The Travel Bloc

In the darkness of the womb the first sound we hear is the beating of our mother's heart, the steady rhythm of life pulsing into and around us. For nine months we grow in that limited environment, however we turn, or kick or twist we are always surrounded by that unending beat.

It's no wonder then, that music feels like a memory we can't remember. It is our first physical memory and furthermore a remnant, of something deeper, something that has travelled down through generations and across cultures.

Was the first music percussive? Rocks smashed against rocks or hands slapping on wood? Was it a sudden awareness of the sound of our own feet, the music of our own movement? Or was it imitation of the things we heard?

Music is all around us if we listen. Birds sing. The wind blows. Did music come before language? Is that why it so easily transcends time and space and words that are really just symbols of some greater meaning that can never quite be expressed?

When you hear music, whether it's the smooth silhouettes of Jazz tumbling almost lazily from a saxophone, the slow, languid rhythm of Reggae, or the harsh guttural sounds and wild instrumentals of metal it echoes back, past your own fleeting lifetime to lives that were lived long before, feelings that were felt long before words were even there to express them.

There are still cultures that make music by slapping their hands in rhythmic patterns in the water. There are orchestras pieced together from metal and plastic found in trash heaps. Wherever you find people, you find music.

Music reflects many things, maybe it reflects everything that has ever been felt, or will ever be felt, but to me the most important thing about music, even more important than the way it enables us to connect and to understand, to feel empathy, is the way it allows us to transcend, at least momentarily, our external and internal environment.

Like all art, music enables us to imagine something more out of every moment, than the moments that came before. It enables us to strive towards an indefinable something that may never be reached, but will always be there: simultaneously around us and within us.

When we feel music, truly feel it in our veins and our hearts and our minds we are one with all that has been and all that ever will be. We are a part of a movement that goes so far before and beyond anything we could ever know: the emancipation of humanity from the limits of our own feeble bodies and patterned minds.

Now that she's back in the atmosphere

With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey

The first time I remember hearing this song we were driving down the autobahn in the back of a flashy BMW. I was staring out the window as the last pink line of the sun disappeared over the farm-covered hills. I had never been so happy to be in the back of a car, safe and warm, as a man we had never met before drove over 200km an hour down the motorway.

Earlier that day we had gotten off the train in Munich in the middle of Oktoberfest to be greeted by a swarm of people breaking beer bottles on the station steps in broad daylight, fighting and shouting, some of them dressed in traditional German clothes as they stumbled around us.

We were there to be picked up by the parents of a girl we had met in a hostel in Ireland. The meeting had been arranged with minimal contact and a shoddy internet connection. It was the first time I really panicked on that trip, even though I was seventeen and it was my first time travelling outside of Canada I had kept my cool up until then but the thought of spending a night in Munich during Oktoberfest with no place to stay filled my chest with weight. A weight that only increased as the day dragged on. You made a sign that said "Julia`s Canadians" that didn't lead us to her family but did lead to a lot of uncomfortable conversations with people who were far too drunk for the middle of the day.

It was dark out by the time they found us and I had never been so relieved. Julia's Mom looked just like her allaying my concern of 'how we will even know it's them?' A warm feeling filled by chest as we left the city and it's chaos behind, that unique mixture of elation and emotional exhaustion only travelling can bring seemed to pump through my veins and settle warmly in my chest. Content, I leaned my head against the window and listened to the music and the sound of Julia`s parents and little brother conversing in gentle German as the first stars appeared on the horizon.

She acts like summer and walks like rain

Reminds me that there's a time to change, hey, hey

Since the return of her stay on the moon

She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey, hey

You were asleep beside me and you looked so peaceful I forgot about all the stupid fights and the stress of travelling and let the moment fill me up. This moment was why we were here, to find out what it meant to feel alive.

Tell me did you sail across the sun

Did you make it to the milky way to see the lights all faded

And that heaven is overrated

In Budapest we stayed in a hostel on the third floor of a building down the alley from the main strip. We arrived at eleven o clock at night and a drunk stranger led us up a dubious elevator to a hostel run by a coughing Hungarian man. The hostel was overrun with manikins for some reason that was never explained to us, but it had a kitchen and free internet so we paid for a week and hunkered down youtubing music, eating cheap food and drinking cheap beer.

We were listening to 'Drops of Jupiter' one night when you turned to me and said, “that could be our song if its not yours with anyone else's.” You never could say anything straight out. I knew what you meant though so I smiled and agreed.

We spent that week getting drunk with wine and sleeping bags on Buda mountain and running back across the eight-lane suspension bridge shouting out the lyrics to each other. The water under the bridge shone bright and black and I laughed aloud at the splash my wine bottle made as I threw it far down into the river.

Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star

One without a permanent scar

And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

You wrote that on my facebook wall when I went to New Zealand “did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?”

I did miss you, more than anything. For the longest time it was like you were supposed to be there beside me. When I went to the super market you were supposed to be there so we could argue about what to buy, or find ourselves on a random adventure somehow.

We spoke every week and it was bittersweet. My heart ached, literally ached in my chest. I had always thought that was just something people said.

When I climbed to the top of the ski hill/volcano I was working at I called you from the top. I wanted you to share that moment with me. But you were busy, you had a boyfriend and more often than not you were stoned, dragging deep hoots from the bong as we spoke on the phone and only half-aware of the conversation.

Now that she's back from that soul vacation

Tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey

She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo

Reminds me that there's room to grow, hey, hey

The easy way to tell the story is that we grew apart, like two streams off of a river that head in entirely different directions we mingled for a while underneath the heavy current but we were always going to have to part.

Now that she's back in the atmosphere

I'm afraid that she might think of me as plain ol Jane

Told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land

The truth is the trust was never really there. It emerged out of necessity because we needed it to survive but when we weren't trying to survive anymore there was nothing left to hold us together. Even our dreams started to drift apart, to splinter into pieces.

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet

Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day

And head back to the milky way

And tell me, did Venus blow your mind

Was it everything you wanted to find

And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

I was in school and you were working. My mind was filled with theories and ideas, dreams of making the world a better place, of balancing the different parts of me somehow. You wanted to have your foreign romance, to fall in love and live in comfort, to be protected and safe and in touch with nature. I wanted to be anything but safe.

Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken

Your best friend always sticking up for you... even when I know you're wrong

Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance five-hour phone

Conversation

The best soy latte that you ever had... And me

The truth is you didn't stick up for me and maybe when it came down to it I never really stuck up for you in the way that you needed me too. We were both right and wrong and in the end it doesn't really matter: right or wrong. It just is. I am what I am and you are what you are and we aren't kids fumbling our way across Europe anymore. We are adults becoming who we will be.

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet

Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day

And head back toward the milky way

It must have seemed like the world was ending. It must have seemed to an eleven year old boy that the world was a cruel and terrible place. He was moved away from his family and shuffled from camp to camp, even to Auschwitz for a short time. 

The first time I went to Europe I would sit on trains and wonder if the same tracks had carried my relatives in cattle cars. My friend told me not to talk about that. 

We went to Terezin, the concentration camp outside of Prague where my great grandmother had spent the war years. It was a cold, grey day as we wandered around the barracks, staring wide-eyed at prison uniforms and video recordings of the camp. We accidentally walked into a tunnel. It was dark and long and seemed to go on forever. The air inside it felt heavy and foreboding and full of something that felt like death. We finally came to the end and a sign read "Do not enter". 

After my grandfather died, my Aunt sent me a CD of him describing his experiences in the concentration camp. I drove around in my Mom's car listening to his voice. A lump rose in my throat as I heard him describe, how his cousin, Oscar, who he had always thought was his brother, told the guards to leave my grandfather alone. The guards had responded by kicking Oscar to death in front of him. Tears squeezed from my eyes as I drove along those dark winter roads. They stung like lemon juice in cuts as they trickled down my cheeks. 

That eleven year old boy who became my grandfather survived six years in concentration camps. By the time he was released he was seventeen, over six feet tall and weighed ninety eight pounds. 

When I was seventeen I had worked non-stop for two years at Tim Hortons in order to save up enough for a ticket to Ireland. The September after I graduated two of my best friends drove us down to Vancouver and we boarded the plane.

Shortly after my grandfather was released from the concentration camp the Iron Curtain fell. He was lucky. He found his mother and brother were still alive. But living was difficult. Basic goods were hard to come by. People lived in desperate poverty. At twenty my grandfather escaped by night across borders. He found his way to England and then to Canada where he worked as a farm hand while learning English. 

At twenty I was working as an educator and taking classes at the University on politics and the environment, creative writing and gender studies.

My grandfather once sat in a restaurant with me in Edmonton and told me that Mein Kampf was an interesting read. He was one of the kindest, most interesting people I have ever met.

For all my studying I can detect certain patterns in the world, but I can never fully understand anything at all. I can see the way the economy, the environment and politics interact with social customs and ideals to create our way of life. I can see the way the events of world war two shaped our world, the way human rights arose from the desire of England and America to establish trade relations and hopefully, at least as a result of some degree of altruism and conviction. But I can never understand how my grandfather was so kind, while other people can be so cruel. 

What makes us who we are? What shapes the way we see the world and the way we respond to it? There are so many answers to that question and so few that answer anything at all. 

One thing I do know is that there is always hope. It is in times of adversity that we find out who we are, not just as individuals, but as a society of people connected across the globe by economic and communications systems, by love and loss and hope and shame, and perhaps most importantly of all by our shared fate. 

My grandfather saw the world change. He defied enormous odds so that I could live, not just survive, but live. 

Our generation will defy odds that may be even greater. We are facing limits to the environment's capacity to support us, to our own capacity to continue living in the style to which we have become accustomed. This is not a matter of nation-states, or territorial disputes, though it is often whittled down to that. This is a matter of our capacity for adaptation as a species, our ability to examine the consequences of our actions and respond accordingly: for ourselves, for the fearless predecessors who have given us so much, and most importantly for future generations, for nieces and nephews and children and grandchildren and their children after them.

You have to trust yourself, like seriously fucking trust what's inside of you. Because your passion, your fire, the aching tides of love inside of you are not something to be ashamed of. Believe in things so hard it hurts. Love people so much they can rip your heart out. They will, but you will heal. Pick wisely and love deeply. Be you and don't accept anyone in your life that doesn't accept who you are, all that you are. You don't have time for that. You are worth too much. Find love that grows not love that tears you apart. This last year has taught you the difference. 

Sometimes you lose people without any warning. The pain and shock sears itself across your chest and you can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t think clearly enough to even comprehend what’s happened. 

Other times people slip away, one forgotten gesture at a time. The smiles fade out of conversation and the words hang over everything you do like shadows on a sunny day.

People come into our lives the same way. Sometimes they appear for what feels like a moment to introduce an idea, or a feeling, something that changes the way you see the world just the slightest bit, like pointing out of the difference between teal and blue. After you’ve noticed that difference though, nothing is ever quite the same.

Other people slip into our thoughts like leaves that float along the river in the fall, unnoticed but ever-present on the endless current. They sink into every breath, every movement, the whisper of their smiles, of their tears, the sweetest weight inside your chest. 

My first travel experiences were a beautiful blur of feelings I had never felt before, of experiences I had never even imagined. Everything was new and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. The more I travelled, the more different experiences seemed to collect meaning, to emerge at the forefront of my mind. Like the bleeding colours of the sky as the sun sets, certain moments seemed to disappear so quickly from my actual experience, yet linger on somewhere deep inside my chest.

            The first time I went to Italy, when I was seventeen, we ate gelato and pizza from vendors on the side of the road, ignoring the calls of the waiters outside restaurants who promised us free wine to entice us inside. As two Canadian girls who had never been outside our home country before that trip we were shocked by the audacity of the men and boys. They shouted at us and made rude gestures.

            In one particularly memorable moment, at the Trevi Fountain in Rome, an Egyptian man chased us through the streets until my friend turned to him and shouted at him to “Leave us alone!” Afterwards, as we continued to run breathless through the streets of Rome, hearts beating, afraid to stop in case he reappeared, I wasn’t too sure what to think about Italy.

            Two years later, after a working holiday alone in New Zealand I was headed off to Italy again. My best friend is half-Italian and it had always been his dream to go to Italy and meet his family there. One night as I was sitting at his house chatting away he told me that before he went anywhere else he felt like he had to go to Italy.

            “So let’s do it.” I told him.

            He didn’t have the money at the time but I knew it was something he needed to do. So I bought the tickets and told him he would pay me back. A week later his sister bought a ticket as well and we arranged to meet up with the girl I had travelled around New Zealand with. She was living in Germany now, spending time with her grandparents and her boyfriend and teaching English. She had always told me, as we drove along the winding green roads, how much she had loved the time she had spent in Italy with her family and how she would love to go back for longer.

            I had a constant feeling of deja vu walking through those streets, but at the same time it all felt so different. The first time I went to Europe we wanted to see as many places as we could and so we rushed from country to country, spending three days here and four days there. In New Zealand I had realized how little the things you see and do while travelling matter in comparison to the people that you meet and the moments that come out of nowhere and take your breath away.

            For Josh, Jessica and Tanya most of the sights and sounds were new and they wanted to see everything. I wanted to wander the streets and somewhere in the middle of it find the people, the culture that pumps like blood through the arteries of every cities. So I ended up spending a fair share of my time wandering alone or following them around to restaurants and boutiques.

            It was lovely in a way to see Italy in a different light, to spend a little more money and rent bicycles. We cycled around Florence as the day turned into night and stopped at a little restaurant in a hidden piazza. The walls were tinted gold by the moon and it was beautiful, eating margarita pizza and bocconcini salad, laughing and soaking up the relative coolness of the night.

            Josh and Jessica’s family lived in the very south of Italy, in a village called Mangone in the province of Calabria. Meeting them was the part of the trip I was looking forward to the most. I had been lucky enough to be taken in by a family in Germany and multiple families in New Zealand and I had always found that to be one of the best parts of travelling: experiencing the culture and kindness of strangers. It never ceases to amaze me how generous people really are wherever I go.

            So as the train headed south past beaches swarmed by sunbathers I felt excited. We pulled up to the station in Cosenza and sat outside by our backpacks. My skin was damp as we hid from the sun in the shadow of the train station. Smiling tax drivers offered their services but we shook our heads and smiled back. It was calmer here than in the north of Italy. People seemed to move slower.

            Josh`s grandparents’ friends owned a home in a nearby village and Vince arrived to pick us up. He drove one of those small, expensive European sports cars, cruising around the valleys and hills at 200km/h. After a drink at their beautiful home, with a balcony that allowed you to see for miles we headed off to Mangone. There was some miscommunication because Josh and Jessica’s Aunt who we would be staying with, Zia Anna, didn’t speak and English and we didn’t speak any Italian. However, with the help of their cousin Marco, who spoke perfect English, we found our way to the place we would be staying at.

            Every time we had gone to a restaurant on the trip, Josh had shaken his head at the food with a stubborn frown and said, “It’s good but it’s not like Nonna’s.”

            I thought he was being ridiculous until we arrived at his Zia Anna’s to a flurry of cheek kisses and smiles and words we didn’t understand. She sat us down and whipped up a meal in what seemed like minutes. The whole time she chattered away in Italian and we chewed wide-eyed attempting to understand. Marco translated sometimes, smiling away at us.

            For the rest of the five days we spent there it seemed like all we did was eat. Relatives or friends of the family would come over or we would be taken to their house and they would feed us: bowls of gelato and espresso in tiny cups. One night we went to Josh and Jessica’s Uncle’s pizzeria. We ate pizza as big as a table and drank the homemade wine that all of Josh’s Uncles seemed to make. Nobody ever allowed us to pay. When we were at the grocery store preparing for our trip back on the train we had to argue with Marco just to stop him paying for the food. 

            One day Josh and Jessica’s great Uncle Silvio took us driving in his car. Jessica and Tanya passed around the Italian-English dictionary and attempted to communicate. He was a tiny man with glasses and a gentle manner. He took us for ice cream in another village and led us to a restaurant overlooking a lake. We ate for hours as the waiter brought us course after course.

            That night we ate supper at his daughter’s house beside the white church where Josh and Jessica’s Nonna and Nonno had married. Everyone gathered in that piazza: the adults sitting by the fountain and chatting while the children played behind the church late into the night.

            I had learned a little Spanish from my South American friends in New Zealand and that night I swear I spoke Italian. Maybe it was the wine, more likely it was the people, but whatever it was we all managed to communicate somehow. We laughed and passed around the dictionary, stumbling across phrases and laughing as we mispronounced them. When I went to kiss Josh’s cousin in greeting, for some reason I had clucked my tongue right beside his cheek. I don’t know why I did it, but it happened and I turned redder than the tomatoes in the salad. I locked myself in the bathroom later that evening and that same cousin found me and let me out, laughing and saying words I didn’t understand.

            The next day Josh’s Zia Anna took us to the sea where her husband and daughter were staying. She bought us bracelets on the beach and we played in the waves. Mostly I hid under the shade of an umbrella because my skin is whiter than snow at the best of times. I got burnt anyhow. We went to another cousin’s house that evening and they were amazed by the colour of my skin. They had never seen anything as red as my legs and back and chest.

            “Rosso! Rosso!” They exclaimed.

            I felt nauseous from the burn so I went back to the house alone and laid in a cold bath, praying I wouldn’t blister. My skin is so white I once floated down a river at my home in Northern British Columbia, when it was ten degrees Celsius, and got a burn so bad a blister the size of a fist appeared on my lower back. I went to the room I was staying in, with the balcony that looked over the entire valley and I tried to get to sleep. It was difficult because I was itching all over. But finally I managed to fall asleep in only my underwear and on top of the blankets because my pyjamas chafed at my skin. Only to wake up a few hours later to Josh’s Zia Anna yelling at me in Italian and waving a tube of cream above my head.

            I have never felt so loved.

            I would wake up to yelling in the kitchen and come downstairs to find everyone gathered around the counter arguing and eating and happy. It was so different to how I had grown up, waking up to yelling and knowing that the day was not going to turn out well.

            The last night we were there Zia Anna had to work in the morning. She spoke rapidly to us as she said goodbye, tears falling down her face as she hugged and kissed us all. I went out afterwards and stood on the balcony with Josh as the sun set red above the soccer field and the darkened hills in the distance. There were years and years where I never cried, but standing there an emotion that felt bigger than myself swelled up in my chest and I couldn’t do anything but sob onto Josh’s designer shirt. I thought of my little nephew at home, just two or three months old and I wanted him to have this, I wanted everyone to have this certainty that they were loved.

            If you see how things can be than you can create them, you can become them. Sometimes the world seems so complicated. I go to school and I learn about the world and the different systems and organizations that are constantly interacting and I feel dwarfed by it all. Then I remember it’s not all that complicated.

            The thing about Italian cooking is it’s simple. The ingredients are plain: flour and butter, olive oil and vinegar, cheese and tomatoes. But somehow when you put them all together it creates something beautiful, something greater than the sum of it’s parts.