Loud Retreat

Everything is louder in a dorm room at 1:30 am when I am desperately trying to be quiet. The lock clicking open, the door of my storage space scraping, me pulling out the things that have spilled from my pack so I can repack them.

The idea was to pack then, in the not too wee hours of the morning so that when it was time for me to leave at 7am, I wouldn’t have to wake people up on the other end.

The best of intentions…

I could hear the woman below me stirring. I could feel the bed shake as she adjusted. I watched her light flicker on hastily and then darken again moments later. I projected meaning onto the flash- a visual sigh of irritation, a silent "screw you." 

I couldn’t blame her. A few days before I'd been roused by someone's alarm that they seemed too inept or uninterested to turn off. And in other dorms I've listened to people slam doors, carry on conversations, and flick on lights, as I tried to sleep.

Having just disturbed a room full of veritable strangers despite my best efforts, maybe the loud and decisive noise would have been best. Forget the slow motion tiptoeing, just grab what I need as quickly as possible- noise be damned. Quick and dirty, the packing version of a band-aid removal.

It was more than last minute packing. When I finally climbed the perilous ladder to my higher than average bunk and realized I needed to find a place to stay in my new destination, I dimmed my phone and hunkered down searching out a space to rest my body after the next day’s transit.

Success! I found a place only to realize I'd left my wallet with my credit card in the bag stowed under the bed below me. More scrambling down the ladder, more scraping doors, more shifting and flicking lights in the bed below me.

At last, settled for the night, staring at the time and calculating how few hours of sleep I'd get before I had to wake myself, and through proximity, my bunk-mates. The room finally silent, my bunk finally still, my adapter plunged from its socket so high up with a startling clatter amplified by the quiet of the room.

I climbed down again. Its retrieval made all the more awkward because it settled in the space by my bunk-mate's head.

Sigh.

I’d want to curse me out.

In the morning my packing required final touches. There were things I had needed the night before; hygiene, medication, night clothes, flip flops. All of those things had to be integrated into the travel bag. I grabbed everything and moved into the hallway where any noise I'd be making would be muffled through the doors. I brushed my teeth in a separate bathroom and prepared to leave.

Downstairs, I sat in the hostel for a few moments, checking and sometimes rechecking that I had everything (paranoid after my mishap in Japan) and then left my key in the little tray set aside for that purpose and listened to the door click quietly close behind me.

Soul Rest

The view I wanted to want.

The sun, hot and bright in a cloudless sky. The walls bleached white or whispering versions of brighter colors by light or salt and all I wanted was a bit of sun and the possible retreat of shade. Shade, the great gift in southern Portugal where the sun feels amazing until it doesn’t. Where the breeze is a better air conditioner than any environmentally degrading contraption human’s have created.

I sat on the roof of my hostel, a place designed for just such lounging. Bed/couches line the walls on the roof. Wrought iron tables and succulents and other plants coveting and receiving the sun. The only thing missing is a hammock. Short of that, the fig tree offering a smattering of shade based on the position of the sun and the clothes line waving a collection of colorful clothing items, flags in the wind.

I wanted to want to go to the beach.

I wanted to want to sit on the sand and when the heat overcame me go running with abandon into the frigid blue water.

I hadn’t expected the chill of the water. I expected a gentle cooling. A cooling that after a few moments recedes in the memory and is simply the temperature. I was expecting the water off the coast of Croatia. Water where I had to be brazen to submerge myself but once submerged, I could mock myself for all of the theatrics it took to get me in. But no, this water reminds me it is cold even once I've dunked myself, the huge waves splashing carelessly against my torso. It felt a bit like floating in a glass filledwith wayward ice cubes.

I wanted to want that. I wanted to want to gaze at the magnificent cliffs that are said to dot the shore here if you walk in the right direction.

What I actually did.

I wanted to want that.

But all I really wanted was to sit and read and lounge in the sun and eat and sleep.

I wanted to want to write. I'd been so diligent in the last weeks, writing in the morning before marching off into the streets of whatever city I'm in. but yesterday wasn’t that day. Yesterday wasn’t a day of doing any thing I “should” do. Yesterday was not a day where I could convince myself to be responsible or guilt myself into “proper” behavior.

That is the beauty and the challenge of traveling alone. The freedom to do just exactly what I want to to do. The absence of any judgment save my own.

I remember arriving in Cappadocia, Turkey and excitedly planning for a pre-dawn balloon ride over the strange and phallic rock formations that are famous in the region.

That was it. That was all I had planned for the day.

When I returned to my hotel only a short time after the sun had escaped the horizon and shone still gently on the city, I didn’t come up with any other plans. In that case, I didn’t even want to want to do anything else. I had my eye on a hammock and I had a book I was more than ready to pretend I'd be reading.

Yesterday was a day like that. A day where as I sit here trying to recount what I accomplished or what memorable thing I experienced, leaves me with my head cocked to the side and nothing of interest for anyone.

Except…

Except, I think there is a place for a day like yesterday. I think there is a place like a string of days like yesterday. Days where I am not doing anything. Not even wandering. Days where I am replenishing my stores in a different way. In a sloth-like way.

Lagos as the sun sets.

So yesterday was a day like that. It isn’t my first and it won’t be my last.

Sometimes it is health that demands such a day of rest. But that isn’t exactly the same thing. The body demanding its due...”pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's” and all of that. The body isn’t one to let debt accumulate for too long before demanding payment in some form. So spending a languishing day in bed when my body demands it isn’t the same as spending a languishing day in bed when my brain demands it...or my soul. Their demand is less tangible. Easier to ignore. Easy to talk myself out of but no less important on its impact and benefits. The calm. The creativity. The healing.

So, yesterday I lay about the hostel napping and reading and gazing out into the horizon of buildings and hills and ocean and sun.

And today...today I'll see what the soul demands. And as much as I'm able, I'll give it.

The sun, hot and bright in a cloudless sky. The walls bleached white or whispering versions of brighter colors by light or salt and all I wanted was a bit of sun and the possible retreat of shade. Shade, the great gift in southern Portugal where the sun feels amazing until it doesn’t. Where the breeze is a better air conditioner than any environmentally degrading contraption human’s have created.

I sat on the roof of my hostel, a place designed for just such a lounging. bed/couches line the walls on the roof. Wrought iron tables and succulents and other plants coveting and receiving the sun. the only thing missing is a hammock. Short of that, the fig tree offering a smattering of shade based on the position of the sun and the clothes line waving a collection of colorful clothing items, flags in the wind.

I wanted to want to go to the beach.

I wanted to want to sit on the sand and when the heat overcame me go running with abandon into the frigid blue water.

I hadn’t expected the chill of the water. I expected a gentle cooling. A cooling that after a few moments recedes in the memory and is simply the temperature. I was expecting the water off the coast of Croatia. Water where I had to be brazen to submerge myself but once submerged, I could mock myself for all of the theatrics it took to get me in. but no, this water reminds you it is cold even once I've dunked myself. The huge waves splashing carelessly against my torso. It felt a bit like floating in a glass with wayward ice cubes.

I wanted to want that. I wanted to want to gaze at the magnificent cliffs that are said to dot the shore here if you walk in the right direction.

I wanted to want that.

But all I really wanted was to sit and read and lounge in the sun and eat and sleep.

I wanted to want to write. I'd been so diligent in the last weeks, writing in the morning before marching off into the streets of whatever city I'm in. but yesterday wasn’t that day. Yesterday wasn’t a day of doing any thing I “should” do. Yesterday was not a day where I could convince myself to be responsible or guilt myself into “proper” behavior.

That is the beauty and the challenge of traveling alone. The freedom to do just exactly what I want to to do. The absence of any judgment save my own. I remember arriving in Cappadocia, Turkey and excitedly planning for a pre-dawn balloon ride over the strange and phallic rock formations that are famous in the region.

That was it.

That was all I had planned for the day. And when I returned to my hotel only a short time after the sun had escaped the horizon and shone still gently on the city, I didn’t come up with any other plans. In that case, I didn’t even want to want to do anything else. I had my eye on a hammock and I had a book I was more than ready to pretend I'd be reading.

Yesterday was a day like that. A day where as I sit here trying to recount what I accomplished or what memorable thing I experienced, leaves me with my head cocked to the side and nothing of interest for anyone.

Except…

Except, I think there is a place for a day like yesterday. I think there is a place like a string of days like yesterday. Days where I am not doing anything. Not even wandering. Days where I am replenishing my stores in a different way. In a sloth-like way.

My hostel roof...where I napped, wrote, and read

So yesterday was a day like that. It isn’t my first and it won’t be my last.

Sometimes it is health that demands such a day of rest. But that isn’t exactly the same thing. The body demanding its due...pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's and all of that. The body isn’t one to let debt accumulate for too long before demanding payment in some form. So spending a languishing day in bed when my body demands it isn’t the same as spending a languishing day in bed when my brain demands it...or my soul. Their demand is less tangible. Easier to ignore. Easy to talk myself out of.

But, yesterday I lay about the hostel napping and reading and gazing out into the horizon of buildings and hills and ocean and sun.

And each day I'll see what the soul demands. And as much as I'm able, I'll give it.

Question #2

When I sat down at the coffee shop and nibbled on an overly sweet coconut bun, I was focused solely on completing my writing. I have a not-quite-complete speculative fiction novel waiting for my attention, three other novel ideas that need outlining, a travel book in-process, and a neglected blog.

I planned (as much as I plan any part of travel I do alone) this trip around the world with three focuses: to eat...a lot, to restore myself after almost seven years of working in violence prevention, and to write. I’ve paid the requisite attention to the first two goals and precious little to the last. Intermittent blogging isn’t sufficient. I want something robust and complete. I'm tired of telling people I’ve “almost” finished a book, I want to be definitive- I've finished.

Travel in Europe has never interested me in the same way other places in the world have. There are foods I want to eat all of the things in Italy and Spain, try out the cuisine in Croatia and Montenegro, but the ruins of Greece didn’t awe me the way Egypt’s did, the cities of Portugal don’t mesmerize me the way Vietnam’s did.

The Asia half of my travel helped me focus on goals one and two for this trip, hot baths and massages, good tours and night markets; maybe Europe will help me to focus on goal three. Europe inspires me to sit still, gaze at beautiful water and varied people while nibbling on food as I type furiously.

And type I did, Rodrigo y Gabriela played lyriclessly in my ears, drowning out the bits of conversation and traffic sounds that both floated and roared by. I looked up and smiled when a woman asked permission to sit at the seat catty-corner to me and again when she left. So when a 70ish year old man did the same, I offered him the same smile and nod. And then I continued typing.

He munched on his toast, eating first around the crusts before devouring those as well. When the busboy came by and seemed to be fussing at me (he was speaking in Portuguese and I wasn’t following any of what he was saying) the older man across from me mimicked him affectionately as the busboy walked back into the restaurant, and then shook his head and smiled in my direction. A nonverbal “don’t worry about it.”

I bent my head back to my computer, music still playing in my ears, and the second question in Tim Ferris’s Five Minute Journal exercise made me pull out one of my earbuds. That morning’s answer to the question, “what would make today great?”, rung in my ears: a meaningful connection.

I took out the second earbud and leaned over to the gentleman across from me and asked if he spoke English. He did. I asked him about his day.

We chatted for a while. Me, mostly listening, straining to hear him through his Austrian accent and over the rush-hour traffic circling the roundabout behind us. He had a stroke recently and fired his doctor because the doctor told him he’d never walk again (he walks to physical therapy every day). He played hockey for eight years, married a model. His wife died six years ago; doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong and one day she told him, “hold me, I’m ready to go,” and she went.

He’d been in Portugal for more than 30 years, I’ve been here a week. We sat opposite each other and for a short moment we were connected.

Cool breeze floating in, I thanked him and I walked away, reminded that we all carry volumes; whole stories of love and loss and laughter. With earbuds in and averted gazes those stories are easy to miss.

Later, having scrounged around for dinner, I settled into my seat at the table of my hostel. A man walked over searching out a mug or glass to prepare his vervain tea. The usual traveler pleasantries exchanged, we somehow settled into conversation.

Trump led to Brexit led to Algeria. We talked about travel and family and heartbreak. We exchanged Whats App information and in the morning we chatted about our plans, we sat quietly beside each other, tending to our own worlds but still connected. And when it was time for me to leave, he offered to walk me. And he did, accompanying me all the way to the bus station, a walk and train ride away.

I’ve often thought about what could have made my day better (question five in the Five Minute Journal). I’ve lamented “if only” to some event. But I've never really expressed a specific idea about how to make my day the best. I've “hoped” or “dreamed” but the thinking there is more magical less within my control. But starting my day mindfully. Starting my day with an idea of what I want from it in specific terms – not “i want to be happy” but “what could I do that would make me happy” has adjusted my thinking.

What would make your day great today?

Lost in Lisbon

Europe must work for my affection. Whether it is some unconscious bias for its colonial past or more likely, a conscious one for its numerous sleights, I am not a fan of the “the civilized world.” few countries within its context have made my list of “must see” and even those that have (Italy and Greece) the visit is predicated less on what the country might offer (Vatican or Acropolis) and almost exclusively for the food I imagine they harbor.

After decades of dreaming of Egypt, when I finally visited I lingered over every

grain of sand and unfurling piece of history. Meanwhile, two hours at the Acropolis and I had spent my reserve of “awe” for the crumbling structure and was ready to move on.

Still, I planned for at least part of my yearlong sabbatical to include Europe. After the whirlwind that was me darting from city to city throughout southeast Asia, thirsty for everything she had to show me, I figured Europe, equipped with all of the history I am least interested in, would be a place I could sit quietly and write. 

So, I entered European borders with a bit of attitude and the expectation that if I were to fall in love here, if this were to be more than a glorified writer's camp, Europe was going to have to seduce me as no other place has been forced to seduce me.

Lisbon courted my affections with public transportation. Anyplace that links the city to the airport wins at least a begrudging nod from me. All the more so in Lisbon, the $2 ride diluting the damage a week of less frugal spending in Croatia inspired.

The sun bright, the language scrutable (with my elementary understanding of Spanish), I could feel myself relenting- succumbing slowly to Portugal’s charms.

Novelty (escalators on the streets connecting one block to another far above it) and historical predictability (statues of people on horses showcasing ancient ideals) weave the city into an interesting tapestry.

But the food?

In theory the food should be the thing that certifies Portugal in my heart. Portugal’s marauding citizens pillaged countries my heart gleefully embraces without wooing, for spices and culinary secrets. Portugal has Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Macau in its colonial arsenal and their foods integrated into the tapestry of the place as it if has always been here.

Hangry, my search for food was fraught, as it usually is in my first days of a city. Still settling into a place, still getting my bearings, I knew what I didn’t want but less what I did. The tail-end of the holiday season means many Europeans are off on vacation, one place I'd read about was closed until September, another remained hidden somewhere between the certainty of my GPS and the winding multilayered streets of the city.

Exhausted, with less than an hour of sleep in the last 30 hours, I finally stumbled into a nondescript restaurant tucked in-between houses on a street that I thought led to my hostel (it did not). Desperate, I asked if I could have lunch and they nodded and settled me at a table with a couple finishing up their meal.

Scanning the menu, I was unimpressed but desperation forced my hand.

Cod. 

This is a coastal place, everyone says seafood is a winner here and cod is a local dish. Although this is sardine season, my hunger wouldn’t allow me to gamble on the tasted of grilled sardines just yet.

Bread arrived, a fanta, I breathed deeply and relaxed into my seat.

The food arrived after the delay that food cooked fresh requires. A huge piece of cod, charred perfectly and adorned with sliced garlic and a bath of olive oil. The sides included potatoes, sweet and savory, and a greens, broccoli, and carrots (Vegetables! In Croatia vegetables were not as common as I would have liked).

I dove in greedily. Learned that the bones were still inside the cod, realized despite the copious amounts of olive oil the dish wasn’t greasy.

And they had WiFi. The WiFi that let me know I'd been headed in the wrong direction...only, I suspect it was the direction needed to feed both my body and my expectations.