Nomad--good or bad?
These last months of travelling around have been amazing; the time of a lifetime, really, and something I doubt I will ever regret. I do wish I had actually been able to make it to the Indian Ocean, though. That would really have topped things off.
But in all seriousness, travelling like that is not easy. How do other people do it?
Most of the people with whom I talk, or who find out about my travells somehow, think "how cool is that," or how it must be such a "blessing," or wistfully speak of how they might like to do such travelling, too. To take in all these sights; to come face to face with so many cultures; to trekk around the world at all... It's all so exciting, so daring, so educational, so enriching, so...
There are some, however, who approach it from a different side. Who look at me and shake their heads rather sorrowfully. But what about community, they ask. What about roots?
And still some others take my hand, and say, Now darling, in all of these cultures you've been in, which one is yours?
They know that none of the cultures really are mine. That I belong nowhere and that I never ever fully will no matter how long I stay in one place, no matter how much I work to integrate and assimilate. They note that sometimes, too.
One person commented recently, Why, that must be what you are doing: you do not belong anywhere, so you keep going, but paradoxically, the more you keep going the less you belong anywhere.
I want to run; I want to stay. I want to stay; I want to run.
My world is too big and I don't know how to hang on to all of it; but...I don't know how to let go, either; not even what to let go of. I think if I give up one culture or place or home then I will deny some part of me that has a place there, and I cannot do that. I need to be whole, and you cannot deny or reject part of yourself and still be whole...
I do run from one place to the next, and I think I'm going to keep doing it, too. It seems the only way to escape the awful questions that I don't know what to do with: what to do, and who will I be, when I stop.
I don't know what to do with my life; it'd be so much easier not to do anything.
I don't know who to be; it's so much easier to run around being everything until it kills me... and then I won't have to worry about anything anymore.
I feel trapped right now in a life I didn't start or understand, but then built upon, and now cannot escape or change.
I want to run but I want to stay; I want to stay but I want to run. I don't know how to do either, and I am tired of them both.
My world is tearing me apart.
What a Month Holds
June. It's hard to believe it is nearly over already--we are almost a whole halfway through the year! Amazing where time goes...
Amazing what we do with it.
I am learning to stay put again and find it does not come easily...particularly when it does involve going back of a sort. Back to the home of my family, back to a country I have known for so many years and lived in for only a part of.
Back to traditions which have no place in today, but hold tight regardless. Traditions not cultural, but more those of habit within one's self, one's family, and one's community.
How hard it is to allow for change!
But they come along anyways...
This last while has been busy, and internet has been down til now...
The basement flat my sisters and I share flooded, and the ruin of it all... what can be salvaged? What can I bear to toss away, to allow to be lost forever? I hate to think what it must be like for people whose entire home is destroyed by such whims of weather.
And weather we have had here! High winds that knocked down trees all across the city and moved people's cars around... Huge balls of hail crashing on the gardens, on the red tiled roofs... Rain--so much rain!
But sun as well. I biked the other day out of the city to a lake (only about 20km) and spent the day there with my youngest sister, biking back. How burnt we were from that adventure! It was so hot I expected sunstroke anytime... but today is so cool I wear long sleeves and still shiver with cold.
I have been in one country for two weeks now with no moving around in that country.
And I'm discovering that perhaps one of the reasons to be insistently busy is just to distract oneself from the one thing you can never leave behind.
Yourself.
I Met the President Today...
Yes, it's true; I really did meet the President of Slovakia today. In fact, I even have his signature with a note signed to me, Lada, and of course, it was all most exciting. Pictures to follow when I have the chance to load them on the computer...
Being back here in Slovakia is such a nice thing. I like thinking
ah...I have a whole month and a half of no more planes or super long travels anywhere. It will be nice to do laundry again... nice to stay in the same room for an extended period of time...to maybe unpack clothes a little... to reconnect with a community once more.
And to get over jet-lag.
After hanging out at the Presidential Palace downtown today, my youngest sister and I went off to enjoy the city. We bought some crucial items with which to reequip our bikes, purchased some hotdogs in rolls from a kiosk, and wandered around in the fresh, summer, city air. Aahhh. (And of course, we topped it all off with some good old zmrzlina--icecream--from our local homeade stand.)
One of the things she and I discoursed on was the annonymity of city living--particularly when it comes to clothes. Sure, in some cities (we won't mention the obvious, like Vienna), people may very likely look you up and down and pass some sort of judgement on your attire or accessories (or lack thereof), but it doesn't really matter, does it? Because you don't know them and most likely won't. We were discussing our own very varied styles and the different particularities which we appreciate, and talking about the importance of being your self... In fact, we even talked about how much styles have changed in this country in, say, the last nine years.
When we first came to Bratislava, everyone wore formal black.
Well, today I saw something I never in my life expected to see. Not here, anyways. But hey, freedom, right?
Out across the Old Square walked someone with long hair, dressed in a vividly red housecoat!
What?!?Surely my eyes were decieving me...but no, they weren't. Someone really was wearing their bathrobe in the middle of the city!
Eventually, another person walked by in a red bathrobe... and later on, we came across three more people also in those bathrobes.
Turns out, it wasn't a fashion statement but an advertisment for Nescafe.
Well, they got me hooked. I want to walk around the city in a bright cherry red, fuzzy bathrobe!
Maybe I'll run back to the Prez. Palace and ask the president if he has one I can borrow...
Contraditions
Sometimes I want to stop. Just kick my shoes off; leave them tossed in a heap by the door; put my feet up on a cushion; head back against a cloud; against another cushion. Traveling is exhausting.
But it's curious to come to notice... Travels are indeed exhausting, but that is really only a physical exhaustion. I am exhausted because of relationships, and am at the same time rejuvenated by them. But right now... it is pure, unadulterated exhaustion.
I want to run far away from people. Escape life. Escape expectations and failures and misunderstandings. Escape from breaches of faith, from broken trust; from poorly chosen words at bad times; from so much hurt.
I don't want to always be coming home; I want to stay home. I don't want to stay home; I want to travel. I don't want to travel; it's always leaving. I love traveling; it's always coming home.
Madeleine L'Engle, one of my ultimate favourite authors, wrote in her book
A Circle of Quiet (Which yes, I'm currently reading, and yes, I know I need to add it to my list on the side here, but hey; i've been busy!), that contraditions in people are not a bad thing. They show how real we are. The more real we are, the less uniformed, the less conforming, and the more seeming contradictory we are because we are so...big.
And it's interesting to think about, because really, life is full of contradictions and opposites and things which don't always make sense. which together make up the world we know; the world we are part of. Night and day. Death and life. Hate and love. Men and women (ha!). And other things... different colours. Introvert/extrovert. Hopes and fears. Sorrow and joy. Science and technology and...faith. Knowledge, with all its different facets. Cultures. Languages.
Sometimes just the way you word something makes all the difference. Night and day or day and night? Death and life or life and death?
One is upbeat, one; downbeat. Same words; different relevance.
I used to be so frustrated with the contraditions in myself. Used to look at my life and think...
this will never work out; never ever make sense; never come together. But I think now, maybe some things just aren't meant to be understood. Some things must needs contradict. Some things must remain a mystery, and there is beauty in the mystery. And it's just a matter of living, of accepting, of believing and hoping and trusting.
I am, and I am not. But I am anyways.
Is it alright? Is that enough?
Crashing
Sometimes so much goes on in your life that you can't take it all in. You can't, or you would not be able to go on. Your feelings and emotions are suspended. You breathe and continue to be, but you are not wholly alive; not wholly being. Part of you has frozen in order to survive.
But you can only stay frozen for so long, and then the ice begins to crack. And then you begin to break. Chink, chink, chink and a very long craaaaacccckkkkk.
That's when you start to crash, when you just want to close your eyes and burrow under the covers or snuggle up with someone you know cares. Someone for whom it does not matter how mean and snappy you get in all the hurt. Someone who holds you close so you know they won't let you go; so you know that you won't drown in the dark, frigid water opening up beneath you.
Close your eyes tight. Don't give in to the tears. Don't succumb to the pain. Keep holding on. Keep your head above the water. Fight the cold seeping up your legs, weighing you and pulling you down. Pulling you down.
There is no bed to crawl into. There are no arms to hold you.
Search for hope and hold onto it. It will hold onto you.
Greetings!
Greetings from the State of Ohio in the USA!
Just passing through right now... It's so nice to have friends everywhere you go. It's like you never stop coming home. I like it...
Discoveries:
--the Pennsylvania Interstate has MUCH less road construction than the Route 80 (or whatever it's called) through same said state.
--Quizzno's is like Subway, just waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy better
--police universally don't like speeding. it's hard to tell which state has the most police on patrol, but after seeing 8 just after passing through into Ohio, it might be here...
--Blockbuster Videos are cheaper in Ohio than in NJ
--Watching uber scary movies just before sleep means...NO SLEEP!
--Papa Johns pizza is actually quite good.
--Online maps/road direction sites don't always work. When you click on Ohio, you may find yourself in California instead... and when you click on Indianna, it just might put you in Ohio. How random is that?
--road trips with sisters are unforgetable experiences.
