Brief encounters (a review)

The idea of life on the road is seductive. There are new people; exotic foods and ideas, all calling demurely from every corner of the world we travel.  This seduction is something primal, almost carnal, and for the twenty authors who fall to the temptations of a new experience and a new adventure in Brief Encounters: Stories of Love, Sex & Travel, the allure of the voyage is as enticing as the exploration of a new lover.

“I had somehow absorbed the idea that travelling occurs in a separate moral universe, outside the confines of normal life,” writes Sarah Wheeler in “The End of the Bolster. “I know differently now.”

Wheeler’s observation, made after falling for her Aussie roommate while traveling throughout Poland at 18, sums up the entirety of this collection of stories, issued by Lonely Planet. Although Wheeler and her unlikely lover spend weeks traveling together and then attempt a relationship afterwards, love becomes the hardest road to follow. At the story’s end, Wheeler confesses to still being single, as is her one-time travel partner. This is a common resolution to the stories edited here by Michelle de Krester, and aside from Pico Iyer, “who now lives in Japan with the heroine of his Lady and the Monk,”  and a couple others, the narrators don’t end up with the love they encountered in the beginning. So it is in life, as it is in travel.

Having spent the better part of a semester retreading old travel romances in the landscape of my mind, the stories picked by deKrester beckoned to me as longingly as any steamy memory. I expected the lurid, the no-holds-barred story-telling that goes along with love and sex on the road, and what I found was  more vanilla than I expected (there are of, course,  a few shockers included ).  The thing about sex and romance on the road is that it is the ultimate fantasy for many, and therefore, it can be the ultimate fantasy, gritty, debauched, or glamorous. It is, as Mona Simpson discovers during “Ramadan,” “so foreign no one would know. No one ever.”

Simpson’s essay, like many others, is well written and intimately explores not only the relationship she has with an on-the-road lover, but the relationship she has with herself. While the writers contained here learn about themselves and discover that strangers make everything feel brand new, there is a sense of common connection between the explorers and the unfolding of their stories. Restless hearts and restless bodies will always make for good stories, even if they are only Brief Encounters.

A whispered roar

She defines herself by her husband, by the line of work she has chosen. Each time it is the same, each story bears the marks of a woman who is legitimized by a man, her father, her brothers. I can’t understand this line of thinking. Although I love  my dad and  consider him my best friend, I am so much the opposite of what he embodies that in the wide spaces between us I seek my existence.

I’m reading a book by a woman  who is attempting to write a “feminist autobiography,” and maybe that’s making my hypercritical, although I doubt it, but I’m at the point  where every piece of writing I read from one of my  class mates leaves me feeling the same. And it’s infuriating. Not because  she can’t write– because she can, extremely well and with lots of detail– but because I am so sad that she has been so reduced to nothing but who she is depending  on the males around her. She is sweet, and we bonded during residency, but maybe this is what makes her bare-bones existence in her writing so hard for me to accept.

 I’m  also frustrated because I’m not sure how to respond to her writing– I try to mention the lack of her voice with grace: “you’ve helped me see the landscape  and hear the language of Germany, but please, show me some of your self. What are your emotions?  This isn’t his (the husband’s) story, what are you thinking?”

I feel like she’s writing to heal herself, so that’s one of the reasons I want her to find herself and gain her courage, and I want to know what she’s thinking, and expect it, because that  takes good writing to the next level.  Also, well, clearly, I have no problem writing what I’m thinking.  Maybe that’s because I have used my writing as a way to heal and have worked through what it feels like to feel small and insignificant (in being and on paper).  But healing aside, don’t I have that obligation, as a woman, to be strong in my voice and in my writing?  

I have enjoyed the critique work I’ve  been able to participate in all semester, but I find myself worrying that my classmates will respond badly to what I’ve written on their papers.  If we were in  an interpersonal setting, I believe it would be different.

Amuse me, won’t you?

“There are, it seems, two muses,” writes nature writer  Wendell Berry. “The Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say “It is yet more difficult than you thought.  This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Well, the semester is almost over.  The first draft of my travel writing final has been sent out and will soon be reduced to shreds as  I edit and make revisions. Well, maybe not shreds– I think it’s pretty good. Naturally.  But it doesn’t hurt to have had such great characters and circumstances working as my inspiration. I might have assembled the words and scenes I wanted to use, but the real action, the depth of it, comes from the experience, and the people who contributed to it.

Cryptic, aren’t I?

As I’ve spent most of the semester writing about Thailand or Colombia for this course, I’ve given plenty of thought to the notion of the muse. I’ve always envisioned the muse as something feminine, but I suppose that’s because this is how the muses have always been depicted. I’ve found then,  that in thinking about the muse as something masculine, I feel a little anxious  about attributing my inspiration to any one person. Not because I’ve got a zillion muses, all of whom need a mention– I don’t– but because I’d hate to offend him, the one recurring point of concentration that shows up again and again.  I’d hate to never have the chance to find him helping me with a story again.

Although he is my muse of inspiration, I suppose he’s also what Berry calls the form, the realization, too. In short, although I write to write things out of me, to make sense of my surroundings and my issues, he baffles me and complicates things, but I don’t want to lose that. Or him… as my muse.

A little gratitude

After three funerals in a week, I’m surprised that there’s anyone left in my small community, but I guess that’s how it goes.  Holiday time always seems to hit hard, or else maybe I just notice  catastrophe more around this time of year because everyone places such high expectations on the holidays and what it means to be happy.  Thanksgiving is this time for gratitude and appreciation, so I guess hearing about the deaths of three of my neighbors last week made me really appreciate what it is I have here in this community.

I don’t often think of Hay Springs as a place to be thankful for, or a town with much to appreciate,  but when dad told me about our neighbor dying last week, suddenly, just like my brother did around this time last year, I thought, “damn, there is nothing like appreciating what you’ve got.”

So as the past week has quickly ticked by, like sand falling through a bottle, I’ve realized that no matter where I am, this sense of gratitude is nothing I can hold onto, but should be accounted for.  I’ve spent the past week immersed in my books and sentence structure, so I’m not quite sure that “home” has really dawned on me yet, but for once, that feeling of “being here” is something that I’m looking for.

A little structure, please

So  I know I’ve posted before about the beef I have with one of my instructors (oh-so-professional,  I know) but after a round of poetry critiques have come and gone with rave reviews from my fellow classmates and other instructors, I’m really feeling like the whole underlying issue is her dislike of my style and voice.

So I don’t use punctuation– in my poetry.

So some sentences end abruptly–in my poetry.

So there’s a degree of uncertainty that leaves the reader wondering “hmm”– in my poetry. 

Reading her class notes and assignment instructions is a lot like reading my poetry: her lack of punctuation, myriad run-on sentences and phrases that make me go “hmm?” is equally frustrating. And not at all poetic.  Ah well, so it goes. I suppose if I cared more about her opinion, I might be wiling to revamp my work for her class. But alter my style? Switch up my structure? Never. Einstein couldn’t read for quite a while, and look at his place in our society now…

Loose Ends

Well, it’s official. I quit my job, have been furiously emailing to sell my stuff and show my apartment. Now the hard stuff begins. I had dinner with one my best friends in Chicago–one of by best friends period–tonight, and as much as we laughed and chatted and had a good time, the mood was underscored by a sense of finality.

“I knew it had been coming to this,” she said to me when  I told her. It was a little bit like breaking up with someone, and in  a way, I guess that’s sort of how leaving Chicago feels. I HAVE fallen in love with this city, and I think I’m in a bit of a shock that I’ll wake up in a big soft bed Wednesday morning and it won’t be in Chicago. Chicago will not be home any more. So I’m going about tying up my loose ends, talking to those who need talking to, hugging those I’ll soon be missing.  I’m not exactly sure what comes next; I’ll finish up the semester and probably head to Colombia, but even that is, at best, uncertain.  There is a bit of freedom to this feeling, this uncertainty, and if there’s anything good about having loose ends, it is that I am not feeling unraveled.

The months fly by

The only good thing, I suppose, about not having posted in so long, is that it’s not for lack of writing that my blog has gone untended. School has kept me busy this semester, and now that it’s almost ended, I’m just as frantically busy as ever of course, but I feel like I have some things that need documenting.

I’ve decided to quit my job and leave Chicago. For all of the times that I’ve said this before, this time I’m really doing it. My apartment is in shambles, books and clothes are strewn about the floor. I woke up today and felt the urge to move, to pack, to make things ready, so I did.  I’ve found that I can’t look back, or I’ll change my mind and never go. I can’t think about the library and how much I love it, or the fun times I have with my friends here. No, it’s time to go. There are two things that have happened just in the past  week that make me certain.

When I decided not to move to California, it was because I wanted to work on the spiritual connection, and I wanted to finish my book before I left Chicago. Well, the other day some guy said to me, as we passed each other in the intersection (on foot) “watch it cunt!” I looked at him for a minute, tried to process what he said, and told him to “fuck off.” “Fat-assed fucking bitch,” he replied, which I found pretty amusing.  For one, I was holding a bagel.. he was carrying a whole pizza. Two, he clearly didn’t look at my ass, which is pitifully non-existent. Now my tummy, the doughnut there? There’s more legitimacy to calling that fat.

 Anyway, I got home, considered what had happened for a moment, and felt genuinely sad that someone had had such a bad day/life that he’d have to yell something like that at an unsuspecting stranger.

Seriously, I just felt bad for him, for whatever horrid woman he’d known that made him use that word with such menace. I told a friend about the it next day, and when she said to me “that’s very Buddhist of you, to see it from his angle. “

That wasn’t the sort of comment I was looking for, but she was right. I feel like I’m able to see things that way more and more now, if I just think about it. Telling the dude to fuck off clearly wasn’t thinking with equanimity, but hey, I’m still human.

And as far as the completion of my book, well, I’ve been submitting my chapters as submissions for class all semester, and getting good feedback.  Revising afterward has gone slowly, and there’s some that still aren’t up to my ideal of perfection, but I’m getting there. I’ve just needed some deadlines and feedback to get me going. My second-to-last chapter is going to be my travel writing final, due the beginning of December.  The best part about finishing this project, and perhaps the most pressing, is that I can start working on my thesis proposal and the next project, the book I’ll write as part of the MFA program. Colombia, here I come.

Along the night’s path

“Ever the opportunist, this adoptable creature might find his bed in an old beaver lodge, or burrow beneath a garden shed. He’s confident in woods and city alike.”

So I don’t normally put much stock into the stuff found on random websites like suite 101, but after walking behind a raccoon for the last part of my block, I got home and had to google the creature as a totem animal. The above line comes from a suite 101 article on just that.

Creative and inventive, able to make his home anywhere, the raccoon is  clever, communicative and mischievous. I’m thinking about leaving Chicago (aren’t I always) and seeing the  fat guy  waddle across my path made me want to know more about what his spirit guide could  have been saying.

Much like the seagull, who visited me in a sunlight moment before I came back to Chicago this spring, the raccoon is an animal who can creatively make do with what he’s got, anywhere. City or country.

As a guide he allows us to “take on and let go of the many roles we fill”–a healthy reminder that we can be many things.”If,” according to  a shamanism website,  ”raccoon comes to you may be being asked to let go of a situation, person, belief or habit. Reversely, the message may be for you to receive the gifts being offered to you by the Universe.” Why not both, if one leads to the other thing?

An investigation of lifestyles

Development as poverty.  My suggested reading for ecofeminism this week makes an argument for the idea of westernized development as another form of colonialization for the inhabitants of  Third World citizen, specifically women. It is the women who are close to  the land, harvesting food and materials, working in the kitchen, collecting herbal remedies and folklores for the family home.  Development then, with its presupposed ideals of necessities and outcomes based on the necessities and outcomes desired in the Western world, has changed the  imagined needs and desires of people in the less developed countries and sent them into a hasty spiral of poverty.

I’m thinking about these things today as I think about my friend Ryan.  He’s moved out of the  apartment he shared  with his girlfriend this summer, and has been camping out–literally–since then.  He’s in the south-ish, KY, so it’s apparently not too cold there yet, but his rustic lifestyle sometimes baffles me.  He’s done this before, roughed it in such a manner, and he loves living on the land, immersed in it and aware of its very being, but the lifestyle seems to me to be so extreme.

And yet he is happier than he has been for a very long time.  I’m trying to have zero judgement around his life choices, because they are his, but I come from a society in which that sort of living makes one out to be a crazy man.   And yet I can see some sense in it.  We’ve talked about going feral in class, living off the land and just being in it, seeing what we become when left to our real instincts and senses. I’ve been reading books by women who renounced their way of city living for a deeper investigation into their senses. So this type of living might be crazy, but  yes, it makes sense to me,  if done for the right reason.

More sense perhaps, than that of Wes’ lifestyle, his big, bigger, biggest TV, his nice, nicer, nicest car compulsion, his need to keep up with his neighbors and outdo their lavish living.  To me, that lifestyle is crazier still. 

I am somewhere in between.

I don’t want the TV, or  need a nicer car. Is that only because I have lived so long without a TV an already have a nice car?  What is it that I feel I truly need?  Basics for survival is all that comes to me.  Food, shelter, my health.  Friendship. Intelligent discussion.   Could I have these things if I left Chicago? Of course I could. So what’s keeping me? 

There is something  that still ties me down, ties me to the expectations of  my upbringing and my society. My friends could all see me living off the land or hitching across the country, but my family? They are getting used to the idea of me being  settled down into school and work, here in Chicago.  If I up and renounced my way of living, what would they do to me?

Is that what keeps me from going feral? From seeing what I can be with no safety net, no one there to catch me, bail me out, shake me to my “senses?”  Or is it something in me, some dream of the good life, of a childish protection and guidance  through everything? I want to finish school, safely, comfortably, without struggling and stressing.  Forcing myself to rely on my own means of survival seems a bit too extreme, at least at this point in my ecofeminist development. But if not now, when? I certainly don’t want to be sleeping in a tent and bathing in a stream before springing into class each morning and expecting anyone to take me seriously.  Unless of course,  ecological perspectives are the focus of the lesson!

Darts on a map

Busy looking up places to visit. Feeling moved to seek a spiritual center. Sedona, Arizona.   Taos, New Mexico.  Rapid City, South Dakota.

What? Yes, South Dakota. I guess I’m thinking Rapid because it’s close to home, but writing that out just now next to the other locales allowed me to see just what kinds of places I’m going. Places with a kind of history and heritage that belong to the land, back before white men roamed it.

My travelin’ bones are gettin’ restless as fall bears down on Chicago!