The Black Bird Enigma

Before I left for Gerona, my shoes were of primary concern. Which to pack, which to leave behind in Barcelona? What would be safe, what would be comfortable? I regretted what I’d chosen upon arrival. (Such a silly fixation; ultimately I was better off sweating in boots on those cobblestones than I would have been rolling my ankle in flip flops.)

I went up to the roof of the hostel and forgot my feet. Immediately I sat and started to write. I cannot get enough of Mediterranean balconies and terraces, nor gothic bell towers dominating charming plaster horizons.

This time, the tower was accompanied by a cloud of black birds. I became fixated on them, their swooping and darting, their seeming disappearance before re-apparition in a burst of feather and screech.

For a week I’d been noticing an inordinate number of bird silhouette tattoos on Barcelona’s women; immediately I felt these birds overhead to be the inspiration. I am making this bond up. Who knows what each bird meant to each woman? But in my mind we were all linked, me and bird tattoo ladies, in this recognition of this enigma overhead.

What were they, swallows? I have no idea; I so lack the vocabulary to describe nature. I loved their punctuation of the burning blue slate sky, their sudden elusiveness when I tried to capture them with my camera. They forced me to be in the moment because there was no way to satisfyingly record them. The more I thought about them, the more I stared and tried to take pictures and wished for a clear metaphor or symbolic understanding of why I was drawn to them, the more mysterious they seemed. Why were there so many? What were they doing, circling and hovering like that?

More and more I noticed them, like clouds of electrons or harbingers of... what? There was nothing to say about them, nothing but this buoying joy I started to feel every time I saw them. My black birds, my enigma.

They are patternlessness with shifting form and shape, like a jazz improvisation. They are dance, grace, kinetic ebb and flow. They mean nothing, they are the great turning wheel of the natural world set whirling in miniature through the sky. They are primal, simple, functional beyond my understanding; beyond deliberation, they are thoughtless instinct manifested in multitudes.

Paradoxically they’ve acquired symbolism for me now, for their very lack of symbolic clarity. They are my personal reminders that life makes no sense; means nothing, says nothing until one stares and speaks or writes to lend it meaning. There is nothing to figure out, nothing to unlock; the locks are in our minds and all we have to do is free ourselves from the expectation that we have more control and understanding than we do.

To hit the ground running...

As usual, everything starts with worry and concern. Too much stuff, don’t like my blog, conflicted about how much to focus on photography, not sure what I’m doing out here. Writer’s block outside my notebook. I have to shed it, this icky sensation that I’m somehow getting it all wrong.

It doesn't LOOK like that much stuff.... the only thing missing is my camera bag and my other shoes. Whatever, soon the useless shit will become clear and I'll mail a box home. 

I’m never going to be anything but myself. I may never be a real writer, but I have to write. From now on, I’m going to try to throw something up here every day or every other day. It’s going to be meandering, unstructured, and exactly like my brain. I can’t pressure myself to craft perfect pieces, and quite frankly the sun is shining and I want to get my ass out there in the adventure.

So here’s to new habits and hitting the ground running.

But what is the ground made of? Where am I running to? What do all these cords connect to and why do I feel like the anxious shepherd of a flock of very poorly behaved digital sheep?

To catch us up:

I was on a cruise around the Mediterranean with Mom and Amanda for the first two weeks of this adventure. It was outrageous, amazing, wonderful. Exhausting. Invigorating, hilarious. Mostly wholesome (but for the Bingo storage room rendezvous...)

Everywhere we went (France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey) I could have passed for a native. This is a shift in what it’s meant to be a foreigner to me in the past - no visual marker of difference means people are more open to talk (at least until they realize we have to switch to English and/ or charades.)

I want to learn every language. I ended up with Korean because that was the first place I went and had an experience like this, but the impulse doesn’t change. I always want to get at locals, to try to communicate even when the only shared denominator is a body with arms and legs. I spent last night with some Barcelona boys who spoke almost NO English and somehow with my totally limited Spanish we got by in hysterical laughter and acrobatics.

I know I’m drunk when I’m talk to myself out loud in the bathroom. I took a picture to commemorate during my bathroom break from the charade-a-thon that was last night.

Yep, that’s my face reflected upside down in the toilet paper holder. “Bitch I’m in Barcelona! Bartheloooonnnaaa Barcelona! Si si si, yo hablo espanol, si si siiii en Barceloooona.” Over and over.

Anyway, back to the point:

Now I’m back in Barcelona by myself for a few days. I sort of have to figure out what I’m doing next, but mostly not. Mostly I’m just so grateful to be alive and excited about my adventures that I don’t even care what I see or what happens.

A lot of this is coming out of losing Marina. Marina Keegan passed away in a one car accident a few days after her graduation from Yale. She was probably the most talented writer I’ve ever known personally, my little WORD dongsaeng all set to be the shiningest of shining literary stars.

I don’t want to say that I’m devastated; I’m running around. I’m smiling and laughing, I’m writing again. But I am devastated, I think of her and I cry at least a little bit everyday, not only for her and her family but for the rest of us, for literature and the course of America and the world for not having her with us anymore to inspire and delight and provoke us. Her death has changed me, or reminded me of something I’ve always known but haven’t actively engaged with consistancy. I can’t let this go without being affected, she was too important. Too good. Too brilliant.

The last thing she wrote was about the opposite of loneliness, about the shared sensation that we’re all in “this” together. I want to live that way, making it clear to everyone I meet that I’m in this thing with them and that we can count on each other, we can love on each other and be vulnerable and laugh too loudly because I’m not going to judge, I’m not going to knock anyone down or be too cool for school. 

I’m pushing deeper and I’m not letting go. I’m going to do it with love and trust and honesty, and whatever it is - it is. I’m going to write about it, too, even if the writing isn’t very good, because we can’t get anywhere without sharing and communicating with each other.