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11/25 Flight from Helsinki to Paris
I am so very deeply in
love with the rosy sunset and the awaiting dawn.
I feel the tug of my
heart. I didn’t take plum tarts and I feel the regret – pathetic but I know its
really just I don’t want to leave any part of that country behind. The people
were so kind, the land so beautiful, everything so full of nature and health
and life and spirit. The family was just beyond generous, it makes me want to
cry. They have seen so many things and places and work so diligently; they are
intelligent, cook together, play board games together, laugh and watch Jane
Austen and play Seven Wonders hundreds of times and take walks and go to saunas
and love their dogs and have such pride in their home and hometown.
They want to share.
 I ate so many berries
I reeked of them. I wore wool socks and ate sesame seed desserts from Israel
and dates and gloggi and plum tarts and avocado pasta – made by my awkward
hands – and strawberry cereal and porridge with litchenberries and strawberries
and cinnamon and peanut butter pancakes and salads and beet cakes and bean
salad and berry graham cake with yellow custard and teas of all flavors and
strengths, and vegetarian lasagna at a restaurant with a famous man from
Finnish TV and carrot cake with thick frosting. It wasn’t even all the
deliciousness of the food and drink – berry juice in the sauna – but the
company and warmth and laughter.
 They cuddle with
blankets and cocoa and donuts at 4 pm when the sun goes down with wool socks
and the click of Anne Marie knitting and Sufjan Stevens singing while they
cook. Victory songs – Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” – when they win a game. Sarcastic
jokes and witty remarks.
Churches in Tampere, a
man carrying a fallen angel, Josh Graban piano music, a nativity scene for the
young to play with. Locks of love and a Christmas donkey and sheep in a stable
yard. Running down slippery steps in the bitter wind to splash in ice-cold waters
with the moonlight stretching across miles of pine forests. Sweat and steam and
waves of heat, laughing at each other with games of 20 Questions by candlelight
and feeling so very not self-conscious.
There is nothing more
liberating than that split decision to do the seemingly irrational. That moment
when the barriers and claws of your mind are ripped away because the heart
finally just wants to be released. And a weight is lifted and you take the next
step with a brighter smile and a lighter spirit and you are happy. I didn’t
want to go into the lake, thinking it was a ridiculous notion. Then when Juho
and his friend Stefan went out running, diving, hollering into the darkness and
splashing through waves, I thought of the ridiculousness of my resistance. Life
is made up of the moments where we resist and when we release and when we take
hold and when we let go. Here was one where I just needed to break away, and so
I did. And with a crazed grin I rose from heated wood planks and dripped sweat
down onto the warm floor, stepping onto hard damp earth and down into the
waves.
The heat, the cold,
the numbness felt so alive. And after, how cleansed and renewed and awakened I
felt was incredible. I would sauna everyday if I could. And just knowing that
that is an integral part of their lifestyle shows the ease of the people, the comfort
of this home away from home.
Their bright eyes. My
desire for more, forever more words and forever and ever more time.
The language as well.
Rolling r’s and long phrases and a fluid gentle rocking of sentences. Like
putting sprinkles on a warm, chocolate-frosted gingerbread cookie. Warm,
mellow, a cushion. A language sounding in love.
  Rolling pine forests
and soothing plain chapels and Christmas twinkling light. Homemade and natural
always more appreciated. A church built from the rock. Ships in the harbor. The
cool, fresh, crisp air. No haste. I want to return to the museums, the cafes,
the little boutiques. I want a knitted cap and to cut a pine by the lake for a
tree for Noel. I want to play rounds and rounds of board games and listen to
Nathan speak to the dogs in Finnish. I want to hike and cross-country ski and
snowboard in the mountains and have a summer sauna and eat ice cream and glimpse
the Northern Lights.
Nathan mentioned my
dad growing mad during an intense game of Monopoly they had played years ago.
That moment I yearned and ached for my dad. And seeing Christmas things and
smell the cinnamon and tea and coffee and just the spirit of the air made me
want my mom’s embrace.
Yet there is so much
to see.
To Krakow next
weekend, which will be life-changing. To see Auschwitz. To hear the tongue of
Irene and nana again. To feel wrapped up in her culture for just a few short
days. To see a mass in Polish. Buy my mom something else beautiful.
Then in Paris, the
museums, the exhibits, the Christmas market, the music, the dancing and
drinking. Nicole to speak with, to hear about the war. To study, to read, to
write, to see.
The father next to me
rubs his daughter’s feet as she falls asleep, after they have eaten and
decorated a doll together. Sweet love.
I want to cry from the
beauty being collected in my soul. I never, ever want to lose a drop.
Of course I will be
different. I will ache for art and activity and culture. I will ache for new
friends in distant places. I will look at a map of the world and feel
invincible, capable of seeing and loving it all.
Collected beauty,
bundled memories, quiet stars above and twinkling lights below. Tears. God, you
have blessed me beyond what I thought was possible. I am yours, and forever
grateful.
Love selflessly this
breath and this moment amidst the soft blinking away of tears.
10/27 Jardin de
Luxembourg
 I think I have come to
desire an amount of solitude that seems so contradictory to what I thought I
would be. I wanted before a rich social life – which I have to a great extent
almost more than I could dream – and an overpowering love that takes over your
being. But I realize, as I ignore the attentions of both friends and male
pursuers, that maybe the desires I had were this fake sense of a future
security that really doesn’t show my own heart.
I’m grasping this
language and this culture and the essence of this place more and more each day.
There are old men carrying baguettes, old women with pulled shopping bags and
maroon hats, and teenagers jumping over blockades and drunks selling cocaine
and those that will not hesitate to say “I love you, Je t’aime” and those in cabby
hats and those that frown too easily on the subway or who don’t take a moment
to return the smile of a child. There are too many emotions for a place like
this. It is as if I am constantly hopelessly trying to swallow.
Perhaps it would be
wise to take pieces of the world and encase them in a phosphorescent glass. To
let artificial frays catch the light as they soar down from the top of the
dome. To create the illusion and resolution of space within. Protect, do not
erase. Do not let one piece sink too low. Let no memory fade.
(Eiffel Tower moments)
 The moonlight was
forbidden, the covers were drawn. An everlasting search for unity denied,
perhaps between the two figures fumbling in the dark. Hands jumbled, mouths
muffled, warmth shared and warmth taken away and warmth trapped between pleas
and apologies, searching for a heart’s upper left curve to borrow into.
Where was her
artificial light? Her cool sense of apathetic safety that allures the masses
and buries within them a false twinkle of their own? Where were her monstrous
curves, voluptuously teasing the banks of antiquity with her nouvelle allure?
Where had her peak gone, with Babylon or Olympus? Or had the falseness so
disgusted her that she barely watched with an upturned nose?
 Seule. Amidst the
jumble and cold plastic and ungrateful ground and the shadow of a lover’s hands
smothering her conscious. The ache of hollow playfulness, of complicated
spontaneity. Of words on her lips halting and ending because the mind is too
animalistic for tense and agreement. The harrowing glimpses of past hopeful
grazes that were too tempting for innocence and its ignorance within the empty
upper left corner in her heart; they came in lamenting waves. Come back, she
begs, to her and to him. Come back to mistreated goodness and use her again.
Moping, aching moment.
Cozied in my scarf and pen.
10/31 Jardin de Luxembourg, avant mes cours
The most solemn
beautiful day. I sat by a younger man who seems so content, relaxed, ease with
himself and his plan for the day. While I remain restless and sad, sometimes. I
just long for eternal sunlight and my nana’s embrace.
 Yesterday. The man who
sells candy outside the metro Odeon, unloading his sugary sweet white van with
a frown, stacking things just right as they have been just right every morning
of every day. He sells to giddy children and old women with no remaining hard
candies and couples from all over the world who will share the goodies on the
banks of the Seine or in between shops with a feeling of infant excitement, of
jumping back to the time when we ran everywhere because there was no need to
take Time, but to hasten to it with open arms and gasping lungs.
11/13 Chez moi
I am drunk off the
beauty and wonder of this paradise. Who else gets to be this damn lucky? Too
many things to keep straight. Too much that is too beautiful.
I have butterflies
again.
The magic of this place is this: every stone speaks.
Every wave of the
Seine carries a story. Art is alive here, music is alive, the language breathes
sensuality and vitality. She is alive.
11/19 Barcelona
Airport
Something about the
homelessness of travel is appealing. Of being bedraggled and exhausted with
only a backpack for company. Of feeling a longing for every place you’ve been
and every place you want o be in one whirlwind moment as you walk the echoing
marble halls of the airport. Always hungry, always thirsty, always a little
sick and a little tired and a little anxious for reunions and homecomings against
anxiety for the new place, the new tour, the new adventure. Mouth dry and mind
drier. People looking distant, solitary and isolated even when with families.
Everyone who takes a journey takes it for one’s own.
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| Muslims praying in Beauvais Airport |
Something awkwardly
beautiful about the cafes and fast food and stores selling duty-free
tablecloths to the apathetic but succeeding traveler. Everything feels like
it’s needed. You’re on a leg, not a last leg, but you stand with precaution,
searching for utility.
I think some people
don’t see the world without the fog of thinking of rest and nourishment.
I will be so
judgmental when I go home. Or I will think people don’t know how to live the
right way and be disgusted at their life choices. Maybe I’m better with lots of
books to occupy this growing mind.
How easy we sleep.
Mélange
Let and laisse
your things and mes choses,
take and tack
marche and march
the steps of Edith
and feel le sens
d'une ville that seals
un amour in my coeur
et le flight de mon soul.
10/20 Back to Paris from Normandy
 We arrived yesterday
and I was so afraid, built up with aching anticipation. The lands were as I imagined,
the white cows and horses cross green and orange landscapes under a pale blue
cloud-filed sky. (Just now in a field, saw two men, one holding back a barking
mutt and the other lifting the prize of a rabbit, in the middle of a
post-harvest field) Also the rest stops, with junk food and coffee machines and
lines for bathrooms and sugary drinks and babies crying or wandering, the smell
of gas and al haze of sale exhaustion, truckers and trucks lined and piled all
over; it is all so familiar and such a delight. Almost got coffee or treats for
the sake of being in a rest stop again. I realize now how they were a part of
my childhood.
I could live on the
walls of the medieval town of St. Malo, with its seagulls and crashing waves
and shops that draw you in with cozy antiquity. These hills, filled with
red-roofed homes and dirty play toys and bikes and flowers and the feeling of a
comfort, a familiarity. In St. Michel, the monastery and even side tourists
streets had the feel of serenity and spirituality that I sometimes find lacking
in Paris. I love it all, but I would give up bars and clubs and crowded metros
and busy streets for cider in a haystack in Bretagne or Normandy.
I ache leaving it. I
think I may belong here, or in a place like this.
I wanted to run from
beach to rock at Omaha, but little kids were doing just that and it was moving
enough. Calling “Papa” as they dart up the sand in such stark contrast to the
soldiers’ torment as they made the same run. In the cemetery, as Arlington, I
said sorry. I don’t know why exactly. I knew most should not have died, war is
silly, etc. But y apology feels greater than that. That I will never truly
understand, that I can only humble myself to a point with learning and
listening. That I could never meet their eyes and feel worthy, or worth
anything to the level at which they served, the level at which they died. That
is what I was sorry for.
 A man, Hispanic,
marched nicely dressed in brown tailored suit, and saluted and marched away. He
might understand.
My tears kept raining
down, an uncontrollable shivering sadness into my bones. I missed everyone and
everything as if a part of me was being buried in the ground at that moment. A
quiet panic.
The rain was a soft
patter, the birds a glimmer of companionship. The sound of steps, rustle of my
jacket. All calming. Touching the damp cold stone of the crosses, so bitterly
solid yet reassuringly so. Everything was just such a stark contrast.
A rainbow over stains of blood.
  The bunkers were just
fun, an excitement that video games and movies and my fort-loving self caused
to stir within me. I fell in the mud, crept through barbed wire, and imagine
the adventure without a thought of mortality. Sun and rainbows shined there
too. Just so stark. I felt a fluster beyond content and the sorrowful remorse.
Sitting in a
marionette bar, swinging away, drinking games and laughter – I wonder sometimes
at my desire for isolation when things can be so joyous with others. But this
morning, the walk/jog on the wall, I had to do alone. The sea called to me more
than anything, crashing against the hidden causeway, bragging in each crash and
pull. The gulls, birds in a swarm, boatmen on an antique ship, the stars and
moon slowly giving way to sunlight… a rope tearing me away.
Hopefully this week will not be
too hard with my six euro finances and emotional struggles. I realize how much
I appreciate the pure notion of friendship as I stay longer with these people.
“I’m glad I met you.” For these friends, these experiences, this city and
country and continent.
Friday in St. Gervais
with a cloister of nuns, or St. Louis sur l’Ile, amidst a small devout group;
both made my heart ache. The church today was so plainly open and awakening
with its chanting. I just feel tossed about by people and places and contrasting
desires and forgetting and remembering: it builds up.
 Yet I know, as I look
back upon Italy and Cannes and the month here, I see so much brilliance and light
and change for me. I see something beautiful and young – and those things
always seem to be looked back on one day with aching delight.
For this week, see
art, stay cheap, active, and breathe. Be. Don’t miss too much, or it could
overwhelm.
(Written before our trip to Normandy. The poetry focuses around the Eiffel Tower, my favorite although cliche spot in Paris. My grandpa fought on the beaches of Normandy up to the liberation of Paris, which is why it held such meaning to me.)
10/24
And foreign warmth,
uncomfortable comfort
before metal arches and
flashing kodaks and the jingle of china toys and
popping corks. A mile of metal bridges
scaling the darkness, shading stars with
waves of her own supernovas
as I feel the ancient winds come
from drunken piss-stained banks
and smile
against cold handlebars
and foreign warmth in a shadowed place.
11/5
Her peak reposing
in angel's sheets and
swan feathers, feet
cold and damp, raindrops clinging
to her shoulders and awaiting dawn.
11/12
Sa vue, s'est couchée
par les vents d'un couple
qui marchait, jouait
avec l'amour qui souffle
dans l'espace qu'elle voit.
10/19 - On the bus to Normandy
I have such
expectations. But I’m not on this trip with the right people. I want my mom to
be with me. She knows how much it touches me. She knows what this means.
This morning, father
and blonde-haired young daughter with a blue suitcase in between them, miles
and expectation on the girl’s face.
How do you piece
together someone from their face?
 Last evening, I walked
down the gleaming neon-lit cobbled paths, the upper levels pale and concrete
and boarded with all the life sitting by synthetic memories below. The people
are with loved ones, laughing and finding directions and perusing menus and
wallets and photocopied paintings amidst a feeling of complete obliviousness.
Is it possible to even walk down a street here and let the stones wobbling one’s
feet, the tags of youth, or the ancient washing of colored stones sink their
story into one’s conscious? Brilliance has strolled down every rue, His cape
sweeping and feathered hat catching every eye. Virtuosity has stayed recluse in
cafes and music rooms, feasting on the art that remains that we dub genius.
Neither seems to venture far from landmarks and the ashen faded stones that
tide over one another in segments of allotted repose, an eternal hostel.
Flashes and blinking battery signs and continues poses attempt to capture that
which was never asked to be borrowed.
 I walked by all of
this and feel filled by human voices of all languages, fulfilled by human
presence. If you have no one beside you to share a moment, borrow a stranger.
Absorb the love they are receiving in that moment, really watch it. The love
others give is almost as good as being loved yourself; and I mean that in the
base of love, not any commercialized or depicted relationship. We are all
comforted knowing someone is being loved, no matter who it is.
Let the sun rise and
spread light across tilled fields and red shingled towns and huddled trees that
embrace the mountainside. Let my eyes close, but only for a little while.
I keep a small notebook in my backpack, and everyday I write down something I see or hear or think. So here's some excerpts from my wandering mind.
10/8 ::
 The
magic of this city makes me want a thousand cups of coffee and a thousand pages
to fill with what life is and what it is not and all that should be
immortalized within the pain and missing and regret.
10/13 ::
There’s a magic in
people that I wish we all realized. Beauty is a mother who is young and her
little boy sleeps on her lap. Or kids throwing rotten apples from the haystacks
of Monet down into a square. There is magic in flowers that bloom a thousand
fiery shades with not a hint of dullness. Magic within repose. Within the spin
of language.
The fizz of the cork,
sugar on popped corn,
wood and spice and sting, warmth of the hearth;
sifting
wisps from mugs and cakes, the crackle of leaves, the appreciation of a friend.
10/14 :: Lutecia Arena (ancient Roman stadium)
Within the beginning of a century, within the tearing of calendar pages and
scribbling of corrected dates, within the click of every clock adorning each
wall, there is an impossible pause. A hush, a slow rush of twisted space that
lingers and flickers before the world continues its spin. We love this moment,
anticipating it each year, parading and caroling and traveling to be with those
who will appreciate the inconclusive pause. It is anticipated by the expectant
nothing, and leads to following nothing.
 It is merely at that strike that
we shake off mortality and feel most infinite.
My journey is to find this
moment, the inconclusive impossible inconceivable pause, again and again and
again. Maybe if I acquire enough of the false tricks of Time, I will find myself
with a paper link of truth behind me. A trail of fullness. A fulfilled and
honest passing of Time.
So toss the clock, burn the
papers, use up the ink in questions and thoughts. For to be within, I believe
you can only venture alone.
10/15 ::
You see the
magic of each street by staring at just one. If you want to see Paris, look up.
10/17 :: Vegetarian
Indian restaurant (favorite dining spot in the city)
 I want to burst. There is so
little time and I need to stop being so overwhelmed by the threat of it. I am
in Paris and I feel like it is the sand of times of Egypt slipping through my
sweating palms. What am I to do but go on my own when that is when I feel most
content and most alive in this city of too much, city of art and love and
family that smothers me whole? I want to feel as if I am not the only person
who just wants the here and now and not anything from the US. Paris is about
getting take-out and being a pig outside Notre Dame. It’s about getting lost
and looking at clothes you can’t afford and eating food you shouldn’t have paid
so much for and listening to jazz and violins and sitting in churches and
hearing children laugh and getting drenched in the rain and losing track of
money and time and hearing stories in 50 different languages and seeing people
be people because we are all just wandering unrequited lovers and we all can
love like a child does and sing like a mourning dove and simply be in this
spinning universe something stable and true and beautiful. Our lives are
sometimes luckier than others, longer, richer, funnier, fatter, lonelier,
loftier. But there is always someone who has felt the way you feel. Someone who
knows this ache or that tear and can feel it resonate in their soul the moment
they meet your eyes. There’s a reason why our eyes refract light; to shine our
souls into someone else’s, to find understanding. Artists are those who are not
afraid to bruise and bleed and go insane or sink to depression or collapse into
poverty for the sake of revealing this human link. They find the base we can
all relate to, the things that make us one. It is all within hope, despair,
love, isolation, and death. I would say faith is one as well, but I think
faith, even though it is beyond real to me, is a mix of hope, love, and death.
It combines all of those into a flood of confusion or enlightenment that most
cannot grasp in their lifetimes. I don’t know how I know my God. But I do know
Him. And so I am content.
I can’t stay straight. Smoke
fills my lungs, too many desires and despairs to handle. I cannot handle
poverty despite my love of ease. I want things, unfortunately. It makes me
ache. I want to love selflessly, to not desire the food and cigarettes, the
treats and drinks, the concerts and clothes.
How will I leave this place? Go
to a place where I cannot walk for miles and see these people from every age
and feel the buildings and streets whisper their history? Where I cannot feel
history ache to burst from within, where I feel close to every soul and my own
soul and want to just run with aching limbs and let air be my lover if nothing
else? Let this city trap me within its perfumed velvet robe and trap me in the
cloistures of a sepulcher of the past. Time does not exist here. It is a line
of continuous and endless possibilities, of roses that do not wilt, of cups
that do not run dry.
 Comfort in anonymity. Comfort in
my coat and scarf and pen.
I am not the same as I was a
month ago. I have come to appreciate my body’s strength, my mind’s keen
attention, my heart’s ups and downs. I have come to see the me that I want to
be, the right me. The one that does what she wants, sees true intentions, is
not petty nor vain nor tired nor sore. I pray and wirte and wander and drink
and read and observe and learn. I want to feel a violin resonate at my chin
again, so badly. I want to listen to every piece of Brahms. I want to write
each day without bias but with soul. I want to write for others and not myself
– a very challenging notion. I want fluidity in my soul and body and to see
every painting and sing every song. I want to love under a canopy. I want to see my ancestry and speak and
understand each language so that I can get more of humanity within my grasp.
A backpack and a dream.
Time to see friends. Time to
climb out of solace and into smiles and stories. Hopefully I can impress with
just being me, backpack and poverty and expatriate and all. Let’s go Hemingway.
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