a bond so instantaneous

Billy Jonas has a song called "The Bus” (lyrics) (listen) in which he shares a few anecdotes of fellow passengers he met while riding the bus across America. A father goes to bail his young daughter out of trouble, a young man heads off to boot camp to avoid gang violence, and a Native American woman teaches Billy how to kill rabbits with a stick (before cooking them with instant onion soup mix.)

The point of the song is the bond, the trust that arises amongst travelers in a single vessel, the breakdown of suspicion in favor of camaraderie and straight-up love. It’s a subversion of our natural fear of strangers, and an assurance that it isn’t so odd to let your guard down, to get close and be vulnerable because we’re all in this thing together

I wept over this in the sun on a beautiful day at sea, so happy to be on the boat with strangers, getting to know them, hoarding the small intimacies they shared with me.

We have so much to learn from each other. Each of our lives represents a perfect example of what it means to be a human being. I can only live from this one seat, from these feet and this brain and this set of predetermined and acquired circumstances. Whenever I talk to someone new, it feels like a bonus round of life, a tiny taste of what it’s like to be that person, to think their way and experience what they have. It gives me the most expansive thrill, that spontaneous moment of closeness when we break through our conceptualizations of each other as “other” or “foreign” and find common ground.

Of course this is Marina, too. Her words shake in me everyday. I reread and think about her and it feels something like studying scripture; enigmatic enough for multiple layers of analysis but prescriptive and instructive. Important. It feels good, painful like a workout or an overzealous massage, but good.

Good today at least. Mourning can be like the weather, capricious and unpredictable.

The Vatican

We got to the Vatican and back by an easy train ride from the port of Civitavecchia. It was good to trust each other and our instincts, the inherent logic of a system meant to move people around. Every time we saved ourselves a few hundred euro by not booking cruise-organized excursions I felt smug and snobby, too proud of our willingness to do things the quote-unquote real way.

hell yes I took that in manual! I am totally getting the hang of my camera!

In the Vatican itself, gilt glitter like religious shock and awe. How much wealth could one group of families possibly acquire? Enough to fund all this, at least. Apparently the Vatican is still one of the richest countries in the world. I don’t know if that’s per capita or what, but I believe it on sight alone.

In the Sistine Chapel I put one hand on my mother’s shoulder and one on my sister’s back and shuffled through like that, saying nothing, looking only up. On a gentle current of human bodies I was carried past a legend I had studied but never quite connected to; it’s hard to feel anything personal about a work so heavily reproduced and pop-ified. (Who could imagine they have a personal relationship with the Mona Lisa?)

I wanted to linger, but our excellent tour guide prodded us out after what only felt like a minute or two. When there are so many masterpieces about, there are compromises that have to be made.

On the street were several Roma beggars. For many Roma this is a lifestyle, not a temporary state of hardship. Amanda and I sort of pat each other on the back and shook our heads in fine Puritan fashion, emphatically claiming, “No! Neither of us would ever live this way! Whatever it takes, you’d never find us on the street like this!”

Is there a natural conscience that supersedes cultural and traditional strictures? Education is one way to develop a mind beyond culturally imposed boundaries, but only if society lets you and culture teaches you that education can be used to create such a personal perspective and set of values.

Or is there something innate in us that tells us how to live, and culture simply lets us make excuses? Lets us form habits that become exceptions to the unyielding internal compass indicating true north no matter what language spoken or religion practiced?

We ate pasta to the tune of a violinist ambling slowly up the alley. “Oh, how very Italian!” we thought, eagerly taking out our video cameras to capture the magical Mediterranean moment.

Our waitress warned us the violinist was a pickpocket, known for lifting tips off patio tables before the waitresses returned, and we should watch our bags when he waltzed by again.

put it in your pocket and take it with you

FLORENCE

Overwhelming beauty in Florence. Every facet, every gilded rafter and crumbling cobblestone speaks. All they say, though, is, “eat something. Drink something. Look at this, look at that. Life goes on, and in what fine style.”

Richness and movement in stone. Intensity and passion held static but forcing the eye to movement. Emotional investment in the content is palpable. The Duomo! How much detail in color, in texture, in composition can you pack into and onto the exterior of one structure? Every other square made me reevaluate my answer.

Man do I love me some pointy pines. (I now can identify these as cypresses. They are THE tree of the Mediterranean countryside.)

How can people live in such a beautiful place?! How does anything ever get done? I would just walk and stare and eat and stare and smile, never writing, never asking for anything more than what I had.

We had. The most. Incredible. Gelato. Ever. Rich, light, smooth, with one delightfully crunchy bite of coffee bean.

I was bored of shopping until I touched the buttery leather we had talked so much about. My mother wanted a jacket, a jacket, a jacket from Florence, so we were on a mission.

Apparently there’s a 10,000 euro fine for buying fake designer purses off the street. It sounds crazy to fine the customers rather than just the sellers but after spending a little time in this leather market I’m pretty in favor of the fine.

The Italian government is serious about protecting their artisans and their manufacturers. They know they have a treasure, and they’re not down to let Chinese bootleggers destroy that market. Even though the fine is mostly about protecting the big brands like Prada and Gucci, small manufacturers benefit too because if you can’t get a fake Gucci you’re totally happy with a real leather no-name bag or wallet or coat from one of them.

My bag just broke and I started using the one I bought in Florence yesterday. Wow. It’s awesome and so beautiful. Thank you, Italian government, for protecting the leather industry!

There wasn’t much time, but there was no way I was going to miss Santa Croce. I stood before the tombs of Galileo and Leonardo DaVinci and Dante. I wish there had been more time. Contemplation of greatness can’t be done in a 20 minute dash.

There are many holes in the wall serving decadent-looking sandwiches and little glasses of wine. Two patrons can stand at the counter at once; we breezed pass many pairs like this, always in the shade.

We had no time to eat ourselves, or even to pause for a picture. How opposite we were than the diners, deciding spontaneously to feast on the street because there was nothing else they needed to do. Their only aim was enjoy each other and some food and wine for a moment before ambling on in their beautiful, beautiful city.

PISA

The leaning tower is a fabulous stage prop.

We had pizza in Pisa and life was absolutely grand. It was good to relax, to sit back after a full day of running around to enjoy some deliciousness that could really make us feel like we had arrived.

The best of everything

Europe loves Speedos so much

It’s important to be able to embrace and enjoy even very corny things.

What’s “the best?” Of course it exists, and it’s pleasant to stumble upon, but I’m not going to spend my life looking only for the best of things at the expense on missing out on other really wonderful or silly things that make me happy. I don’t want to have tastes too refined for joyful foolishness.

I say this because of the cruise. I was concerned, very concerned that it would be an irritating waste of my time to spend two weeks on a boat full of fat Americans, stuffing my face with mass-produced buffet spaghetti instead of sampling local cuisine and traveling the way I like to.

Instead it was the most fun ever. Much more diverse than I ever expected. So much to do! Silly poolside activities and samba lessons, scavenger hunts, karaoke, bingo, a club every night. And each day at port was a little mini-exercise in the kind of travel I like, pushing my mom and sister to do the public transportation thing instead of relying on ship-arranged transport or private taxis. It was good for us to make decisions together about what we wanted to do, and to have the time restraints imposed by the call for all-aboard to keep us from overdoing it.

The cruise was a perfect place to work on Marina’s opposite of loneliness. For two weeks a bunch of strangers actually were all in literally the same boat, living and eating and playing side by side.

The thing I enjoyed the most about the cruise overall was bonding with fellow passengers. There was a couple from Mississippi that loved to dance, maybe in their late 50s or early 60s. Whenever there was music, I joined them on the dance floor to huge smiles, hugs, and high fives. Another couple composed of a big bellied woman and her husband like a dressed asparagus made us one rug-cutting fivesome.

There were families we spent days with, saving lounge chairs by the pool for each other and reserving full booths for bingo. There was an old Spanish man who had been married for 67 years, and in 67 years he could never get his wife to dance. He was shuffling and shaking his booty at every event by himself. By himself until I joined him, at least.

I thought a lot about myself. In conflicts with my sister I was told that it’s always “the Jessica Show” and that that can be a lot to deal with. Irritating. Too much to handle sometimes. She’s right, it is the Jessica Show. I am a lot.

I’ve decided it’s mostly good and not something I want to change. It brings people together, it makes people laugh and loosens them up. I have nothing to lose, I have no shame and little pride. It’s easy for me to say sorry and accept apologies. It’s easy for me to sidestep awkward and ignore sarcasm. I met someone like me, someone older who has been running his own Show for a lot longer than I have. We found common ground and I’m not turning back from his assurances that this way is a good way, a loving way and not a selfish, attention seeking way at its core. It’s a way of being that means well. I hope other people will understand.

Anyway. Here are the few notes I had from Cannes:

The yachts in port were huge, enormous, ridiculous. How much boat can a private citizen use at once?

Every building looked to me like an ancient, crumbling cake. Pastel plaster fading into the sea, indifferent to our shopping and searching for croissants.

They called it a playground for the rich and beautiful, but we are all so much more the same than we are different. We play the same ways, just on different scales.

Saying “Bonjour!” over and over made us feel like we were in the intro sequence from “Beauty and the Beast.”

Cannes was basically a wash. We have Fifth Avenue in New York; the facade of a Dior store doesn’t exactly thrill me. The best part of the day was getting a bunch of t-shirts on sale for 3 euro each. I promptly ruined one of them by banging into a holy oil-coated candelabra in a church in Athens.

on Barcelona, the first time

first meal was paella! nom nom nom

A little twist in biases of Spanish as a blue collar language. To hear white people speaking snobby Spanish made Amanda and I raise our eyebrows at each other and say, “Ahhh, but of course.” And they were speaking it right to us, without fail, because we could easily be one of them.

The crowded bus was full of smiling, quiet people. They were mostly beautiful, even those with paunchy faces sloping to pop in exaggerated chins and noses. 

A pale, skinny girl in a dirty white dress was hanging off her father like swinging from a lamppost in the rain. Her dark and taciturn companion didn’t touch her own father at all.

The old women don’t look innocent here. They look like repositories of wisdom and scandal, beyond the possibility of shock or surprise. 

The “x” in Catalan is a lock to which I desperately want to key. 

Everything is lovely, lovely lovely lovely in every direction. Thrillingly gorgeous buildings with old plaster facades and curling wrought-iron balconies, the fantastic architectural genius of Gaudi, the way light moves across the rooftops.

I want to do more than take a picture, I want more than beauty. How can I crawl inside of this, this feeling of peace and chill and joy and vibrating excitement at once, to be alive? To see these things? To be with my beloved family at the same time?

Why are there no scrambled eggs here? All we wanted were egg sandwiches!

Why does it take a half hour of charades and pictionary to STILL only end up with four well-done sunnyside up eggs and some bread soaked in vinegar and salad dressing? 

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.

first two video attempts