No time to really write right now, but I have a lot to say about Barcelona. For now, I will just say this - it is by far the most beautiful place I have ever been. This is one of many views from Parc Guell, which Gaudi designed and lived in - Andrew and I spent a few hours wandering around this place and becoming increasingly awed by the variety of beauty that is tucked away in different corners of the park. He goes to school basically around the corner but had never explored before. One day, when my education has failed me and I decide to become a starving artist, I would like nothing better than to be scraping by in this amazing city. Maybe being a bum in this amazing park. More details later. Love you all.
xxx
29 January 2008
23 January 2008
Look Left, Look Right
All the intersections here have that written on the appropriate side of the street. Curiously, even though it is in big letters right in front of my face, I have to frantically look both ways every time because I am confused about other-side-of-the-road driving.
Dublin is small and friendly. The first day I was here we went to a co-op with some of Whitney's friends, and walked everywhere and went grocery shopping (there are a lot of things to be fascinated with in foreign supermarkets). The Irish, bless them, have a plastic bag tax, and most people bring their own bags out shopping. I keep forgetting and thus have been caught almost every day wandering Dublin with something ridiculous in my arms - yesterday coconut biscuits and laughing cow "cheez dippers," the day before "coffee milk" and chutney flavored "crisps." Man, does this country know how to do potato chips. And pastries. Yesterday we had something called "flapjacks" which are sort of like very peanut-buttery and delicious chunks of granola bar. I've also had a few notable jam donuts.
Sunday and Monday we spent parts of the day wandering Dublin and parts of the day on the train and in parts of the countryside - Sunday we went to Howth, which is a very charming seaside town. We did a cliff hike, it was beautiful and muddy, and I'll post pictures of everything on my Flickr once I locate my camera cord, which I seem to have misplaced (hopefully in my disorganized luggage, and not in Saint Paul). I ate fish and chips and had a pint of Guinness in a pub as it rained and we chatted and watched people walk along harbor wall hand in hand twirling their umbrellas. We bought fudge and saw a seal and then came back to Dublin and walked some more. My rain jacket has served me well. I can't get over how warm it is here. The sky doesn't look that extraordinary most of the time, to the naked eye, but it has been coming out wild and sassy in my photos, without exception. I'm not complaining - a crazy sky can make an otherwise banal picture incredible.
Monday we went to Newgrange, which required hopping a commuter train to Drogheda, an outer-ring suburb, and then a bus to the Visitor Center and then another bus to the monument. It was sort of an inhospitable day (cold and windy) to be roaming the countryside, and it took us a bazillion hours and euros to get there, but it was definitely worth it. Newgrange is a Neolithic mound-style tomb, older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza, and the burial chamber is lit for 17 minutes on six mornings including and surrounding the winter solstice. Some of the stonework is incredible. What struck me the most was that the site has been protected since 1880, but the guides talk about visitors who made their mark on the site prior to that as "graffiti artists" and "vandals." History is conceptualized very differently over here. We would probably consider 19th century graffiti cool and historic on an American monument.
Yesterday was Phoenix Park, which is the largest urban park in the world, and beautiful and enormous, but surprisingly not particularly pedestrian friendly (meaning there was a lot of chaotic thru traffic). Irish drivers are maniacs, and don't seem to care about the repercussions of running over pedestrians. Maybe there aren't any? It seems odd that there is this constant war being waged between equally fierce drivers and walkers, when most people don't have cars in the city anyways. We tried to go to Kilmainham Gaol, which is a beautiful jail that now uses its museum as a springboard for anti-capital-punishment propaganda, but we didn't have time to take a tour, so we just poked around the museum. The Irish Museum of Modern Art, which has beautiful grounds and looks like (is?) a castle, is adjacent, but we didn't make it there either. Toured the Guinness storehouse in the afternoon, the floor dedicated to advertising was in particular fascinating. You can watch every Guinness TV spot since the 1950s. Also,I had no idea that the Guinness Book of World Records was affiliated with Guinness the drink, but there you have it. On the top floor you receive a free pint and there are floor to ceiling windows on every wall of the circular room, so you get a panoramic view of Dublin - it was amazing. I wish I could have taken a panoramic photo, but of course there were lots of people standing in front of every part of the window. I sat in on Whitney's lecture on Postcolonialism - it made me very glad that I go to a small and discussion-oriented school. Then we went back to her friend Emma's flat (all the flats here have tiny balconies that you can crawl out to through the windows), and made ratatouille and drank mint tea and I did the dishes and Emma read aloud to us from Heart of Darkness. It was all very charming and domectic and made me want very badly to settle into a house and not be traveling (even though I love traveling). This morning was full Irish breakfast (minus the black and white pudding, which is kind of integral, but I am a wimp sometimes) and now I have to lose ten pounds out of my pack and head off to Andrew, and Barcelona. I am excited for even warmer weather and perhaps some sunshine, but sad to leave Whitney. It would be nice to live here. Maybe funds will permit me to come back sometime.
Anywho, I hate travel updates, I feel like it's hard to create a meaningful narrative when everything you do is an event and a point of interest in and of itself, but maybe soon I will have some more time to spend and can insert all of my reflections as well. I've been thinking a lot about class here, which isn't unusual for me, but there are very different race and class dynamics and it's much more difficult to locate myself within them. Also I've been thinking a lot about foreignness. I'll update again in a few days. Love/miss you all.
Dublin is small and friendly. The first day I was here we went to a co-op with some of Whitney's friends, and walked everywhere and went grocery shopping (there are a lot of things to be fascinated with in foreign supermarkets). The Irish, bless them, have a plastic bag tax, and most people bring their own bags out shopping. I keep forgetting and thus have been caught almost every day wandering Dublin with something ridiculous in my arms - yesterday coconut biscuits and laughing cow "cheez dippers," the day before "coffee milk" and chutney flavored "crisps." Man, does this country know how to do potato chips. And pastries. Yesterday we had something called "flapjacks" which are sort of like very peanut-buttery and delicious chunks of granola bar. I've also had a few notable jam donuts.
Sunday and Monday we spent parts of the day wandering Dublin and parts of the day on the train and in parts of the countryside - Sunday we went to Howth, which is a very charming seaside town. We did a cliff hike, it was beautiful and muddy, and I'll post pictures of everything on my Flickr once I locate my camera cord, which I seem to have misplaced (hopefully in my disorganized luggage, and not in Saint Paul). I ate fish and chips and had a pint of Guinness in a pub as it rained and we chatted and watched people walk along harbor wall hand in hand twirling their umbrellas. We bought fudge and saw a seal and then came back to Dublin and walked some more. My rain jacket has served me well. I can't get over how warm it is here. The sky doesn't look that extraordinary most of the time, to the naked eye, but it has been coming out wild and sassy in my photos, without exception. I'm not complaining - a crazy sky can make an otherwise banal picture incredible.
Monday we went to Newgrange, which required hopping a commuter train to Drogheda, an outer-ring suburb, and then a bus to the Visitor Center and then another bus to the monument. It was sort of an inhospitable day (cold and windy) to be roaming the countryside, and it took us a bazillion hours and euros to get there, but it was definitely worth it. Newgrange is a Neolithic mound-style tomb, older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza, and the burial chamber is lit for 17 minutes on six mornings including and surrounding the winter solstice. Some of the stonework is incredible. What struck me the most was that the site has been protected since 1880, but the guides talk about visitors who made their mark on the site prior to that as "graffiti artists" and "vandals." History is conceptualized very differently over here. We would probably consider 19th century graffiti cool and historic on an American monument.
Yesterday was Phoenix Park, which is the largest urban park in the world, and beautiful and enormous, but surprisingly not particularly pedestrian friendly (meaning there was a lot of chaotic thru traffic). Irish drivers are maniacs, and don't seem to care about the repercussions of running over pedestrians. Maybe there aren't any? It seems odd that there is this constant war being waged between equally fierce drivers and walkers, when most people don't have cars in the city anyways. We tried to go to Kilmainham Gaol, which is a beautiful jail that now uses its museum as a springboard for anti-capital-punishment propaganda, but we didn't have time to take a tour, so we just poked around the museum. The Irish Museum of Modern Art, which has beautiful grounds and looks like (is?) a castle, is adjacent, but we didn't make it there either. Toured the Guinness storehouse in the afternoon, the floor dedicated to advertising was in particular fascinating. You can watch every Guinness TV spot since the 1950s. Also,I had no idea that the Guinness Book of World Records was affiliated with Guinness the drink, but there you have it. On the top floor you receive a free pint and there are floor to ceiling windows on every wall of the circular room, so you get a panoramic view of Dublin - it was amazing. I wish I could have taken a panoramic photo, but of course there were lots of people standing in front of every part of the window. I sat in on Whitney's lecture on Postcolonialism - it made me very glad that I go to a small and discussion-oriented school. Then we went back to her friend Emma's flat (all the flats here have tiny balconies that you can crawl out to through the windows), and made ratatouille and drank mint tea and I did the dishes and Emma read aloud to us from Heart of Darkness. It was all very charming and domectic and made me want very badly to settle into a house and not be traveling (even though I love traveling). This morning was full Irish breakfast (minus the black and white pudding, which is kind of integral, but I am a wimp sometimes) and now I have to lose ten pounds out of my pack and head off to Andrew, and Barcelona. I am excited for even warmer weather and perhaps some sunshine, but sad to leave Whitney. It would be nice to live here. Maybe funds will permit me to come back sometime.
Anywho, I hate travel updates, I feel like it's hard to create a meaningful narrative when everything you do is an event and a point of interest in and of itself, but maybe soon I will have some more time to spend and can insert all of my reflections as well. I've been thinking a lot about class here, which isn't unusual for me, but there are very different race and class dynamics and it's much more difficult to locate myself within them. Also I've been thinking a lot about foreignness. I'll update again in a few days. Love/miss you all.
18 January 2008
L'Aeroporte, Day II
A day of what could be stress, and has instead been mostly enjoyable. Being in hotels is strange, since I worked in Glacier. I feel a responsibility to do things a certain way because I know what is easy or hard or irritating or amusing for staff. I felt bad for checking out at noon because I knew it meant my housekeeper would have to consciously organize her route through her rooms that much more. I was careful not to muss the extra bed and to strip the one I slept in and make a separate pile for the towels I used in case they do them separately. I left a tip even though I only stayed for one night, and a note about how prettily the towels were folded. Some of this is probably a little ridiculous, but there you have it. Housekeeper empathy.
I was maybe going to go into Chicago because I have so much time, but I decided to roam O’Hare instead. The flaneur in me swells in airports. I like to be alone. I like to be in the midst of big incongruous swarms of people. I like the particular sort of acting that being in an airport invites, at least for me – the opportunity to invent a new self entirely out of mannerisms and visual cues, who you make eye contact with and how quickly you look away, how you thank the people who give you your bottled water or direct you to the nearest outlet, how you say excuse me, if you bump into people, how quickly you walk, how much you let what is happening in your headphones intrude on what is happening in other people’s ranges of hearing. These are welcome opportunities.
All I’ve ever wanted, really, is to be perceived as competent – in a weary way or a graceful way, because I have to be or because it is my nature to put others at ease – really any of these ways would do. Airports are so interesting to me because there are so many stories to be invented in them. Are you coming or going. What is a woman with ugly sweatpants like that going to do in Buenos Aires. What is a woman with a shock of pink hair like that going to do in Grand Rapids. Examining the leans and sighs and sips of water, the way of shuffling through the bag, of the people around me drives me to play this game. If I am sitting here trying to figure everyone else out, someone else must be watching me as curiously, and so we will give them a show – hold the books in one hand and the water crooked under the arm while walking, sit down in one fell swoop, cross legs. Look up and around as if the wing of the nearby plane is very interesting, once in a while. Make a ponytail without adjusting. Pretend to text message. Smile slightly from time to time as the pages of the book are turned. Curl legs underneath to show comfort with surroundings. When walking, move fast and touch shoulder strap frequently. Wend in a way that implies urgency, duck and weave. Do not say excuse me. Two days straight of airport routine have brought some new additions to the playbook. Sit on the floor even if there are seats available. When getting up to look at the monitor, leave the bag behind but take the wallet and the ipod and the passport. After ten pm, meander instead of booking it. When buying a book, take time paging through the wallet for the right change, evaluating both bills and cards.
The nice thing about these impressions is that they won’t ever lead anywhere. They’re just leaving little fingerprints on the consciousnesses of the multitudes, really. Everyone is curious in an airport, but no one is sizing anything up that will travel with them all the way to their destination, maybe not even onto the airplane. I haven’t been gathering what sort of fingerprints I am leaving, and that’s ok. That’s part of the fun of it, really. This is the same game I played as a little girl in the bookstore, wrapping myself around my father’s legs whenever he was talking to someone graying and handsome about something academic. It is the same game I slip into at bigger parties, moving often from room to room, sipping from my cup long after it is empty and holding it just so, winding my way to the back porch to be with the smokers, even though I am not a smoker. It’s the reason I walk fast and with head down on paths at school, and why I don’t cross at the light even when I need to cross both Grand and Snelling.
I wonder if everyone does this, or some version of it? When I first started, when I was very small, it was because I wanted to create visual scenes that would make good photos or stand out as seemingly random ambient memories. Later, because I wanted to create cinema, to move like Audrey Hepburn, and perhaps to someday rope in a man like William Holden with nothing but my way of reading and gripping a cup, and when he struck up a conversation, my aloofness and naivete. I don’t so much have a goal anymore. It’s just habit when I’m in the middle of a crowd, or when I’m in a place that doesn’t belong to me. I am trying to create someone who can claim the train platform, the concourse, with either her fierce traveler’s alacrity or the tired sense of having been in this spot many times before.
To simultaneously claim and have no basis for claim is a beautiful thing. I am drawn, visually, to the people who practice it. I like to think that other people are doing this too, contemplating each other’s jeans and assured ways of brushing hair out of their eyes, wondering if they are going home or visiting a friend and what it means that you are calm even though it is late, and everyone is missing their connecting flights. I like especially when I catch strangers contemplating each other. There are people who you have the urge to grab and hold so that the freneticism will leach out of them and people who make you feel tranquil, just by looking at them.
Despite the fact that I play this game, despite the fact that it is by nature a series of calculations, the calm I’ve found as I’ve settled more into myself and life and the Cities means that it’s a lot less panicky and driven than it used to be. The hyperlens I direct at other people and the hyperlens I direct at myself through other people’s eyes has subsided some, which is not to say it’s subsided to a respectable level. Right the very second the lens is turned on self as accounter of self, for example. The questions are shooting everywhere. Am I the sort of person who can ramble and introspect and people like to read it because they recognize bits of themselves in it? Am I the sort of person who rambles and introspects and people think “wow, how self absorbed?” Am I the sort of person who can ramble and introspect and people think I am crazy?
Tangentially, I bought a few books to read including “How We Are Hungry,” (even though I have already been through it) because it contains “The Only Meaning Of the Oil-Wet Water,” which is a story that has been stuck to the inside of my brain since I first read it in the summer, because it mashes together details and introspectiveness in ways that resonate with my tendency for hyperobservation. I would categorize Dave Eggers as someone who can ramble and introspect and people scream “yes!” internally because they know that he is also talking about them, and they didn’t know their condition could be captured with such gorgeous language. Dave Eggers should write poems, maybe. Maybe he does and I just don’t know it.
People have been calling me “sweetie,” which is really the only read I have on how I come off in these situations. It irks me a little, because it implies that I don’t seem competent, which is what I strive for. I have been trying less, though, to seem like an expert, and doing more moving in ways that are fluid and comfortable and weary because that is how it is economical to move. That I am not so concerned with projecting finesse perhaps means that I am perceived as more comfortable, and perhaps as more like what I am – which is young and small, hesitant, polite, slightly unsure. Apparently, the sort of person that other people are driven to offer some comfort with language. Last night a harried gate agent was doling out “my dears,” which were nice. I personally like “baby” and its derivatives, but I give that to people I have some sort of affection for, whether it be fleetingly established or built over years. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like using endearments with a stranger, to ease their emotional or logistical load. Enough. Dublin in t-minus 12 hours, if I am not unlucky.
I was maybe going to go into Chicago because I have so much time, but I decided to roam O’Hare instead. The flaneur in me swells in airports. I like to be alone. I like to be in the midst of big incongruous swarms of people. I like the particular sort of acting that being in an airport invites, at least for me – the opportunity to invent a new self entirely out of mannerisms and visual cues, who you make eye contact with and how quickly you look away, how you thank the people who give you your bottled water or direct you to the nearest outlet, how you say excuse me, if you bump into people, how quickly you walk, how much you let what is happening in your headphones intrude on what is happening in other people’s ranges of hearing. These are welcome opportunities.
All I’ve ever wanted, really, is to be perceived as competent – in a weary way or a graceful way, because I have to be or because it is my nature to put others at ease – really any of these ways would do. Airports are so interesting to me because there are so many stories to be invented in them. Are you coming or going. What is a woman with ugly sweatpants like that going to do in Buenos Aires. What is a woman with a shock of pink hair like that going to do in Grand Rapids. Examining the leans and sighs and sips of water, the way of shuffling through the bag, of the people around me drives me to play this game. If I am sitting here trying to figure everyone else out, someone else must be watching me as curiously, and so we will give them a show – hold the books in one hand and the water crooked under the arm while walking, sit down in one fell swoop, cross legs. Look up and around as if the wing of the nearby plane is very interesting, once in a while. Make a ponytail without adjusting. Pretend to text message. Smile slightly from time to time as the pages of the book are turned. Curl legs underneath to show comfort with surroundings. When walking, move fast and touch shoulder strap frequently. Wend in a way that implies urgency, duck and weave. Do not say excuse me. Two days straight of airport routine have brought some new additions to the playbook. Sit on the floor even if there are seats available. When getting up to look at the monitor, leave the bag behind but take the wallet and the ipod and the passport. After ten pm, meander instead of booking it. When buying a book, take time paging through the wallet for the right change, evaluating both bills and cards.
The nice thing about these impressions is that they won’t ever lead anywhere. They’re just leaving little fingerprints on the consciousnesses of the multitudes, really. Everyone is curious in an airport, but no one is sizing anything up that will travel with them all the way to their destination, maybe not even onto the airplane. I haven’t been gathering what sort of fingerprints I am leaving, and that’s ok. That’s part of the fun of it, really. This is the same game I played as a little girl in the bookstore, wrapping myself around my father’s legs whenever he was talking to someone graying and handsome about something academic. It is the same game I slip into at bigger parties, moving often from room to room, sipping from my cup long after it is empty and holding it just so, winding my way to the back porch to be with the smokers, even though I am not a smoker. It’s the reason I walk fast and with head down on paths at school, and why I don’t cross at the light even when I need to cross both Grand and Snelling.
I wonder if everyone does this, or some version of it? When I first started, when I was very small, it was because I wanted to create visual scenes that would make good photos or stand out as seemingly random ambient memories. Later, because I wanted to create cinema, to move like Audrey Hepburn, and perhaps to someday rope in a man like William Holden with nothing but my way of reading and gripping a cup, and when he struck up a conversation, my aloofness and naivete. I don’t so much have a goal anymore. It’s just habit when I’m in the middle of a crowd, or when I’m in a place that doesn’t belong to me. I am trying to create someone who can claim the train platform, the concourse, with either her fierce traveler’s alacrity or the tired sense of having been in this spot many times before.
To simultaneously claim and have no basis for claim is a beautiful thing. I am drawn, visually, to the people who practice it. I like to think that other people are doing this too, contemplating each other’s jeans and assured ways of brushing hair out of their eyes, wondering if they are going home or visiting a friend and what it means that you are calm even though it is late, and everyone is missing their connecting flights. I like especially when I catch strangers contemplating each other. There are people who you have the urge to grab and hold so that the freneticism will leach out of them and people who make you feel tranquil, just by looking at them.
Despite the fact that I play this game, despite the fact that it is by nature a series of calculations, the calm I’ve found as I’ve settled more into myself and life and the Cities means that it’s a lot less panicky and driven than it used to be. The hyperlens I direct at other people and the hyperlens I direct at myself through other people’s eyes has subsided some, which is not to say it’s subsided to a respectable level. Right the very second the lens is turned on self as accounter of self, for example. The questions are shooting everywhere. Am I the sort of person who can ramble and introspect and people like to read it because they recognize bits of themselves in it? Am I the sort of person who rambles and introspects and people think “wow, how self absorbed?” Am I the sort of person who can ramble and introspect and people think I am crazy?
Tangentially, I bought a few books to read including “How We Are Hungry,” (even though I have already been through it) because it contains “The Only Meaning Of the Oil-Wet Water,” which is a story that has been stuck to the inside of my brain since I first read it in the summer, because it mashes together details and introspectiveness in ways that resonate with my tendency for hyperobservation. I would categorize Dave Eggers as someone who can ramble and introspect and people scream “yes!” internally because they know that he is also talking about them, and they didn’t know their condition could be captured with such gorgeous language. Dave Eggers should write poems, maybe. Maybe he does and I just don’t know it.
People have been calling me “sweetie,” which is really the only read I have on how I come off in these situations. It irks me a little, because it implies that I don’t seem competent, which is what I strive for. I have been trying less, though, to seem like an expert, and doing more moving in ways that are fluid and comfortable and weary because that is how it is economical to move. That I am not so concerned with projecting finesse perhaps means that I am perceived as more comfortable, and perhaps as more like what I am – which is young and small, hesitant, polite, slightly unsure. Apparently, the sort of person that other people are driven to offer some comfort with language. Last night a harried gate agent was doling out “my dears,” which were nice. I personally like “baby” and its derivatives, but I give that to people I have some sort of affection for, whether it be fleetingly established or built over years. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like using endearments with a stranger, to ease their emotional or logistical load. Enough. Dublin in t-minus 12 hours, if I am not unlucky.
Eloise
Here I am in a Holiday Inn somewhere near O'Hare, trying to suppress my hunger and waiting for the heat to work and playing with all the cool gadgets - like the microwave and the fridge and soap and free coffee and the TWO BEDS i get all to myself to play in and the big mirror and all the other wonders of a brand spankin' new Holiday Inn. Zoe said to me that it would be good for me to do this hopping around Europe before I got to Amsterdam because "I'd get used to everything changing all the time," and I guess if things keep going as unexpected that will be true. I am delayed a full 24 hours to Dublin, but at least my bag will be with me and I won't get there in the middle of the night, and there is a possibility that I might get to go play in Chicago for awhile tomorrow, since my flight doesn't leave until 7:20 and I've got all morning and afternoon to kill. Also, I am definitely going to check out all the nuances of this Holiday Inn, something that I never get a chance to do because we always leave hotels really early in the morning. While I was waiting to be rebooked, I saw a mouse peep out from behind the Customer Service Desk. Then I got onto five wrong shuttles before I got on the right one. I have a change of underwear and some toothpaste and deodorant, but no change of clothes. And for some reason I checked the part of my computer cord that works in American outlets, so I just have a European adapter. I haven't eaten since 2:30 and room service is closed, so I'm pretty starving. I am really excited though, and not that stressed out. I guess I am a woman of the road now. Being in this big hotel room all by myself makes me want to shout SCREW YOU at the state of Indiana for that time they wouldn't let Angie and I get a room because we were under 21. It also makes me feel a little bit like McCauley Culkin in Home Alone 2. It is really interesting (and lonely) not having a cell phone (I have my Dutch phone, but it is roaming here so I can't really talk to anyone). Anyway, I should go to bed.
07 January 2008
Beginnings
One might wonder why I took a picture of this. It's a shoddy photo, although I think it turned out kinda cool - my hands are far from steady and I haven't gotten the hang of my shiny new camera yet.
Anyway, this is a doll sitting in front of a book entitled "The Powers That Be," one of many books in what one could call the "History Section" of my living room. I've been taking pictures around the house like crazy. Part of this is a self-imposed initiative - even in obviously casual situations, I always feel like a tourist whipping out a camera. Since I will be doing so many New and Exciting Things and exploring so many Nifty and Beautiful Places over the next few months, I am trying to shed myself of this reluctance to photograph so that I will have some memories in hand when it's all over. I learned the hard way that one has to take matters into one's own hands if one wants pictures of things in one's life when my resident photodocumentarian/best friend went abroad for the semester, and I emerged with approximately ten photos to show for six months of lived experience.
So that's what I've been doing these past few days- documenting my surroundings, from cats to doorframes to cakes to piles of yarn strewn all over my bedroom floor. It doesn't hurt that each time I come home, I become increasingly fascinated by the idiosyncracies of 523. It's an amazing house full of amazing things. Books and music in spades, certainly, but also knick-knacks. Walking from room to room in this place is like a series of reminders and history lessons. Frankly, it makes me want to never throw anything away (danger, danger)! I've lived here my whole life and I still find new things all the time. Today I spent a long while staring at the wall of buttons that has accumulated above the full-length cupboard in the backroom. I thought I had seen these buttons a million times, but I swear there are new ones! One that says "Attica Is All Of Us," which drove me to dig out the Prison Commission's Report again and read some more about the riots (which, for those of you who don't know, JW and Martha were involved in prisoner's rights work in the aftermath of). And one of Good Dog Carl which I'm pretty sure I've never seen before. What my parents have infused this space with is incredible, and I'm glad to photograph it, amateur though I am. I could just take pictures of the books for days. Books are really photogenic.
This photo craze, the creation of my Flickr and this blog, the obsessive packing and re-packing of my bag, the frantic search for clothes that are both chic and practical, are only some of the more obvious and material manifestations of my particular pre-departure brand of crazy.
When I was smaller, I spent hours upon hours planning imaginary trips. The number of coverless Lonely Planet guidebooks stacked up in my bedroom is astonishing, considering the farthest flung I've ever actually been, culturally, is Quebec. The penchant for imaginary trips has resulted in some useful things for me - most notably, a thorough grasp of Southeast Asian geography (can you find Vientiane on a map? I sure can.) and a keen eye for budget airfares. But it hasn't really sunken in that I'm going on a REAL trip now, that I have to REALLY prepare for. Or rather, it's making me antsy and giddy and all kinds of excited and doing strange things to my head. Where I would normally hesitate and retreat, I am currently hesitating and then plowing recklessly ahead. "Who cares! No consequences here! I'm leaving the country!" seems to be the name of the game. Fear not, though, reckless for me is tame for 97% of the population. Ironically, given my extensive background in Imaginary Trip Planning, the only things I have a clear idea about thus far are the people I'm seeing and the planes,trains, and buses I'm taking hither thither. I should get on that. Onward!
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