thoughts on travel

On being a solo traveler; or I can’t cancel dinner with me again

/ erinroseward / Leave a comment

Living in New York, I’ve learned the art of feeling completely alone while surrounded by millions of people. All the eye contact you can make or smiles you can give doesn’t espouse the transient nature of human encounters. In one day they all add up to a few seconds, minutes maybe, or if very lucky a casual conversation.

If I was hiking a trail or traversing the countryside via my bicycle, I’d expect this lack of human contact, and it would be welcomed as a necessary part of such adventures. But on this current tour I am drawing direct lines from one major city to another. There are numerous listicals of things to do for each place I’ve been, and tourism is imperative to these urban economies. There are swarms of people, tourists and locals alike surrounding me at every moment. Even now over breakfast in the grandiose dining area of my hostel there are 5 other people eating near by.

The man directly to my right wears a white collared shirt and a v-neck sweater. He looks too clean to be staying in a hostel or perhaps he has refined his ability to exist on the go better than me. I believe he is the one who slept two beds beneath me, the bunk beds stacked 3 high (yet I can still stand on my bed without touching the ceiling!). He snores and moves a lot in his sleep but I can’t fault him for that. He eats the cornflakes that are part of the free breakfast and I am waiting for him to pull out a laminated map. I imagine he is meeting a woman from last night for lunch so he has the morning to explore at his leisure.

There are 3 young men sitting behind me who sit hunched over ham, bread, and cheese, too hung over for much discussion. They all wear hooded sweatshirts pulled up around their faces and big warm coats, though to me it feels like spring. They probably went to Barrio Alto, starting at the famous cocktail bar and moving on to the neon clubs with 1 euro shots. There was also a pub crawl last night according to a poster on the stairwell, but I don’t believe anyone ever attends.

There is another man who reads his iPad, much older than all of us judging by the white of his scruffy, traveler’s beard. I peg him as a web designer or some profession to do with aesthetic proclivity. I would not cross his path if I was on that long hiking trail, I assume, but then again we both are here on our computers, eating the free hostel breakfast alone. I predict he’ll wander over to the main shopping area that is all a buzz on the weekends. He’ll buy a few gifts for people from well known stores before writing a few emails, to get a head start on his London counterparts, before treating himself to a seafood dinner at one of  the restaurants recommended by the too-beautiful hostel bartender, the one with the man ponytail.

I won’t make the effort to talk to them, and to be frank it is because they are men and I am sick of men. Traveling alone, I do not have a wing woman or girl power advocate by my side. I’ve found myself checking over my shoulder, quickening my steps, keeping a stone face when cat called, and making quicker-than-normal exits at bars. In NYC, perhaps because I feel so at home, I feel in control and command of my body and my self in my surroundings. Here, in strange worlds and alone, I find myself skeptical of the compliments and attention I receive. I’d rather not have it.

Before I left, my mother told me she was worried because I am overly trusting. I have been told I make friends easily and to my dear mom this meant that I would end up on the evening news. Her words have stayed with me as I traverse, two guard rails on either side of me as I walk a cautious line. I am proud of my womanhood, but I am not naive.

Instead of making gaggles of friends to follow on social media and promise couches in our respective homes for future journeys, I’ve picked up a few special people at random. Like finding a quarter on the side walk, I was in the right place at the right time. Jen at the pub, Lena taking a selfie, George in a smokey bar, Julien over vegetarian rice paper rolls, Susan in front of the coliseum, Francesca over NYC style brunch. Quality over quantity, that’s what I’m going with. And when the quantity is too sparse to overcome inevitable loneliness, I simply talk to myself until I feel better.

I think my friend Jessie back home was right: I’ll look back on this experience with such fondness, and be proud of myself for doing it alone. All the ups and downs and dark mental corners I find are part of me and the inevitable complexity of being a human being. It’s painful and lonely at times, but I hold on to the idea – while playing “the ground is lava” by myself in a park because why not – that it is the road to a deep understanding and more importantly cherishing of the self.

Tonight, I think I’ll put on some lipstick, find a wine bar, and take myself out on a date. And at the very least, I’ll go home with someone I’m starting to love more and more.

On being on Regina’s couch

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Our first couch surfing experiences

I wasn’t sure if she would serve me a cup of tea or a bowl of stewed eyeballs and pickled fingers.

I rang the doorbell to her one bedroom flat around 8 pm on a Sunday. I heard her come down the stairs slowly, one thud at a time as her hazy silhouette grew larger through the frosted glass. Her form took up the space of the window and I saw the outline of wiry hair.  Locks twisted and unchained, she opened the door a few inches. Her nose appeared first followed by one eyeball. I smiled, I had seen this in creepy movies before. I knew what was going to happen and it was almost comical. She’d either become my best friend and we’d talk about knitting or she’d cut me up and feed me to her house cat.

When she saw me she shut the door again, undid the final chain and opened it wide. She smiled at me and her eyes squinted until they became only horizontal lines with crinkles around the edges. Like little stick bugs digging their little legs into her still smooth skin. Her gray hair cut just above her shoulders was secured on one side by a large felt flower barrette. She had a crocheted blanket wrapped around her waist, a purple cardigan and a faded yellow turtle neck.

I got to the top of the middle of the stairs and realized she might want me to take off my shoes. She told me to put them at the bottom of the steps, and so I stepped  backward down the stairs as it was too small for me to turn around with my home on my back. Another minute or two of awkwardness ensued as I bent down to untie my shoes without releasing the bag and fell forward, by arms catching the brunt of the weight before my face smacked the floor. Off to a good start.

Her house smelled of long worn carpet and once wet wool. Brewed tea had steeped into the walls coloring them a worn in brown. Tiny framed watercolors of landscapes lined the walls. On the drawers beside the entrance to the living room there were two heart shaped frames with smiling children looking back. Both had matching grins and emblemed navy sweaters, and maybe I was tired but my first thought was that they were two spoiled children up to no good.

The couch had a  white blanket covering it in that way older people do when they don’t want to be bothered getting rid of the stain sofa when they can throw a cover on it much more easier. We were quiet then for a while. She paid no attention to me laughing to herself as she read from a binder, magic spells perhaps. It was my first time and I felt as if I took up the entire room.

I asked her questions about her life and learned she was a practicing Buddhist , estranged from her father and had one sister, the mother of the mischievous smiles in the hallway, living in the north of England. She had recently taken up painting and had a preference for Downton Abbey. There were essential oils lining her sink and inspirational quotes hung like limp flowers around her home. You could follow their trail from above the dusty television in her kitchen to the mantel of the fireplace in the living room collecting discarded bits of paper and wood, more than ready to escape in smoke.

I stayed two nights with Regina on a Thai beach bed, which is essentially a mat made for enjoying tropical seasides. I was up before her both mornings, leaving little notes as if she was my caretaker and I needed to let her know I was thinking of her. It all seemed to be going well and eventless until it wasn’t anymore.

She asked me to dinner the send night and having made plans at a local pub with a new friend, I apologetically declined. That night when I got home she had locked both locks though she had only given me only the key for the bottom. She waited 30 minutes to answer the door, having said she was on the phone when I first rang and couldn’t hang up right then. She wasn’t sure it was me even, because I seemed to not be coming back due to the late hour. Her brow was more furrowed than normal and her eyes sunk in. I could tell I had offended her without her saying it. This is it, I thought, this is where she kills me in my sleep.

What are your plans for tomorrow? She asked me. I was suppose to be staying with her the following night as well, leaving for London early Wednesday morning. Because, she continued, I’d like a night to myself. So you’ll find another place to stay. The corners of her mouth smiled in a way that was not unkind but rather matter-of-factly. She was kicking me out.

The next day I asked a friend to shower at her place, not wanting to be at Reginas’s longer than I had to before departing to London. When I returned to her house she made me a cup of tea and asked about my plans. I began packing as she sat on her sofa using an exacto-knife to cut out shapes in the paintings she had made.

While I shoved my stuff into my bag she informed me that she was sending them to homeless shelters as a random act of kindness.

Before leaving I went into her room and left the flowers I had bought from the market on her bed in the way one leaves them near the casket at a funeral. She’d find them later and I hoped she’d put them in a vase and maybe paint a picture of them. The pinks and magentas bleeding into the greens giving it a soft and far away feeling. Making the real into the imagined.

I kissed her on the cheek before thinking about it. It was a hard kiss and I had just drank water so it must have left a wetness on her cheek. When was the last time you’ve been kissed? I wanted to ask.

I’m going to go make dinner now, and see about a friend. A flash of a smile before she closed the door and again became a shadow in the glass. I could still make out the tip of her flower barrette as she stood there for I don’t know how long.

On meeting a girl crush

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From beneath the thin borrowed blanket, reading the story about a betrayed woman’s quick mental decline, she felt weighted enough not to stir when the she heard the soft click of the door. She was using her e-reader with the backlit screen, and for a moment she turned it down and pretended to be sleeping.

But, she was a stranger in this girl’s apartment, after all. At some point she would need to see her and say hello, greet her and assume the humble position of one who has accepted a huge favor. Something like looking at her shoe laces a lot and shifting weight from foot to foot. She got out of bed and turned on the light, opening the door into the little hallway.
Sara was taking off her coat and scarf, unwrapping a smile from beneath the gray woven fabric. She was beautiful in the way that she looked completely aware of herself. With cropped hair and no makeup to hide a smooth complexion, she would show up as she was to greet whatever happened, fully confident and aware. There was something of a movie star about her. She would play the love-interest who sat directly in opposition to the main character whose life was in disarray. She would come in with her neat receipt piles and stock of toilet paper – she would never be caught unprepared – and shed wisdom and guidance on the girl who just couldn’t fathom what her life meant.
She was carrying a pizza and offered her some. Though it was almost midnight her host seemed to be as alive as ever. She wondered if this was how she always was.

The Madonna in Milano

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“What defines art?”

One of those glorious 2 am questions that energizes the body as the mind starts to churn.Rion, my Milan host who I know from Brooklyn, posed the question as we walked back with his girlfriend Francesca to their Milan apartment. It was the second time that night we three had walked down their block with the intention of going home. The first was abandoned after we passed 3 strangers who’s eyes betrayed what they were doing, and we wanted to be a part of it.

I used one of the three words in Italian I knew to say hello and ask how they were. The leader of the pack, Mike, looked confused and watched my lips with half closed lids as I repeated in English. He asked where I was from and then what I did. Rion started talking to his friends as we stood in a skewed mid-sidewalk circle. Mike had an LA Clippers hat on and the other two wore hoodies and matching sneakers with the velcro strap undone.  I told him I was a writer and drew a fake cursive word, with extra flourish, in the air.  Me same! he said and his eyes opened wider.

Yes, I felt it. An instantaneous connection. A bond over words. I suspected he was a poet, perhaps a spoken word artist. I started to think of my friends back in New York who are involved in the slam poetry scene and with whom I’d want to connect him with if it turns out his stuff was good. He seemed like he would do well in a battle. Impassioned Italian man spittin’ verses, driving the words home with dramatic arm movements and inflection that demands ears.

I asked if he wrote fiction or journalism or poetry, but the language proved a problem. He asked Francesca in Italian if we wanted to walk to the little park between the church and the McDonald’s for a drink and a smoke. His friends looked bored by the idea of 3 new additions and split off to go buy beer.

As we were walking Mike turned to me and said he wanted to show me his writing. That if I came to the park tomorrow during the day, we could create something together. Imagine! A beautiful afternoon in Milan spent sipping a spritz while creating a bilingual piece, maybe one that we could practice and perform! I thought of Mike and I in Rion’s living room with a few of their friends gathered to hear us share our art. I didn’t think he was attractive or all that exciting, but I was in love with the thought of it all and smiled a little brighter. We agreed in a few words: tomorrow, some park he named, creation time.

Francesca was walking behind us, and I paused to take step with her, not wanting her to feel left out. Isn’t it cool, I said, he’s a writer too! What are the chances of meeting another writer so randomly?

Mike turned around, I’ll show you good and bad, he said and pointed towards a wall.

I think he mean’s street writer, like what’s the word in English?

Graffiti, Rion said, he’s a graffiti artist.

Heart sunk. Supposed connection severed. He had thought I meant I was a graffiti artist from New York City. No, definitely not as cool nor as elusive as that.

He stopped in front of a gate of a closed shop, where someone had painted a mural of a mom and a child holding hands. It was vey well done in my opinion and must have taken the artist a long time to do it with spray paint.

He hates it, Francesca translated. Not art, Mike said. He says the artists are, what’s the word-

Selling out? Rion was standing closest to the gate, nose an inch away, looking at the strokes and lines.

He says the companies pay the artists to paint these and this is all they do. They cover the art that is already there.

We turned a corner down a quieter street. Mike stopped again and pointed at the wall. Artist tags ran up and down it, some more easily read than others. Most were composed of single swooping strokes. A few of them were scribbled symbols. This is real, said Mike.

This is great, Rion said, stepping back to take in the length of the wall. Are you on here? Mike shook his head. He made a waving motion with his hand and said in Italian that it was covered up by another artist. He’d come back and cover someone else’s and leave his name. So it went.

I was trying to figure out if Rion was serious or just being friendly to the guys who had just smoked us up. I had seen and been involved in works of art that Rion created, and considered him a talented artist with a unique perspective. I had posed topless for him for an art piece and it was the first time I hadn’t felt shame being exposed. He had a way about him like that, I thought. I was always ready to hear his opinion and I had assumed that he would have denounced the wall as what it was: vandalism charading as art. He touched the wall and traced a name with his finger.

Can we go see the lady? I want to show Erin. Mike didn’t seem to understand but started to follow as Rion turned and with his daddy long leg strides led the way down the main street. 2 am on a Saturday night in Milan looks a lot like 2 am in NYC. Except in Milan you can drink on the street. People, younger than our party, were strewn about on benches, outside of late night eateries, laughing and talking loudly. It was one big playground and I wondered who were the king and queen and what the rules were. There were a lot of short skirts and bright lips, dark hair with darker-lined eyes and leather, leather, leather. I wondered if they could smell the American on us.

After another 5 minutes, the effects having worn off and given way to that shrill November bone-cold, we paused in a walkway behind the chain railing that divided it from the street. Across the skinny road was a large black door with an oval arch that seemed characteristic of the area. On the door, someone had painted the image of a face reminiscent of the angels I had seen in the church frescos. Cherubim cheeks and round features, soft and inviting. Except, there was hell in the divine. Something empty and eery stared back at us. Black relief spaces fore the eyes and mouth. If I put my hand through her eyes, it might go all the way through. I wondered what eyes like that had seen, what they held as they took in the street. She couldn’t tell us, she was forbidden.

The artist had used feathered strokes, intentionally asking the eyes to swoop upward towards the top of the arch. Begin staring into the black mouth, where searing nothingness gaped. Continue up to crater eyes, sunk deep into the door yet even blacker still. Find the tip of the forehead where her hair has been parted and wind-blown. She’s stunning, Rion whispered, my favorite piece. It’s like we’re at a museum, he said as he stepped over the low chain rail.
He took out the YES stickers in his pocket. The same campaign he had started in Brooklyn, decorating everything from curbs to traffic signs, going so far as to make large scale prints to wheat paste on building facades, he was continuing internationally. Fearless in his disregard for propriety, his artistry flowed out two middle fingers stuck up to the world. Any moment there could be a confrontation. I could feel it just below our breathing: how much we all wished for the polizia to join us hand guns un-holstered, coming from down the block at a sprint as they shouted in Italian. Even Rion knew it was the thrill of the act rather than the result. For the artist and the audience there is knowledge of the illicit whenever they see what shouldn’t be there. It’s not what it is but how it got there that excites the imagination. Someone got away with something they shouldn’t have done, and in that way we share a secret we’ve been holding all alone.

How we wanted him to be confronted, and cuffed. Once they found out he was American they’d take extra pleasure in a jab to the ribs, eyes flashing a well-groomed distrust and disliking. A little adventure that night, that’s what we all craved. You could smell the desire, hot and damp like sex in a bar bathroom. It stretched along the alleyways and wrapped itself around street lights and cigarette butts.

About 8 stickers later Rion rejoined his audience on the other side of the railing to view his work. In the black hole of the Madonna’s mouth he had made a tongue out of YES’s. The screeching night-people walked back and forth down the street as we stood and looked at defamation called art. The act having been committed, there was a sadness to the scene. Had the Madonna said yes or had someone spoken for her, I wondered. I thought of my mother. Physically altered by his hands, the sticking and the smoothing and he hadn’t even been caught. No one had said anything. We didn’t even get a show out of it and now the world saw there Madonna, sticking out her tongue in fevered defiance.

He’d made her go mad for the world to see.

At the Union March in Rome

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I stumbled upon a protest in the  middle of Rome, after making the decision to get lost in the center of Rome. Rachel lives in Monti, the Williamsburg of Rome for associations sake. I ran to the Coliseum, and it being a Saturday found the crowd overwhelming. Turning left I wound along with the traffic a bit higher. A woman sat on the sidewalk giving out pieces of sandwich to her five children. I imagine they were hers, and when I went running by they all stooped to look at me. One of the girls, standing closest to me, had wide gray eyes like a cartoon of a child. Her hair was stuck to her face. I felt her looking right through me, seeing my American idiosyncrasies swimming inside of me. I am exactly what she saw, whatever it was.

Protests here are causes for celebrations. Like a birthday or holiday party, you can be sure to see all of your friends. It is an excuse for an early pre-game, a meet-up at which you can have a march and a shout in costume and face paint, perhaps don an emblematic banner as a cape, and join in a just cause. The particular march I attended circumvented the better part of the city and was in support of unions and their benefits for workers. The colors are red and yellow and it seems all ages showed up for the event. I felt like a party crasher, but wonder if I would have been invited if I had only asked.

The woman at the boutique was happy to see me

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They give pieces of chocolate with their coffee. I have to remember that grazie has turned into merci. A woman with purple horn-rimmed glasses and blunt bangs asked if she could follow me into the boutique. She smelled like a perfume one of my friends wears, but it was too distant to name. The one in which the clothes all have funky geometric patterns in clashing colors. She asked me in French and I didn’t correct her, nor did I know what she was saying. I smiled and she pointed to the door and opened it. I picked up a sweater and she ran a finger down the sleeve and said something in fast french. I imagine it was about the quality of the material. I watched her mouth as she talked. I must have looked intense as I tried to pick up a word or two because she touched my arm and gave a squeeze. She cocked her head to the side, looked at me again and then wrote something down in her notebook. She wrote with a Mont Blanc pen. I wondered how many people she had followed into the store that day. The store was too expensive and I turned to go. She followed me out and asked me to sign something. I asked her in English, forgetting the game, what it was for. She laughed and answered that she was writing a linguistics thesis. She asked if I was spanish because I looked like her friend who lived in Madrid. I signed her slip and wished her the best of luck and gave her a hug, which must have surprised her because she did not move to return the gesture, rather kept one arm holding the notepad to her chest and the other soldier-straight to her colonel mustard yellow pea coat.

Sky on Fire

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The sky is on fire right now. The Belgian gray has given way to the ambre of color. Pink turns to yellow turns to orange and somewhere  in the palette cornflower has leaked in. I sit at the large bay windows in Jean’s living room. The lights are turned off because I’d like to give the color and attention to the sky right now. There are 3 ponies playing in a small field across the narrow road. They drink water from a bath top and spontaneously take up chasing one another. What do they think about all day, these 3 friends? The smallest, patterned auburn and white, seems to be the most rowdy of the bunch. They seem not to notice the sunset. Perhaps they have seen one too many to get excited.

I ran around Jean’s little town, Vedrin, today. It is my favorite way to see a place, I’ve discovered, is to let my foot falls grow excited, to taste as much of the black top and the new place as possible. Let my feet be greedy until they can’t take it anymore. And of course,, as it happens, I got very lost along the winding streets. I place a lot of trust in my internal compass, that it will remember how to retrace the steps leading to home. Well, I was wrong, and ended up seeing much more of Vedrin and neighboring Namur then I had planned.

There is something so beautiful about solitude. Perhaps I am at heart an introvert, as I was very much content to be alone today. I had time to move at my pace, to be with myself, to be quiet when I wanted to dance when I needed to (to Stromae’s Papaoutai of course). It is something I always knew but has been made apparent while traveling and spending so much time with other people: space very much matters to me. I am so thankful to be here with one of the best human beings I know, my dear friend Jean, but even so I welcome this moment when the door is closed and I sit alone in the peace of a Belgian nighttime.

I can’t help but think of the ghost companion. How lovely it would be to be share this moment with him. To have him sit next to me as a lover and adventure companion. To be each alone as we enjoy the quiet together.