Thoughts while driving from Volendam to Liege

I’ve spent quite a bit of time the last few days staring at the sea. In Ijmuiden, I wandered along the sandy path and stared at the sea. Then on the hydrofoil into Amsterdam, I just stared at the canal we were traveling over. Then today, I spent some time in Volendam staring at the sea. I’m not sure if it was an effect of the ocean or just my own relaxed mind. So many years I have generally subsisted on insufficient sleep with more than sufficient things to do. One of the most relaxing things I usually do would be to go hiking, watching cycling races, or to watch football matches. The rest of my life is not that relaxing, but this summer has been different. I have no official job, no classes, no theatre projects, and no research projects. I’ve been reading some Walter Benjamin for fun, but mostly I seem to have been just floating through the weeks. There has been planning and finding directions and other traveling responsibilities, but that’s it. I have seen art, famous monuments, and wandered through strange cities and let the streets branch out in front of me. Sun breathes in my presence in these places that I have never been. I am a stranger in a strange land, but these places feel as familiar as so many others. People walk near me, going about their own ways – business or pleasure. The streets are streets. The people live, love, and die. These streets are older than the one’s I usually walk on. The streets of London, Edinburgh, Orkney, Paris, Luzern, and Holland have all been paved and pounded into the ground by feet, wagons, horses, and vehicles for many thousands of years. What makes these streets different from the newer ones? What makes these crowds different from the others I have been through. I have wandered through lakes, gulfs, seas, and oceans of people through my life. I like to drift through them, only hanging onto a few. I like seeing cities and moving through the streets, a gust of wind, blowing past and enjoying it all.

But I don’t. I generally like to keep too busy to do these things, except interludes when I can camp and hike during the summer. What would I do if I didn’t keep busy? Would I just do this: wander? Probably. It is nice for now to see all the things to be seen, but I miss busy-ness. I miss having to wake up at a certain time and be places everyday. My sister and I could sleep all day with no consequences. It was nice at first, but now I want to be somewhere at sometime to do something useful. I am loving the pictures and soon watching the Tour de France, but there is so little to do. I only need to get directions, make decisions, and occasionally speak French or German. That’s it. So, I watch the sea role in and out and think about how it is the same sea in New Jersey, Shenzhen, Seattle, and South Africa. The same water goes and comes with a rhythm that is not one I usually hear. My rhythm is that of the clock and the alarm and the fast walk to campus.

Switzerland - wonderland with few street signs

Last Thursday, Ekitzel drove us across France to Switzerland. I was reminded of my love of driving because of all you get to see. I kept trying to take photos with her camera since mine was out of batteries, but it really didn't capture even a tenth of the beauty. Ekitzel freaked out at the border because we just drove through without being stopped at all. No looksies, no questions, no stopping. She does come from China. I figured since we had a French car we were fine, and we were. We didn't get stopped at the Swiss-French border or the French-German border. The Schengen Zone in Europe is wonderful with the open borders, no lines for borders, or anything else. Ekitzel will also not have to worry about running out of pages in her passport book. She's almost all out of her extra pages with the multiple crossings between China and Hong Kong.

We stopped in Vevey on Lake Geneva to take pictures, eat ice cream, and walk along the lake. It was one of those sites that can't really be described because it is so beautiful. There was a lightning storm going over the mountains. It darkened and hid the mountains in a blue-grey sky then slowly it lightened again in the half hour we were there. We were at one end of lake and the other disappeared into a white distance of mist going on forever that darkened once the storm passed over. The lake seemed to fade into forever. Very trite, but I can't describe the place. It reminded me of those Chinese ink landscapes where the mountains, lakes, and rivers all fade into mist. We ate ice cream while watching distant lightning on the mountains and a sky that faded from light to dark at a moment's notice with mountains and far shores that faded in and out of sight. With lemon ice cream.

Ekitzel finally drove us through the storm upon the mountains and we realized how light the tiny car (a VW Up! car) was as it was swayed across the road by the wind. The rain hammered down and the wind tossed up as we went up high gradient winding mountain roads and then came down them. We were trying to ascend Atlas with all the weather the gods threw at us just making it more beautiful. We came at last to Luzern and realized that while the Swiss may be excellent at making watches, keeping to time schedules, and other punctual things, they are horrible at signage. It took us ten minutes of driving in the town to see one street sign. The highways are well signed and the roundabouts, but the ordinary streets did not merit the same treatment. It took us about an hour to find our hostel (it may have been longer) in a small town in Switzerland. We finally did and basically collapsed.

The next day was one of relaxation. We needed some food, some medications, and to replace the sunglasses I left in a bathroom in France. We wandered around the old town and did all our shopping including the purchase of a comprehensive road atlas of Europe, then sat next to the lake. We finally decided to move and found a river cruise around the lake with audio guide in three languages: German, English, and Chinese. I will now take a minute to mention Chinese tourists. Ekitzel came from China and was hoping to escape Chinese people, but little did she know how far they have come. In London, Paris, and Luzern there were many Chinese tourists in their own tour buses (some driven very poorly), with their own groups with the head who speaks English (but can't really understand), take pictures of houses and sailboats when on a lake in the Alps, and eating at their own Chinese restaurants in France, England, and Switzerland. They also seem to use vacations mainly as shopping trips. On Orkney Island, we saw a Chinese restaurant, and we even saw a Chinese mother in Vevey. They seem to be everywhere. Except the Alps.

The next day we woke up early to hit the Farmer's Market and eat some breakfast purchased there before driving a few minutes away to take a cable car going steeply up into the Alps. We spent 5.5 hours on a hike that was supposed to be three, but it was beautiful. We were looking for cheese farms, but didn't find any. But the hike was so beautiful, we weren't disappointed. It was so beautiful, there was only room for exhaustion and wonder. And mud.

On seeing works of art

In this very digital age we can see a picture of every work of art at the drop of a hat. So why do we still go to see original works of art? I just spent an inordinate amount of my five days in Paris either being frustrated by a waiter, riding the Metro, or viewing works of art. I am considering the monuments I saw to be architectural works of art and the churches also along with the art inside them. Couldn't I have saved myself time and much frustration at visitors taking pictures, using a flash to take a photo, speaking on cell phones (all when they were not supposed to), and being generally irritable in their large groups? After seeing Notre Dame, Sacrè Coeur, and Saint-Chappelle in one day followed by l'Arc de Triomphe, I felt uplifted and wondered at how all these people used so much of their worldly goods (or other peoples) to show their love or worship of God. I know not all of it was genuine, but much of it was and the beauty of it still moved me today. These artisans (whether paid or not) finessed and caressed these statues and plans of buildings until it was transformed into a thing of beauty. These buildings and statues conveyed a love of God or France that carried throughout the centuries. Just looking at the pictures of the churches or the Arch does not convey this. The pictures may be exquisitely framed and taken in perfect light but they cannot connect the audience with the creator of the work in the same way.

I went to l'Orangerie and Centre Pompidou the next day through the much changed weather. L'Orangerie was special to me because it contained Monet's Waterlillies. I have come close to crying only at a few paintings in my life and they were all Monet's or Van Gogh's but mostly Monet. I have only ever shed tears over a Monet. In the Minnesota Institute of Art is a Wheatstacks painting from Monet and it is the only painting I have ever cried at in exhilaration of aesthetic pleasure. In London's National Gallery I have come close with a Van Gogh painted a few months before his death and seen as somewhat unfinished. But many Monet's do this to me including the Wheatstacks, train station, cathedrals, and others. I love many of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists because of the globs of paint they use. They glob it because they can. Paint was finally available in tubes which made the Impressionist movement possible. Before all artists had to make their own paint and they seemed to spread it as thin as they could. Buy now they could clump it on canvases from tubes. This allowed them to create a scene of the senses and paint a picture that was not exact, but conveyed the feeling of objects. It reminded me of how a feeling of a morning in a field of wheatstacks cannot be captured in a photo, neither can driving through the Alps or Lake Geneva, the Cotswolds, Scottish Highlands, Paris on a Sunday morning, or sailing on Lake Lucerne. None of these can really be captured in a photo and neither can these works of art. You can see the brushstrokes and how the paint was dabbed. You can see how the sunlight caught these dabs and not how they were perfectly lit. You can see the varnish from the old masters ad how the painting still sparkles in the sunlight. All of these efforts of the artists including varnish in their oils to give them a shiny appearance after they oxidize. Oil paints don't dry per se, they oxidize to harden slowly. If the first layer of paint hardens quicker than the top layers, the paint can crack. I saw these cracks, dabs, and reflective varnishes. These artists made these originals and they reflect their care and effort. Through the Musee d'Orsay and the 10 hours we spent at le Louvre, I was reminded of the brilliance of these works but also the brilliant artists behind them. Da Vinci began adding beeswax to his paints to quicken the drying, but before him a few weeks was minimum to wait for a painting to dry. All of these artists had their own formulas for paint and some of the paints darken with time and some reds also fade leaving faces ashen. But you must see the paints in their original to see the artists.

By the end of le Louvre, I was tired of art. I'd seen thousands of paintings, all beautiful, but my mind and eyes were tired. But I needed to keep seeing before I left Paris the next day, so I did.

Remembering Orkney in Paris

So, I went to Orkney Island. Before Dublin. Before seeing much of the Lake District besides a quick stop at Lake Windermere. I had to go to Orkney mainly due to Simon Schama's History of Britain. There are many places he goes to showcase the incredible breadth of the history of the British Isles and one of the first places he goes is the Neolithic village of Skara Brae on Orkney Island. He shows how incredibly intact this village was found buried in sand on the west coast of Orkney Island looking out at the Atlantic. I have now been there and it was incredible to think of people living 5 or 6 thousand years ago on this cold desolate island in the North Atlantic. It was beautiful and remote. The World Heritage sites I have been to have probably never been so sparse of people and these ones are older than the pyramids. We could walk right up and touch the standing stones in the Ring of Brodgar and were allowed inside a Neolithic burial mound that Vikings had already broken into and carved runic graffiti on. Vikings considered this place old and ancient. We walked around the ancient village of Skara Brae at a respectful distance because of the fragility, but we were allowed into a newer broch. A broch is a ruin of a village with a central core building or house. The Broch of Gurness was built during the Iron Age, so recent compared to the Neolithic ruins. But it was still old and the very fact that I could get inside of a dark hole, or storage room most likely, built in the Iron Age is a bit too much to comprehend. These stones were laid around the birth of Christ and I can climb all over them!

The island was very sparsely populated and we rented a car to drive around. The only car they had was a older manual Jaguar station wagon. Luckily Kitz got to drive because I would not have been able to drive a manual on the wrong side. But we got to traverse many one lane dirt roads in our quest to see World Heritage sites. It was so lovely and remote from the crowds that I am now a part of in Paris. I think there were more people in Notre Dame than the whole Orkney Island. I am missing the remote beauty but not the freezing cold weather. Summer has not yet come to Orkney.

Driving through England

I must admit that I had my reservations when I booked a car to drive from London to Edinburgh, then from Edinburgh to the far north shore of Scotland, and then after a ferry around the island of Orkney, then finally back to London. I have actually been studying how the various bus and coach drivers drove through the streets while I was a passenger for the last two months. But I will now report that my sister, myself, and the car survived. I usually drive everywhere in the States and while I may seem to be rushing through the landscape compared to hiking or biking, I love experiencing the speeded up vistas seen through my windshield and always having the option to stop and take pictures. I didn't stop as much as I would have liked to but as soon as I got out of London, the end goal was in my mind.

Driving up I was almost alone in the car since Kitz slept most of the way. I was left with my thoughts as I drove and they were occupied mainly with how humans had shaped everything I had seen through many thousands of years. Forests had been felled, regrown, and refelled to make pasture land. I remembered Sherwood Forest, Enclosures, and Clearances and pictured people used to living on the land being evicted. I imagined the poet John Clare only being safe and sane when he was in his little corner of the world. With no real home, I have always felt more transient than settled. Home could be a building, but could also be how you feel most at peace. I always feel peaceful when I am driving on long roadtrips. By exiling myself from the everyday and then taking myself to a place where I am a stranger makes me feel peaceful.

We never lived anywhere very long while I was growing up and the house we lived in the longest has survived in my dreams and memories as an imagined haven of security. But the home I remember in Cincinnati, Ohio no longer exists. We returned to the house a few years after we had moved and the new owners had renovated it. The outside uncleared forest and shabby old trees with wild onions and dandelions growing all around had been meticulously manicured. The mulberry trees with moss and wild strawberries overgrown underneath was no more. Even our ancient wooden shed was gone. This place had been my fairy kingdom and it was gone forever. The inside was the same. All the eccentricities and inconveniences of the 80 year old house had been molded into a fashion plate for Architectural Digest. Slowly the house I remember has become more dreamlike and less real.

The first memory I ever had was in the Gulf of Mexico. I was sitting in a floatation device for a baby that was brightly colored and had many different toys around the outside. The only real memory was of how amazing I thought this float was. But I know my parents were there and slowly my memory has incorporated facts that are not my memories but things my parents told me. The memory has always been mire like a dream than reality because it is so far back in my own memory. It feels like a memory of a memory. That is how driving through England feels. It is crowded in more memories that obscure the reality.

The reality is that this is farmland. It is beautiful farmland, but only farmland. I see novels, essays, and poems I have read as I drive to Lake Windermere, Edinburgh, the Grampian Mountains, Orkney Island. I see paintings painted and photos taken all along the road. But most of all I see what I want to see: beautiful history.

As I was driving from Lake Windermere to Edinburgh I kept thinking of the human forces that shaped the land and not the natural forces. I was looking at sheep and thinking of all the natural forces that shaped the geography of the States away from human influence. Even as I was driving past farmland thinking of this I realized my own Euro-centric fallacy. The Americas had been shaped by people as much as any continent. We imbue the many many civilizations of Native Americans that existed for thousands of years with an inability to completely change the shape of the world around them. They cut down forests, made new hills, and created deserts with the same force as any other civilization. We just forget them. We forget that our continent has been occupied for the same amount of time as all the other continents. The so-called discovery of America happened within a couple thousand years as the discovery of England. These people do not deserve to be forgotten any more than we deserve to be forgotten. The Native Americans have faded beyond even a memory of a memory. Now they are always thought of by myself with surprise. That is my own fault. I may not build pyramids for people to remember me, but what is this writing except a cry out to not be forgotten.

On Orkney Island, we went to a Neolithic grave mound called Maeshowe. It was the largest burial chamber from this Neolithic Age they have ever found. Do note that this is way before the pyramids were built. These communities up in the North Atlantic constructed a stone burial chamber that is still intact today. But when this burial mound was excavated, no bodies were found in it. We don't know why there were no bodies in it. The chamber had been opened before when some Vikings heading to fight in the Crusades were caught in a sudden Blizzard and fell through the roof. Maybe they took the bones out, but it is not likely. They were headed to the Holy Land to kill many heathen to make more bones. Why would they want these old bones? The Vikings actually spent the three days they were trapped in the tomb carving runes into the walls. Most of them carved their names I'm conjunction with something indicating they were the carvers. Some were more creative. If you are educated, what better use to put literacy than carving your name into walls? They wanted to be remembered as did the tomb builders. What use is a tomb besides being remembered by the living and the gods?

Humans have been trying to think of ways of being remembered since there have been humans. I went to the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney. This is the third largest henge (or ring of standing stones) in the British Isles. This was also the second henge I have been to after Stonehenge and I could walk right inside of this henge and lean against the stones that had been placed 5-6 thousand years ago. No one really knows the purpose of the henge exactly, though speculation about religious and calendar needs have been theorized. But these people probably didn't need such a large reminder if they only needed a calendar that lasted a lifetime. These stones took thousands of man-hours to move so they would always be there to be seen and remembered. Even me, with my indoor plumbing and cell phone, couldn't help but think about the people that chipped these stones out of a quarry and then transported them nine miles before standing them in a specific place. These people still dressed in fur but they created hundreds of stone circles throughout the British Isles and a large incredibly empty tomb. I joked with Kitz about the fad for henges because I don't understand what would motivate people to put so much effort into being remembered, or even making permanent changes to their environment. It is so easy to change our environment that our struggle is to keep it the same. I can't even comprehend a people with so little control over their own environment that nothing they made or did could prevent plagues, epidemics, all the cattle dying. The environment was always something to be feared because it could kill so easily. I can just imagine these people standing up the stones and then watching year after year as they stayed put lending some permanence to their fragile existences. Maybe all these words I am writing are supposed to do the same thing.

Last week of London

I have not been taken or defected to Russia. I have just been too busy or sick to update the blog. The last week I had in London was spent with my sister revisiting the best parts of London like Tasmanian devils. The sinusitis was still plaguing me, so most of my impressions are a bit hazy. I did get to see The Avengers 3D and Moonrise Kingdom. I also got to see Henry V at The Globe. That made an impression. It was a wonderful staging, excellent acting, and a wholly wonderful production. Even though I was sick, that production was wonderful. It reminded me of how wonderful London was and why I will miss it. That was my speeded up goodbye to London.

Where is Alexis?

Recovering from a sinus infection. I slept through much of the Jubilee celebrations, though I woke up for the flotilla and went to the concert in Hyde Park. Even the Derby I took a peek at, but this last week has been filled with sleeping. I did see some Royal Shakespeare Company shows with the class: The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. Though they were both entertaining, they weren't stunning. Twelfth Night was much better than The Comedy of Errors, but even in my drug-addled mind, it didn't even come close to my top five plays from London.

I finally saw a doctor on Wednesday. He was a nice British man who confirmed my self-diagnosis of a sinus infection. I got some drugs then ran to Heathrow to meet my sister Ekitzel coming in from Hong Kong. She is also sick. With many drugs in me, I took her to see Westminster and Trafalgar Square before we both realized how tired we really were. The next day, we also tried to spend all day at the Victoria and Albert, but that turned into a few hours before it was nap time. Today, we spent a few hours at the British Museum before we returned and purchased Ekitzel cough medicine to stave off more impending illness. When we returned to the flat to collect all our things and move them to the hostel, I found that the cleaning ladies had thrown away all my food and all my prescription medication.

All my prescription medication. All those beautiful prescriptions from that nice British doctor. I don't really feel well enough to care about it at this instance, but I'm sure I need to do something about this. I should probably call the pharmacy and explain the situation or the doctor even. But instead, I decided to sit down and prepare myself for the backpacking adventure that is about to begin. I am about to put on my backpack and trek across Hyde Park to the hostel. I am already missing a place I temporarily called home. So now I am praying that I can make it for two months without any place that seems permanent. I have a feeling I may be throwing away more clothes soon. I already ditched my coat. After Scotland, my turtleneck may go. But now I am squaring my shoulders and hoping my body is well enough to make it across the park.

Good night and good luck.

Sick in Stratford-upon-Avon

Yeah, the inevitable illness that always catches up with me finally caught up on Monday. I stayed home all day and slept. I finally got up and went to Billy Elliot before heading back home to back for our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. I have really been trying to keep a great attitude despite feeling like I just got out of a spaceship that crash-landed on the earth. But, I finally gave up feeling good and tried to not be cranky. I probably failed at that about the time we were going around Shakespeare's birthplace. Being on my own was what was needed so I could just wander a little, appreciate the beauty of what I was seeing and then sit down. But I failed. I fell asleep during the RSC's Julius Caesar, wanted to sleep instead of exploring Oxford, slept all day today, yesterday afternoon, and before leaving for Stratford-upon-Avon. I feel like Rip van Winkle. I sleep and wake up in surprising places.

But enough of that. I am loving what I recall of Stratford-upon-Avon and the Cotswolds. I did not really like our bus driver, Fred. Though, unlike most everyone else, I understood everything he said. My one talent I have discovered in the UK is my ability to understand most dialects of English. I have also discovered that I look like I know where I am going. I was even asked for directions in Stratford-upon-Avon. This is added to being asked for directions in London, Dover, and Edinburgh. I just look like I am non-threatening and competent. This does not apply to farms. Farms are the one place where I know absolutely nothing. I have visited them before and still know very little. My weakness was revealed at Mary Arden's farm. One thing I did learn there was that most pigs just want you to feed them grass. At least the ones I met were satisfied with clumps of grass raining down upon them. "Doors and sardines. Doors and sardines. That's theatre; that's life."

I did discover that the dress I bought in Oxford while wandering the streets in a completely useless fashion is highly flammable, but other than that, it was a good find. I am wearing it now and as long as I keep it away from any heat sources, I hope it lasts through Europe. I am required now to leave the sanctuary of my room, tissues, and bed and venture out to see another play by Shakespeare. After that, who knows.