no more where that came from

hi. that's it. i'm home. i don't blog while i'm home, and i'm going to be home til i finish my thesis at least. so.

if you want a little appendix to drag this out a bit further, send me an email. i'm making a little book - the real kind, in three dimensions - with some little drawings and some little text and i'll send you one in the mail if you ask nicely and give me your address.

thanks for reading

last day

It rained every day of my last week in Amsterdam, every day at least a little and today, the last day, a lot. When it wasn’t raining the sky was clouds from end to end, so that this morning when I opened my eyes and looked out the sixth floor full-wall window my bed was pressed against I had a moment of regret followed my a moment of ingenuity, a plan to split open the cloudcover and shuck it off like a pillowcase.

Tomorrow morning I am getting on a plane to New York. I’ve left here before, by plane and train and automobile, and I’ve always come back again, so I am feeling no latent alarm. I am sensing, from experience, that although I will load my back and arms with all my Amsterdam possessions, receive a boarding pass, flash my passport, I will not, despite all this evidence to the contrary, actually be leaving.

Given the weather it has been a satisfying last week. I gave accurate directions no less than five times, tandem biked around the island of Texel with Natalie, started and finished a solid novel by an author I hadn’t heard of before, pleasantly ended an ongoing nothing-in-particular with a cute and clever Dutch boy, and visited a hands-on museum of hydraulic engineering. On the practical side I did laundry, packed, bought presents, and sent a final round of postcards. I listened to This American Life and cycled through the favorite songs I missed while on the road – songs by angry girls and country boys and friends I haven’t seen in too long. I considered cutting off my hair but decided against it.

Surprisingly, I am ready to go back. I am most of all ready to get to work on my thesis. I am also eagerly anticipating late nights with friends, and nonstop access to English media, and the produce windfall that is autumn in Eugene. Shit, I might even be able to eat a brownie! I never thought much about brownies but they don’t make them here, so I haven’t had a brownie in almost a year. Which suddenly makes brownies marvelous.

Anyway. See y’all soon.

confession

with my 4:30 flight i could have seen florence, but instead i ate bread and cheese at debbie's
lace-covered table and watched mtv.

i am having the sort of day when music videos make me sentimental
so i caught the next bus to the airport -
i'm three hours early,
my flight's not on the board yet,
the ticket counter is closed.

but here are all the people doing airport things:
hailing taxis, looking hopeful, sleeping, carrying children.
going to an airport is a tremendous act of faith.

the woman on the radio on the bus sang last night a d.j. saved my life
and i believed her.

2 august 2005

Today was pretty fuckin fantastic as days go. I woke up in Debbie's Siena apartment, one with a big door like I've always dreamed about, and lay about in the sun eating a nectarine and reading The Art of Travel. Then I booked my flight to Amsterdam, wrote letters, chatted with the town artist who specializes in illuminated manuscripts, ate grapefruit gellatto, made a quick sketch.

Everything in life feels fabulously easy after the Balkans.

And part of me feels like I cheated, like I should have gone to Slovenia for my last four days, because it's a place I've been imagining ever since the Slovenian guys in my Turkish hostel five years ago told Slovenian stories.

But then the rest of me opens another bottle of wine and goes back to laughing with my friends on the Piazza del Campo.

the beginning of august

Test Number One of my Newfound Patriotism:
being stuck on a stopped train full of Carnival Cruiseline Americans

bad: their loud conversations and general panicked agreement that not getting back to the ship on time would be the absolute End of the World

worse: when the Spanish guy said, jokingly, Follow me to a taxi! I'm the boss! and they responded, not jokingly, No, God is the boss.

worst: the Louisiannan's filling time by expounding on the greatness of George W. Bush, including a monologue on the complacency of Bill Clinton and frequent repetition of the phrase the best defense is a good offense.

the end of july

At night the deck lights are off, so you only identify other passengers by the pieces of their conversations - usually in French or Italian - that break through the sound of waves and wind, and by the tiny orange circles of their cigarettes that occasionally arc down and disappear into the water.

By 3 am the bar has closed and all the hallways and lounges are littered with fallen bodies, still and silent as if the ship had been gassed. People in our society rarely sleep together in large numbers, certainly not on furniture and floors, so the scene is eerie and tragic.

In the morning the sky is white and the sea silver. On deck dozens of passengers are wrapped into every corner with their sleeping bags like oversized, multicolored coccoons. Here and there are traces of people: a shoe, a cough, blowing hair.

29 july 2005

The border guards are boreder guards at 3 am so they unceremoniously unload us from the bus - the Spanish with big earings and the Germans with big cameras and the Croats, weary and unsurprised.

Now ten miles later we are on our third coffee break of a so far six hour trip, passsengers smoking and schmoozing as if this was what they'd signed up for, some all-night mobile bar, instead of just a ticket to Croatia.

grrrr

Here I am trying to look mean in the bus, trying to look big and mean though I am neither. When I want company I write in my journal - everyone wants to sit by the girl writing in her journal - but tonight I am big and mean, with two seats all to myself for the long trip to Split.

28 july 2005

Sarajevo is SO HOT.

I am noticing that I have written several times about graveyards and that isnt really fair. Because the thing about this region - the thing that is both beautiful and a little creepy - is that it doesnt feel like a graveyard at all. It feels like Europe, with galleries and nightclubs and cafe-lined streets. The locals kiss a lot in public and eat an inordinate number of ice cream cones and wear jeans rolled up high.

And all this happens against a backdrop of bullet-scarred buildings, every old surface so pock-marked I cant imagine so many bullets, and just a few more people than seems average missing a limb or speaking sign language.

The city of Sarajevo was under siege for nearly four years, completely surrounded by the Serbian forces. Their only link to the world was a tunnel 800 meters long and one meter wide. There was no running water and no electricity. And during that time the biggest seller on the black market was makeup.

I think no city in the world has the dignity of Sarajevo.

mostar

The thing about this cemetery in Mostar is that all the people buried here were born in different years. Usually in a small cemetery all the people were born around the same time, because one life span later the cemetery was made. But here people born in 1947 and 1966 and 1955 and 1974 are all buried next to each other, in clean white marble rows, because they all died in 1993.

What is a year like, when everyone dies at once? Where do you find compassion for the loss of your daugher or your brother when everyone you know is mourning their own losses?

In 1993 I was thinking about college and my new drivers licence and Jordan Potash. I didnt think much about the war going on, and when I did I imagined it far away and happening between irrational, even crazy, foreign people. It didnt occur to me that nice people with pretty houses and department store sweaters would kill each other. What would be the point of that?