Four Countries in One Month

I spent the first few hours of this new year desperately (and unsuccessfully) trying to flag down a cab in the jungle of New York City. I ended up walking home from the East Village to Battery Park at 3 in the morning with a group of giddy and harebrained friends that I’ve gathered over the years. By glowing diner lights I laughed so hard that my abs ached the next day.

In Temple Bar

I finished that same month walking over the old brick streets of Temple Bar in Dublin with a friend of mine peering in restaurant windows and enjoying a hot toddy at a pub called The Foggy Dew.

In one month I have traveled to four countries – by far the most amount of travel that I’ve ever completed in such a short amount of time. In between I dined in a top floor apartment in Paris with a view towards the Eiffel Tower, shopped along the chaotic little paths of the flea market in the Place du Sablon and drank my way to the bottom of numerous cups of coffee and started over on a book I’ve thought about for years. And at such a strange (or at least unfixed) time in my life.

Let me first admit that I haven’t enjoyed “growing up” very much. In a very earnest conversation with a friend of mine over dinner one night about a year ago, we were discussing the various things that seem to be more problematic as time goes on. We have new fears, new neuroses, rote patterns of behavior that have become ruts.

Road to Dublin

“So do you think that you’re getting better or worse as time goes on?” I asked and we both answered the question in unison with embarrassed smiles of admission: “Worse – definitely worse.” We toasted this somewhat sarcastic confession over plates of well-made Indian food in solidarity, but I silently began to go over the things that have disappointed me or how I have disappointed myself over the years. I used to be so trusting of the universe, so present in whatever moment was elating me or scalding me. I used to be phobia-free and now I sometimes walk down streets with my keys formed into brass knuckles whereas once I walked through the streets of DC at 10 p.m. entirely on my own after having watched Buffy in Georgetown at the age of sixteen. I used to love airplanes and now I grip the seats and shriek a bit at each dip in the air (much to the disappointment of my fellow travelers).

I’ve worked numerous jobs basically half-awake at the wheel and finally acquired a sense of the educational debt that’s smothering me and that I signed on for. I’ve been in and out of relationships on the road to nowhere with decent human beings several times over now and I have no artistic life to speak of though it still is the bright sun at the center of my universe: as indispensible as it is untouchable. And sometimes the best news to me in a day is the free burrito I won from Gorditos. Have you ever ended up at the end of ten years and said to yourself “I don’t recognize me…”?

But in going over the past month, I have come to understand exactly what I have gained over the course of a decade and, as such, have also realized that I have unknowingly sponsored my very own “It Gets Better” campaign.

***

Beautiful Day on the Liffey

While the rest of Europe is buried under snow banks and experiencing a cold snap that is keeping many people indoors, I left for the island of Ireland where the forecast was all wind and rain and a general sense of discouragement in response to how hard hit the country has been by this latest recession. What I found instead was a week’s-worth of blazing sunshine and the friendliest people that I’ve met in Europe so far.

“That’s a nice camera you’ve got there,” the tour guide notes to me as I snap pictures in Dublin Castle.

“You’re just being nice,” I reply wiping off the blurry camera lens.

“Does it take video too?”

“Not very well,” I tell him, “I tried to record the evensong in St. Patrick’s Cathedral the other day. It sounded horrid.”

…

“The recording, not the evensong,” I clarify and he laughs heartily.

This exchange leads me to a recommendation that will result in my best meal in Dublin: an Indian restaurant called Jaipur between Temple Bar and St. Stephen’s Green where the staff is as fanatical about my presence there as I am about the food and the group of four gentlemen celebrating the Welsh victory in today's rugby match are gregarious, inclusive, and encouraging of me writing a book. I’ve found that all these Dubliners are eager to chat, incredibly helpful in pointing you in the right direction, and generally glad to have the tourists here, even though times are tough. Or maybe because they are so tough. I am so glad to be the age that I am: capable of managing this journey without a guide or stewarded experience, but not so self reliant that I won’t speak to strangers and make new friends with the bartender at the Guinness Storehouse, the grandfatherly cab driver, the carriage driver who lets me reach out and pet the velveteen nose of his horse: Sparky (putting me in mind of James Wright’s poem “A Blessing).

***

St. Patrick's Cathedral

On my first day in the rebellious Dublin sunshine, I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral (a building that was founded in 1191). The whole style of the cathedral is far more colorful than the other European churches that I’ve been in and Kristyn and I were lucky enough to be there in time for the rehearsal for that evening’s evensong performance. The whole building contains art and artifacts that are hundreds of year’s old including an old church door in which Gerald, Earl of Kildare cut a hole to thrust his arm through and calling an end to an age-old feud with Earl, James of Ormond, in 1492, old Celtic crosses and Irish wolfhounds standing guard over fallen soldiers.

St. Patrick's Cathedral - Interior

But, for some reason, my favorite relic was Jonathan Swift's death mask. The death mask – what a quirky habit of an older time (popular in the 17^th century, it seems for leaders and people of note). Upon someone’s death, they would take a plaster cast of the face of the deceased. It’s a somewhat morbid tradition and I don't know why it draws me in so. But I remember spending a prolonged period of time with Keats’ death mask as well in Rome. Even as I looked out over the Spanish Steps on a bright July afternoon, seeing Keats’ face there staring back at me, so blank and so young. I felt more present with him than in all the activity outside on the streets of Rome.

Swift Death Mask

And then there was Jonathan Swift’s death mask. And, I mean, I liked what I read by Swift well enough (Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal), but I never knew anything about him as a man and probably never cared to. I've since learned about the somewhat dubious relationships that he had with two women (one nearly twenty years his junior who he met when she was eight and he was her tutor, although the affair didn't start until many years later). He never married either of them though he was buried next to the one he had known from her youth. But Swift’s mask – somehow even though life had already gone out of him, he looks concerned and troubled. What dark thoughts did he have on his death bed that left him capable of that expression and how did the plaster cast bring out those details so truly? I don't know - call me strangely dark and gothic, but I love a good death mask.

And I love that I know myself well enough now to pause at these things, to feel sorry for or sympathy with someone who was once a character in my mind, but suddenly becomes a person. I’m glad that I take the time to pause instead of rushing headlong onto the next thing on the agenda.

***

Wilde in Merrion Square

It also appears that Oscar Wilde is haunting me a bit on this journey. A man whose writing I always respected, but never soaked in. Before I left, one of my friends quoted him to me in a line of wisdom I already forget on New Years Eve. In January I visited his grave where I found one of my now-favorite lines of poetry by him on his grave. And then the other day, stepping away from the novel for the afternoon, I decided to visit Merrion Square because of the once again un-promised sun streaming in the streets and the proximity of its location to me. I walked briskly, skirt swishing around my knees, but grateful for the high boots in the wind. And right there – at the corner facing me in Merrion Square park was a reclining Oscar Wilde facing No. 1 Merrion Square where he used to live.

Apart from the fact that he wrote his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest and a number of other great literary works (The Picture of Dorian Gray – his only novel that I know I read, but I now have no memory of), he was a man known for his wit and sparkling conversation. He was a man much appreciated at parties, loved and lamented for his cleverness. He is someone I surely would have stood near at a writer's salon in order to hear him, but not to draw attention to myself for I surely wouldn’t be able to keep up the banter. Earnest brought him popularity and fame and it was at the height of this that he tried the Marquess for libel – a trial that brought to light his own homosexuality and resulted in his imprisonment. Whereas he was once known for lightness and love of pleasure, the prison experience and the abandonment of his former life caused him to write De Profundis (something I've never read)– a letter of deep distress, an illustration of trials, and a journey towards darkness. In other words, the downward spiral.

Eire in Merrion Square

He died two years later in a country that wasn’t his own, penniless. Alone. And relatively young. Just forty-six years old. And now his grave is covered in kisses. I hope he knows that we were waiting for him on the other side of his death. On the other side of the trials in his life – we were here. From everywhere, holding plays and poetry very close and wishing that we could have told him, “Christ, Oscar, it gets better.” It never would for him.

***

Every night after visiting a restaurant or a pub together, Kristyn and I return to the hotel bar and have a cup of Bailey’s Irish coffee (hers) and a mug of chocolate (mine) and we laugh and complain and listen to the middle aged men singing Elton John songs at the top of their voices in the blue-lit bar (drinking: it’s not just for young people anymore).

First Guinness at the Gravity Bar

Last night, Kristyn’s company hosted a party at the Guinness Storehouse in the heart of Dublin that was spread over the museum’s multiple levels and tiered to take you through the entire history and experience of this classic Irish beverage (something my cab driver refers to as “Mother’s Milk”) and is capped by the Gravity Bar which boasts a panoramic view of the city of Dublin where I have my first pint of Guinness ever.  I also was able to hear Ireland’s own Ham Sandwich perform and timidly stand at the edges of the action watching the sound girl with her patchwork stockings and Diet Coke t-shirt tied off to reveal her midriff while Kristyn and I end up talking to an old Irish man whose cousin published three novels here in Ireland and I am reminded of one of the most important ways that life gets better.

Kristyn at the Door of Reconciliation

I am accompanied on this trip by all manner of friends. Friends that have traveled to far-flung Venezuelan villages and are now stationed in Paris. Friends that have crossed oceans to explore new cities with me. Friends that I made in books when I was very young and their poetry was the only thing that made sense to me. Friends that are un-met or just beginning like the fellow who budged over at his table in this crowded café making space for both my laptop and his netbook just now.  Friends that will visit the seediest dive with me or remind me to treat myself to a white chocolate parfait topped with this season’s raspberries.  Friends that now live on another continent and have learned two new languages and then will tell you in one breath about the treasure of their Jewish sushi bakery (?) down the road. Over the years I have come to know some of the warmest, most sophisticated, intelligent, and vulnerable people that one could have the pleasure of knowing. And living this many years has only grown that population in my silly, sometimes-insecure heart.

***

En Route to Howth

Last Friday afternoon I walked to the Pearse Street train station and bought my ticket to travel to Howth – a seaside suburb of Dublin. As I boarded the train I queued up my iPod to U2’s epic “In the Name of Love” and rolled through the city and countryside with a feeling of epic possibility accompanying me. I opened up my journal and tried to write down what was feeling, but sometimes I have to remind myself not to take a picture or write everything down in my little black journal, but instead just watch the migrating geese working their way over the field in the sun. And just remember being here. Not process or preserve it.

Howth Lighthouse

I read somewhere that traveling produces the same chemicals in your brain that falling in love does – because of the newness and novelty of everything. It’s one of the reasons why some people say that they feel more sexy when in a foreign country. And as I stepped out into that little port side town, something like falling in love with my life happened to me. When I arrived, I kept the ear buds in right through my walking tour of town. I followed the sun all the way down to the point of the Howth Lighthouse and stood there while two other Americans sat right on the edge of the breaker and talked. Along the way, a street performer played jazz sax for the tourists and I pulled my red coat tighter around me.

St. Mary's Church

Howth is a town settled by the Norweigians as a strategic Scandanavian stronghold that has been converted into a suburb of Dublin. It is home to a small town of commuters and is populated by several small boutiques, fish and chips stands, and a variety of local taverns. One of my favorite spots was St. Mary’s Church and graveyard. It was one of the earliest churches built in the area – built by Sitric, King of Dublin in 1042 which fell and was replaced a few times and the ruins that are now standing are from the second half of the 14^th century. The graves are decoarted with flowers (still) and surrounded by a wall that is lined with ivied benches for sitting and writing.

Writing Bench in Howth

Up the winding cobblestone streets, looking in tea shops, viewing other churches, watching the wrong way traffic, I finally found a place with free Wifi (The Abbey Tavern) and people extremely generous with their time where I was able to sit for more than two hours and work on my book (also set in a coastal town).

On the train ride home, it turned out that my train car was completely empty for three whole stops, and for some reason I decided to sing loudly along with the songs by Coldplay and the Weepies shuffling on my playlist– fiercely, passionately, and without reserve. They might have even heard me on the other cars. I didn’t care. And I can't remember the last time that happened.

If you want to picture me on this trip, think of it just so: me in a knitted black hat, layers beneath my red coat, sitting alone on a train, chasing the setting sun back into a city and singing, unembarrassed for a change and so glad that I am this age and not any other one.

Note: Tonight I'll be rooting for the Patriots at my favorite Dublin bar late night. Could be my best Super Bowl yet.

Forever 25

If you’d please be so kind as to bear with me… This is a longer entry… I’ve broken it up into sections for you if you want to read smaller portions throughout the work day without feeling like you’re cheating too much on your employer.

People might tell you that you can’t put a price on a generous compliment, but it turns out that you can. The cost is approximately 110 Euro ($140 USD).

Bri and I arrived early at the train station this past Thursday to board our train for Paris, tickets purchased from a lackluster, bilingual ticket agent boy and pocketed. We arrived early, boarded and settled down.

About a half an hour into the countryside with its green hills in the drizzly mist punctuated by Cypress trees, a brusque ticket agent stopped at our row and requested our tickets, which he processed and then asked for identification, which he looked over rather snootily.

“That’s going to be 55 Euro,” he said.

“No, we already paid,” I explained – pointing to the little bill of sale.

“No, this is a ticket for someone who has less than 26 years. You cannot have the youth price.” We looked at our orderly tickets with the word “Jeune” stamped traitorously at the bottom of the page.

“So, it’s 55 more Euro?”

“For each.”

“FOR EACH?”

“Each of you. Each way.”

Thanks Thalys – that’s about $263 total for a two-hour train ride that we weren’t anticipating. We huffily paid out and bemoaned the doubling of our expenses, but with a twinge of conceit, we both realized that it was rather pleasant to be mistaken for 25-year-old girls traveling through the country on a student visa by our ticket agent, even if we couldn’t fool the attendant on the train.

It turns out that the cost of a bus ride is about a quarter of what it takes to travel by train between Brussels and Paris. And rather than spend the supplemental 55 Euro to get home, we decided to stay an extra day in Paris and attend a dinner party with some friends on Saturday night and save some money on the ticket home.

Lose five years on your age, gain a day. We decided there’s nothing wrong with being “forever 25.”

***

When we arrived, we followed the instructions that John had emailed us and made our way from the Gare du Nord to the West side of the city where John lives. After a long bus ride with adorable old women jostling for position with their many bags and hauling our carry-on luggage around behind us for several blocks, and a tour through some beautiful, old romantic buildings, we arrived at John’s apartment and shed our bags before heading back into the heart of the city, desperate for food.

So far, at the center of everything in Europe for me, is food. I am a slave to my local patisserie. Even if I exercised every day, religiously (as I surely won’t) there is no way that I won’t gain weight on this trip. I’m in love with dessert, with chocolate, with pastries, with tiny piles of salad and rich appetizers. The other night I had a raspberry meringue tart, the meringue gently toasted and so light and buttery and fluffy that I swear it was more marshmallow than cream. In Brussels, Bri and I stop frequently at chocolate shops and look at their well-ordered selection with a shy sort of greed.

The other night when Bri and I ventured out into the city for our tour of the old quarter, I sampled (for the first time) one of the traditional Pralines – one that has a history that is over 50 years old (invented for the world’s fair in 1958)– the praline’s name was Caprice. It was a chocolate-wrapped nougat filled with vanilla fresh cream. That recipe pre-dates the Beatles, 80’s shoulder pads, my birth, Sesame Street and more. And I thought about it in the days following, wondering what other dangerously-titled foods I might sample.

I also didn’t realize that chocolate was such a recent development in Europe, really. The cacao bean itself wasn’t even discovered in South America by natives until 2,000 years ago (does that mean Jesus never tasted chocolate?), but Europeans didn’t get their first taste until the 17th century when Spanish explorers came back and started making hot chocolate for the nobility at court. Belgian chocolate didn’t come of age until the 18th century and it wasn’t until the past century that Belgian chocolate distinguished itself from the rest of the chocolatiers. It was actually Jean Neuhaus who invented pralines as these dynamic candies that could take on a variety of other flavors (coffee, hazlenut, raisins, etc.). And Belgian chocolatiers are fanatics for quality in a way that the automated corporate industry could never appreciate. In an age where everything is mass produced to meet demand, Belgian chocolate (true Belgian chocolate) is still made by hand. Another distinction is that while most chocolate companies receive their shipments of chocolate in solid form as bars to be reheated when necessary for their recipes, I read that Belgian chocolate companies receive the tempered mixture of cocoa, sugar, and butter in heated trucks and the warm tempered chocolate retains aromas that cooled chocolate just doesn’t have.

I have to remember that during my time in Europe I’m on a budget. I cannot be as capricious as my chocolate wants me to be. So I have been making a lot of meals at home. In fact, I’ve only eaten out for four meals the whole time that I’ve been here which is well below the average when I’m at home. I’ve had lasagna, quiche, casseroles, pastas, quinoa, cassoulets. And they’ve all been made by people’s hands.

“It’s funny,” Bri said on the way back from the market the other day after we had purchased breads and soups and other things for our evening meal, “that a trip to the market in Europe can make me feel so indulged.”

It’s true. I don’t feel the same after shopping at Safeway as I do after shopping here. At the outdoor market, there is no self-checkout stand. I speak to a person who tells me different ways that I can fasten and wear the new vest that’s being purchased. I am pointed in the direction of the nearest bank by a helpful shop keeper and even the cute bakery boy wishes me a good afternoon in English when he notices my trouble with the currency. It’s human and colorful and personal. When selecting food for the evening meal I can look down a row of hand-picked produce and ask the girl to give me a head of garlic while delicately testing out the word for one of the first times: “l’ail.”

It’s hard when you’re on your own and a bit lonely and you’re floundering a bit in your late twenties, wondering what life really is since it’s not everything that they told you it would be – it’s hard not to fall in love with your food. This thing that pulls the day together from three sides, like a ribbon around the things that make you feel good, that reminds you what’s pleasurable about life, that ties you to the entire tactile experience of touch, taste, sight, smell, even sound as the meal comes together – knives chopping on a board, onions frying in a pan, glasses and dishes assembling on a table. It’s the best part of the physical world in some ways.  

***

In Paris, Bri and I settled for tourist food a few times since our proximity to certain monuments didn’t leave us a whole lot of options, but I also bought pain au chocolat and croissants with fruit salad for our morning breakfasts. John also took us to his favorite restaurant Les Bougresses where we sampled a salad that was topped with a large toasted crouton filled with goat cheese and drizzled with raspberry vinagrette, where we each sampled each other’s desserts, where thinly sliced vegetables were arranged in a petaled pile at the center of my plate with little crevettes all around the periphery and the slightest hint of a sweet balsamic vinegar.

We walked the Champs Elysées in Paris without purchasing a thing. We visited the Eiffel Tower, both at night and with our pre-purchased tickets the next glorious day. In mid-January, there aren’t as many tourists as the various monuments and historical landmarks around the city, because you have to gamble that the weather will be acceptable. When Bri and I woke up on Friday, the sun was already blazing and for the entire eleven hours that we traveled the city, we weren’t cold.

We stopped at Notre Dame, we considered visiting the original Chanel, but my favorite area in Paris has always been Montmartre, with its peculiar little side streets that lead you uphill and take you past surprising, but small vistas with a view of the city like you’re in the clouds, so Bri and I agreed to head to Sacré Coeur before the sun set.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do love Paris, but it’s probably not my kind of city. It’s dirty, and brusque and in a totally different way than New York. But in spite of all that, when I imagine the place that I’d like to live, I think of an apartment on Montmartre, to the East of the Sacré Coeur, somewhat at a remove from the rest of the action, but if you strained perhaps, you could still hear the calliope of the merry-go-round playing at the base of the steps. Bri and I picked out just the building – an old pink apartment with hanging baskets of flowers at its windows, stooped little roofs, and a tiny veranda where one could watch the sun set over the Eiffel Tower. We told each other that when the time came, we’d move in there together with our cats.

We spent the rest of the afternoon abandoning all of other tourist plans and simply wandered through the area: window-shopping at boutiques, buying my new favorite skirt, watching painters in the square behind the church imagine rain on the cobblestones that we were standing on. We watched a pack of children running up the hill after being let out of school for the week and took out our journals in a little café with a loaf of bread on its sign. It is a reminder that sometimes the best introduction to a city happens when you put away your maps, sit down, and find Paris at the bottom of your demitasse of café on a dead end street lined with wrought-iron gates and broad-windowed apartments.

***

The next morning we woke late and spent some time just bumming around John’s lovely apartment listening to Who’s The Boss? dubbed in French while we typed, ate croissants and recovered a bit.

Then we set out into the city for a walk through the flea market and then the Père Lachaise cemterery. There, we visited the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison, and Fréderic Chopin. We wandered the long avenues of the sprawling, many-tiered cemetery in virtual anonymity since the cemetery was so vacant in the January drizzle. The very modern marker for Oscar Wilde is large and clean and is now a historical landmark surrounded by plexiglass that is covered in the pink lipstick of kisses left for the poet. It is obviously a much-frequented destination, but my favorite part of the grave marker itself was the excerpt from one of his poems:

“And alien tears will fill for him

  Pity's long-broken urn,

For his mourner will be outcast men,

  And outcasts always mourn.”

Jim Morrison’s grave is wildly unassuming, almost shoved in amongst the many other crypts and markers which only makes it seem all the more tragic. But, I think my favorite grave, was that of Fréderic Chopin. I have often imagined him as a character in one of my poems or stories – a little tortured, very human, never getting over George Sand even until his death and wanting his heart removed after he had died because he had a fear of being buried alive. He sounds neurotic and approachable and he made such dynamic, complex little compositions. As we approached his grave, I saw one old man under a gray umbrella gently arrange a rose in a single glass of water on the lip of his grave and stand back to look at the bust of the artist’s face for a long while. I wasn’t impatient for him to move away and waited until the man at last wiped off his glasses and moved farther along down the path.

If you are lost in your life a little bit, if you don’t know exactly what course you’ve put yourself on and you can’t see far enough down the road to where you’re going, you are sympathetic to people who mourn men they never knew for the art that they gave to us. The shared sadness that can span hundreds of years somehow seems like a comfort, if not an answer.

That night John brought us to a dinner party hosted by an American couple that he knows in Paris. I put on my new skirt, some beads, a shirt with high shine and regarded myself in the mirror: passable for a fashionable adult, even by Parisian standards. When John’s friend R arrived to ride along with us to M & C’s apartment, I answered the door full of anticipation for making friends with a true Parisian and kissed him lightly on each cheek – always unsure of how much pressure to apply, how much cheek to offer, how much my lips should turn towards a stranger’s face. In any case, we managed the greeting and handsome and slight as he was, I could immediately see that he was both funny and shy.

We all piled into John’s American car and tunneled through the crowded traffic of the city on Saturday night. We were in high spirits, warm in the packed little vehicle listening to the music of Kanye West as we careened around the large rond points at the Champs Elysées.

We arrived at M and C’s apartment – both professionals living in Paris (one a consultant/writer, the other a technology person). Their apartment was five floors up at the top of an old building in the Marais with a long city-sweeping view to the Eiffel Tower which twittered with sparkling lights every hour on the hour. They took our coats, complimented our clothes and smiled the whole time until, before I know it, a glass of wine is in my hand and we are all admiring their new microwave in such close proximity to one another that I’m surprised I’m not at all self conscious.

They had prepared an Italian themed meal with numerous little appetizers: foie gras, cheese tarts, spinach puffs and two different kinds of cheese to go with their crackers. They brought out a salad they had discovered in Sicily: an unexpectedly pleasant combination of oranges, onions, and Cayenne pepper that later introduced a simple greens salad. Pasta with red sauce and bread from the same market that Sarcosi buys from and then pear-chocolate tart for dessert. I might have busted out of my new skirt while their large orange and white cat strolled all around the table in a mute interrogation of the houseguests.

At two a.m., I realized however, that what was most pleasant about the evening for me was how I felt in that room full of deliriously affable people – many of whom were strangers. As M poured out another limoncello and C laughed genially as he blushed over a French curse word, I realized that I wanted to have this again, what they have, what we were having. To be a little bit older and still stylish, to be shifting through different languages (Italian, French, and English) with a group of people principally concerned with laughing, making each other feel comfortable, and the pleasures of a good meal. I would like to invite someone like me out on a night like that and keep her talking well past her bedtime and make her feel at home. I’d like to make her feel comfortable with herself again, even if she’s stretching the seams on her skirt, I’d like to talk about homemade limoncello while pouring a glass of it and discuss a particularly good book. It’s surprisingly overwhelming to meet one of your possible futures and live there for a minute. If you’re looking for it (or even if you’re not), if you shift slightly to the left of the center of your life, you can end up under the broad skylights in the roof of an apartment saturated with the sound of unrestrained laughter and you can meet yourself… even (or maybe especially) in a strange city.