endless bustle and wonder,

"What were you Nepal, before the endless days of hustle? What had you been to deserve this?"

Egypt trip one

My first journey as a widow took me to Egypt. A cradle of civilization and the country my dearly departed had made plans to see at one point but had never gone.  A terrorist attack on a tourist sight and the young age of his children had caused him to postpone his journey.

My travel there caused me to draw, sketch and paint in a near desperate frenzy. I learned the pyramids are limestone and surrounded by fossil rock. 

I stood on the shores of the Nile while the sunset call to prayer echoed in the valley of the kings. 

I ate a meal with a family in Aswan who had decided their son would not go to school beyond 6th grade. The young man, as the male of the family was expected to support his parents as they aged and any higher education would offer him the potential to leave Egypt for work in other Middle Eastern countries. That was the course his father had chosen in life but he had other siblings who relieved him of parental responsibility. 

 It was only after returning to Wisconsin at the end of January that I came to realize the similarities between worlds halfway distant on the planet.

Remember Greece

Rememberance Day, lest we forget. 11/11 is  a day around the world when people commemorate those who died in war. How appropriate then that tonight I watched a Greek theatre production of Antigone by Sophocles.
Antigone is a woman punished horribly for honoring both her war-dead brothers, one of whom the king expressly forbade the decency of a funeral because he fought for the opposition. By the end the King lives haunted by the deaths of his wife, his son (Antigone’s fiance) and Antigone. 
It was a lean, modern minimalist production using barricade fences as the only set element. They were moved and dragged by the actors alone or in concert. Physical representations of each characters psychological limits and their intransigence. Barriers to communication and understanding.

I do not speak a word of Greek and yet the performances were so powerful that I cried along with the other audience members at the end.
Tears for a tragedy of war and the ego of unbending authority, written 2459 years ago in a language I do not speak. That is the power of theatre. That is the horror of war. Remember indeed. 

Sunrise

A lone white cat, white gull, crescent moon we wait

watching for the fishing boats and dawn to start the day. 

A single light on a boat. 

First elaborate birdsong accompanied by a sky turned pink at the edge. 

The last light of night, four stars aligned, pointing at the feeble moon. 

Pink glow of sunrise creeps brighter and the sun wins again today. 

A woman walks the boardwalk and the work of the day begins. 

Fishermen call across from boat to boat to shore and to the woman on shore. 

She imagines they have invited her to join them 

and she hides her shy, sly smile of desire and acceptance. 

Hello sunrise.

Strength of mountains. The heart of Crete.

She sits in a side street so narrow I doubt even a compact car could pass.
She is as quiet as the village or indeed as the mountain which looms overhead
Like many women I have seen in the villages she is dressed in black. A plain black dress, black hose, flat sensible shoes and gray hair pulled into a bun, low at the back of the head.
She sits unmoving as I come toward her in this narrow place.
Her face is weathered and lined and her eyes sunken deep into the sockets.
As I wonder if she has lost her sight, she turns her head to watch me pass.
The eyes are the blue of the water I swam in earlier in the day.
Like the shores along the deep sea which surround this island home, her face is rugged, cragged and worn.
Her joys and sorrows, the stories that have made up her life are etched deep.
The sparks of blue are steel and her hair is not gray but flint.
In those eyes a fire of strength and independence still burns brightly.
I am startled by the strange beauty and long to capture it on film.
She dismisses my clumsy request with a backhanded gesture of her outstretched arm.
I am not of her world and I am dismissed.
I leave her there under the shadow of the mountain.
Her thoughts untold fathoms and as mysterious as the ocean depths. 

I see many of her soul sisters on this island and later learn of the WWII resistance and the Nazi retribution as a result. I am stunned by the strength these women show. Not in the shallow “Me too” expression currently in vogue. It is a strength I am happy I have never had to experience. A strength that serves beyond the individual. A strength of a nations soul bound to the stone and mountains it grows on. 

Crete, creator of man.

Odd that everything about Crete and its people seem designed to make me want to stay or return here. And yet, the people here have been travelers and sailors since pre-history. Pre history takes on new meaning here. It is not the time of writing. It is the time when myths and legends were created. Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon and Kronos, men and Gods and giants intertwined. Time so deep in our bones that writing was created to define it. Writing to give it permanence and then shape and blend that legend into new experiences which, hold at their heart the seed of time itself. Like a dried pomegranate with the juice, red as blood, waiting within. 

The core of our existence before clocks or print or Internet. Time told in the age of mountains, trees and streams marked the lives of men and beast. A time of muscle and bone and sinew. Man created, because of need and excelled to assert domination over the beasts and nature that tried to bring the ego-filled creature down to earth again. And man stood tall and said no, we shall conquer all that is before us. We will not cower in caves but build temples. We will not long for, yet fear the sea we will build ships and ride the storms. We, this race called man, will form and create a world in an image we choose. 

Only then did man say, now we shall write of our ancestors who conquered nature, and in writing they will be remembered. So Crete at its heart is a place to move from and yet the soul knows it began here, in this place of conquest.

Yucatan Peninsula artist

 Chatted with a Cuban artist. The Cuban government gives locals 4 lb rice, 5 lb sugar and ½ lb chicken each month. The only money you can buy things with are USD or GBP Sterling. Since he arrived here in 2018 the exchange rate went from 25:1 to 50:1. Said the entire infrastructure is shot. Roads, factories, etc. As a student at the Fine Arts Academy he was given a stipend to train. On graduation he thought great, "I am an independent artist!" He learned he had to paint what would sell, not what he wanted. 

He feels safe in Mexico. 

He's trying to get his son and wife here. 

Years ago he went to Canada for a month, and arrived Dec 1. Snowed Dec 4. He left Dec 8.

Luang Prabang, Laos

Luang Prabang, Laos; young girls enjoying a slide down the stairs. The pleasure they derived spending no money and enjoying companionship inspires me everyday. 

Puerto Morales- Jose

 Jose, the Hotel Morelos desk clerk, has led an interesting life. He's been to the US twice. As a kid and teenager. He made suggestions to the  local 4-H on ways to get Hispanic kids involved in the club. He formed a club called Today's Youth Tomorrow's Leaders. He helped the local police clean up the neighborhoods by going to Home Depot and asking them to donate paint and rollers to cover graffiti. He requested the JROTC be sent to his school because he always wanted to be a Marine. The Marines sent a trainer for class but couldn't fund an actual unit. They were brought to Camp Pendelton for a weekend. His commander, the chief of police, and teachers all worked hard to allow him access even though he was not a legal citizen. He and his classmates were lauded because the other trainees were good but his group was good, enthusiastic, happy, and thrilled to do the very tough training. 

When the police asked how they could help keep kids out of gangs, he told them they are angry, which makes them violent. He went to his school, asked for space and time to teach the kids boxing, went to a fight gym and got trainers to volunteer time. The kids' grades didn't always go up but they stopped going down and didn't join the gangs. 

He lives with his Mom and Dad right now and thinks American kids miss out by not staying with their parents "through their teen years, when they hate them, until they become friends and roommates" He thinks children become better people when they grow up in multi-generational households. "They respect older people". And "kids are a lot of work, you know the saying it takes a village, it does." He acknowledged that people don't live that way if they have money, only if money is an issue. 

He is training to be an acupuncturist. 

He smiles when he tells me he has a gift that he's used many times, for talking to people and convincing them to do things. 

His GF is currently attending school in Washington. She loves his parents and they love her. Twins run in both families and his Mom is bold in saying they would like a grandson soon to carry on the family name. 

He had a full-ride scholarship to college from 4-H but the program to allow illegals to earn their way into the country by attending college was rescinded. He was offered access for one semester but couldn't see the point and returned to Mexico. 

Puerto Morales- Lola y Moya Cocina

 Ivette Ramos owns and runs Lola and Moya restaurant. Her grandmothers were noted for their excellent cooking. In my feeble attempts to learn Spanish everyday I would order "dos, te chai latte, con leche almendra". 

By habit, I will ask my wait staff which meal is their favorite, or give them two choices I'm considering and ask their preference. On my second morning visit, lvette suggested a marvelous dish. I complimented her on her very fine choice and joked that from then on she could make my selection every morning. From that day on I would practice saying, "Qué hay para desayunar?"

She never let me down as I ate new, interesting foods which always came as a delightful surprise, piping hot from the kitchen. 

On one of my last days, I worked hard to learn the phrase, "Tu abuela estaría orgullosa." She was a bit teary-eyed and grateful for the compliment. 

Sometimes meals celebrate friendship.

As the company shirt says: It's not a restaurant, it's a home kitchen. 

Puerto Morales- Felipe

 Felipe sells tours. He told me how to take the taxi to the collectivo stop ($30 pesos), take the collectivo to Tulum and return ($10 peso), and sold me a tour ticket for ($25 pesos, including tax). Then walked me to a great local restaurant where he suggested the cazuela de marisco. Best seafood soup of my life. 

Where else will a solo shop owner walk you from his place of business to dinner then return to work? 

The following night he explained there are 2 Italian restaurants in town. 1- "owned by some rich guy" and 2- "that guy is from Italy." Should be no surprise which was best. 

Katy posted a picture of Josh, Lena and the dogs walking on the lake in Northern Wisconsin in December. The picture looks B&W but it's not. 

Mexican reaction- “How nice you get a white Christmas!” Positive outlook is delightful. 

Triggers PTSD- Past Traumatic Snows Depression. 

Circle my adze!

I view weeding the garden with the exact same loathing as line work in a factory. Nothing wrong about it, just not within my personal capability. Repetitive, uncreative with an intellectual challenge vacuum. Entire job is an endless series of yes and no questions. Is it a weed? Arrrgh! "Can we plant something now?' Changes the game entirely. But weeding, is ENDLESS! Like dish washing, dusting, sweeping, etc., what drudgery. I know, most people like it, thrive on it even! But doesn't the incredible spread of humanity across the planet along with the cultural adaptations made prove at least some portion of us thrive on movement. A farming mentality requires a consistent and cyclical outlook. Without it movement is manditory, the hunter/gatherer must keep moving to allow supplies to replenish. Or to find new plunder. Something. Anything. There are no reasons not to move when one is of the H/G mindset. GO! Seek out new life and experiences. Do what is necessary and rely on the power of the lilies or the birds. If they have raiment and food then with all my intelligence, buffered by a little humility, I should be able to subsist.

We understood this once. Farmers were not trappers. Seamen were not always fishermen. Miners were not soldiers.

Crete welcome home to a paragliding guest

Crete
Rugged countryside
Smiling faces
People who hug easily
People who know the language of hugs:
Greeting, comfort, gratitude, joy, sadness, laughter, flirtation, domination, submission, apology, forgiveness
The hugs given to children
To lovers
To friends
To family
To acquaintances
To a woman they will know briefly.

I feel at home here instantly.
These are my people.
Steeped in the myth of Icarus.
They dream of flight.
My spirit soars in clouds.
The vultures, harbingers of death,
Escort me in my new home
I rise higher and higher
As my terrestrial life passes away unmourned. 

Pyramids and Egypt

Pyramids are made of limestone. 

Ancient seabed of living creatures compressed, forgotten, found, cut, stacked to the sky. 

Visited by generations past, now looking down on a city of living creatures pressed together. Who later will crumble and die, and still the fish will wait.

If I ignore the hawkers, carnival barkers, the graffiti and the tourists, the garbage and noise of bulldozers, I hear water lapping on the shore.

A glimpse of a local wedding celebration at Edfu. Cars, decorated with colored, hand cut paper, travel through town beeping horns and waving to passersby.
In Aswan Madame Mubarak passes by after opening an heart surgery hospital. Limos and heavily armed Hummers accompany her progress. 
Andreahs' is the best restaurant in Cairo according to a former Egyptian ambassador. 
Dined with a modern Nubian family; son of a banker, this father a dam engineer. Now employed at the Botanical Gardens and formerly at the Kuwait oil fields. His daughters live above and below him in house floor additions built to accommodate their families. His son spends the evening in his bedroom listening to Arabic radio. The boy was born unexpectedly and late in his parents life. Tradition holds that the oldest male is responsible for caring for elderly parents. A decision was made that he would stop attending school in 6th grade, the earliest legally allowed. This will prevent any opportunity to move to other countries. He will stay and inherit his family home along with his responsibilities as caregiver for what will soon be his elderly, widowed mother.

Spent the morning with the second son of a West Bank farm family in Luxor. His parents and brothers all live together, tilling and harvesting the land in sight. Mud bricks are drying in the sun. A room addition is being built for the new baby he and his wife are expecting. 

He speaks of the mixed blessing of the Aswan dam. While the fatal Nile floods each spring had cost lives it also replenished the soil and increased harvest productivity. The influx of soil carried by the annual flooding endangers the dam and so it is dug out and made available free for the farmers. Trucking the soil is not financially viable for the small, multi-generation farm families and it remains unused. 

I participate in demonstrations of techniques for making reed chairs and date palm rope. The chairs are sold for additional income and it is apparent the rope is put use and not just a tourist demonstration. That same style of rope is later seen on the 4000 year-old temple boat displays at the pyramids in Cairo. 

The Nile Cruise passed scenes of modern factories interspersed with thatch-roofed mud clay houses where water is cooled in hand-formed clay pots. Free water for all, both visitors or those passing by. Childhood memories of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty novels fill my head as I watch a riderless Arabian horse flying along the riverbank in an apparent defiance of gravity.

Old Cairo- a mash of churches, temples, synagogues melded together. Next to one another, over one another, and converted from one to another and back. A mosh pit of religious beliefs.
A trip in time and place, where antiques are 300 years old or deemed modern. 
Surrounded by friendly, smiling people all anxious to help.
Poverty but proud. 

Children ask for pens and pencils because those allow education.

I think of home and the containers filled with writing instruments, sitting as clutter there unused and uncared for.

Welcome to paragliding

My travel is not restricted to foreign countries.

In a trip from Wisconsin to Colorado I pick-up a niece whose circuitous entry into our family is a marvel and subject for another time.

We arrive in the mile high city and I am determined to achieve a lifelong dream of hang gliding.  Despite my best efforts no tandem pilots are available and I’m offered an opportunity to paraglide instead.

Some research reveals this to be an unusual and high risk sport involving “flying” a large rectangular fabric wing on wind updrafts and thermal air.

We immediately decide to try it.

Our pilots are highly skilled and solicitous of our safety.

Thus my addiction to ‘sky crack’ is born.

It’s inclusion to my skills repertoire becomes an obsession that I chase for 3 years and builds a family of pilot friendships that lead me around the world in an effort to chase the wind.

Al fresco in Slovenia

The capital of Slovenia.
A couple kiss passionately as a guitarist performs "All along the Watchtower" on the 12th century street.

A fire juggler dances with her twin partners.

People pass oblivious, stand, lean, dine, watch, listen, or ignore.

Our couple smiles and share a private joke.
On the hill a castle marks time in centuries.

Church bells chime and chime again.

Eons pass, slow dancing on the streets of Ljubanja. 

The beauty of small things.

There is a beauty in stillness. This is recognized in movies by use of slo-motion action when a love interest enters a scene.  It is an affectation we recognize and accept with little question.
In a small shop between Avdou and Goines is a woman who inspires that love. There is unending pleasure in watching an order filled at her hands. At the suggestion of my landlord I went there on my first morning for tea and bakery. By the second morning the woman knew my preference for one sugar in lemon and lime, or English breakfast tea. I returned daily for love.
Each morning a small ritual of precision took place:
A cup removed from the shelf.
Sugar placed in the cup.
Very hot water added.
Stirred to dissolve the sugar.
Tea bag dipped and left suspended to the perfect depth.
A cover set in place then sealed tight.
A stir stick to seal the drink opening.
Cup placed in a two-cup box.
Tag safely tucked into the slot provided.
A careful slide across the counter to present the order.
Listed here it gives no hint of the incredible beauty of motion. There is no rushing. It is noh theatre in a cup performed a hundred times a day. It is the serenity of the Japanese tea ceremony in everyday garb.
It is a small attempt at perfection in a routine that is done with love. Perhaps it is love of a job done beautifully. Perhaps an attempt to bring joy to her customers. Perhaps it is gratitude that they choose her shop. Perhaps she was shown this method by someone as a child and it is now ingrained in her person, repeated in their loving memory.
In tiny movements this woman expresses a life of generosity and service. Neither the Zen beauty of her gestures nor the joy it brings to watch them can be captured in words. I can only hope to create such beauty someday. Until then I sit viewing the sea and sip the stillness and quiet infused in my tea.