on the circus tour i learned that everyday was worth about a week. roughly. give or take.
i thought it might have been because i was living on a bus with ten other people performing circus shows and filtering grease all the time. alas, it seems that i am either adopting an intensified way of living my life which makes everyday feel simultaneously short and eternal, or traveling sets you up for this kind of feeling.
It has been 40 days in europe. that is almost the halfway point. sometimes i feel like i have done nothing, seen nothing, experienced nothing. other times i feel like i am so alive and i am of course experiencing everything exactly how i need to. paris has been fabulous. we've been claiming to leave for days now but nothing. four days later and one attempt at an exit, we are still in our suburban apartment with our friends. So much has happened. I played at an open mic the other night near bastille and hotel de ville with a bunch of rockers. they were all wonderful and the host was an excellent character. a new father, full of raw humor that came off as distaste, but rather transparent in how much he loved everyone and what was going on.
bruno played a short set with a singer from the band NEIMO. ive never met a singer whose voice i have liked so much as his. his voice rang such pure tones and they traveled so far from his throat, yet they still held on to his body. he sang two songs by the libertines and one by the smiths that really touched me. 'and if a double decker bus crashes into the both of us, to die by your side would be such a heavenly way to die.' emilie doesnt like the foppy boys, but for a few minutes there his pete doherty-esque voice had her swooning. really.
i received the nervous pleasure of following their act. i was only going to play one song - crush in the ghetto, and i havent sang for others since circus tour but i dont count that, so maybe even since february. but i ended up singing three; two jolie holland songs and one saruh lacoff song. thats me. saruh lacoff. i feel like my voice changed from the moment i got up there and sat on the little performer's stool. it floated right out of my throat like it wasnt even coming from me and it trilled and flowed so smooth and sweetly. never heard that sound before. but then again, i've never felt that song truly before, or any song of such emotion. different states of being make your body move differently.
i was sick for three days here in paris so emilie spent some of the time alone while i stayed inside sleeping, playing guitar, and having a little wrestling match with my brain. charming, i know. paris is a fabulous city. full of people who are paying attention. i've had plenty of momentary connections with people which i feel like i havent experienced anywhere since ireland. at least not so prevalently. people in cars stopped at lights, people on the train, people on the street, people at the open mic. it's an old towne, but it has such a feeling to it, it radiates something fierce and elegant. its architecture is stunning and so magnificent to behold. there are old fountain baths in between creperies, notre dame towers over the seine, the hotel de ville is just another beautiful building in the city. and montmartre. where do you begin to describe the feeling of being in a music box in ballet shoes pirouetting down the hilly sidewalks at night. le cafe du amelie poulain. le cemetaire - city of the dead. such beauty. le moulin rouge with its neo bourgesie tourists awaiting a cabaret of fine french women. le arch du triumph with the list of battles won by sir napoleon dynamite...bonaparte. under PETIT is TESTE. PETIT TESTE.
and of course le LOUVRE. I spent three hours yesterday wandering through a jungle of egyptian statues, artifacts, scrolls; sarcophogi, and of course, the most holy, the book of the dead. I sat beside a statue of isis for forty minutes in awe of her. the eyptians worshipped her so fiercely as a symbol of femininity, joy, love, and music, and you begin to feel that spirit living inside you when you focus on her long enough. ive been pretty fascinated with her for the last year but didnt learn more than archetypal information. makes me want to study archaeology. it also makes me realize what a godless world we live in. at this point in history i feel like religion has turned so many away from any notion of god that can exist. a feeling of oneness, or a feeling that there is something grander than ourselves. the egyptians, among others, worshipped the sun above all, as it brought with it warmth to grow crops, a beginning and end to the flooding nile, and a return of the spirits of the dead. osiris was said to govern the world during the day and the underworld at night with the setting of the sun. the setting sun did not disappear, it instead traveled to light the underworld.
i have observed these forces for the past year and a half. I feel like that has been the focus of this time...figure out how to give love purely (which essentially meant working out shit with my family) and paying attention to the changing seasons, where different feelings manifested in my body, and various healing traditions. giving thanks for my food and feeling ecstatic, and watching gabby die. it was all with consciousness and understanding that there is great beauty in everything and it is all inextricably connected. nothing is separate and when we die we dont disappear either, we just let go of our bodies and our souls release themselves into the ethers where it is easier to remember that everything is connected. that's what i learned when gabby died. so this has been a god-searching year in a godless world, and there i was yesterday in the louvre looking at relics of egyptian culture which are steeped in spirituality, and i couldnt help feeling like i belonged somewhere. ah, too bad i missed the boat - by many thousands of years to be exact. shame.
but those egyptians...stone carvings, blue dyes, wood working, metal work, nature worship, irrigation systems, medical technology and mummification. When a person died, they buried them with statuettes whose purpose was to perform the agricultural duties for the deceased. even after death, the dead were said to occupy the earth at daytime and were not exempt from their agricultural duties.
it made me want to study the human body. nursing school, become a midwife. so many things to do with my life. study music, study anatomy, natural medicine, archaeology, geology.
so ok. moral of story is dont travel for a month and a week without taking a day or two off, and give yourself a mental and emotional break too. the other moral, is to take some personal time if you are traveling with someone else so that you dont become too grumpy. the other moral is not to eat only cheese and chocolate. the other other other moral is to remember you are loved at home. the world is your oyster. but the most important moral, is to balance time between cities and nature because otherwise all else will be lost in the imbalance.
i feel like this is the part of our journey that starts to pick up and soon we are going to be moving at the speed of light on the most beautiful beaches in the sunshine and relative warmth of the northern hemisphere in november. southern france. Madrid. Andalusia, sending little thoughts and wishes to morocco on the wind, but only thoughts and wishes. and then the western coast of spain, up to barcelona, and a flight to roma. rome for a day, and a trip down the east coast to amalfi for a week. a day in isernia, a three day hitch to venice where emilie and i go separate ways on december 12, and i fly back to my beautiful ireland for four more days in wport until my flight home to new york city.
i dont know the point of hitch hiking on a foreign continent other than to remind yourself constantly that you are alive and the world is an incredible place. when you set yourself up in risky situations as such where you are putting your fate in someone else's hands, you have no choice but to acknowledge your life and your mortality and when people go so far out of their way to help you and to listen to your story, you realize that the things people tell you to fear are outweighed by the beauty of the world. moira told me this summer that she believes the world takes the best care of dreamers and wanderers, but i think more truly it takes the best care of lovers and optimists. maybe all of those identities overlap. i thought for awhile that i was destined to a life of wandering and caravans. i dont know so much anymore. i love this movement and i love seeing the world, breathing in the air of different countries, talking to people from different places, but it makes me want a space of my own. a space like my cabin. i loved that cabin. In the middle of the woods with a big enough bed, the sun right in my eyes at 630 every morning, and just enough space to do yoga and have a little space for meditation and practice. endless woods to walk through. i want to make that space again. what i learned then was that i couldnt live in the middle of the country without balancing my time in the city. i need balance. whether i am living in the city and spending time in the wilderness or vice versa, i dont know. but i need both.
so, new york will hold that space for me when i return. i dont know where i will live, but it will be the cave, the cabin...sacred space.
alright, little friends. i miss you all. i hope you are all happy and having your own fabulous adventures. maybe they involve three day long hitches to belgium from berlin, or maybe they involve cuddling with someone you love, or maybe they involve reading, or maybe exploring abandoned buildings. either way, I hope you are all living beautiful stories. i hope your homes are cozy and you bleed all over your sheets. not someone else's sheets though.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
more pikshers
i want to put up more pikshers but it's not working. they are on facebook under europe part 2 on emilie's profile
pikshers
we were the most annoying people on the tube
the plane ride to frankfurt. i think the woman who sat next to us regretted it.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
I Don't Want to Go to College, I Want to Go to Nutella Heaven
A bus in Achen Germany with a big big sign that said FUCKER . that was the brand name
three days to belgium from berlin
unexpected distances traveled at once, seemingly easy distances traveled over two days. beautiful strangers, death threats made by a hilarious polish woman living in utrecht, and emilie calling me le petit cabbage on the train - french endearment
little more later
im glad we didnt sleep in the public park in essen or the truck stop on the belgium germany border or the gas station in holland or the gas station in belgium
i cant tell my mom about any of this...shame
"i still think you're english is great for not having speakin in two years"
three days to belgium from berlin
unexpected distances traveled at once, seemingly easy distances traveled over two days. beautiful strangers, death threats made by a hilarious polish woman living in utrecht, and emilie calling me le petit cabbage on the train - french endearment
little more later
im glad we didnt sleep in the public park in essen or the truck stop on the belgium germany border or the gas station in holland or the gas station in belgium
i cant tell my mom about any of this...shame
"i still think you're english is great for not having speakin in two years"
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
We NO Finish Poland, You Finish Poland, We Finish Berlin
We have been in Berlin for almost two days. Immediately upon arriving I felt this urge to be creative and make art and music and write letters to people.
There is something in the air here, or I am picking up on everyone else's vibe. fabulous.
So our adventure to Berlin started a day late because it took us so long to get out of the house due to hungover Emilie and lazy me. We cleaned up Hilleke's house and embarked on our adventure. First stop to a cafe to buy some mushrooms, where we met a strange fellow who ended up walking us to the right place to go and talking about healing and spirit animals.
After a stint of insanity on the street, some film making, and deciding to stay in amsterdam at a hostel for the evening, we headed to the red light district only to find that all of the hostels were damn expensive. we found the cheapest one around via a booking agent and when we got there discovered that it was a christian youth hostel. the receptionist told us that he has been a christian for four years and it has changed his life. he invited us to go on the journey with him and the rest of the staff. It was like talking to my nana - you have to try verý hard not to laugh in their face.
we embarked the next morning on our journey. we walked to the tram which dropped us off at the city limits, and waited for a ride to take us on what we considered to be a two day long journey. the distance between amsterdam and berlin is 660 km - roughly 400 miles. Within 15 minutes we got a ride from a young guy and his mother. he told us that it was no problem that they picked us up because in a few months that will be him. he is going to australia and bali. he was quite a smiley guy. they dropped us off at a giant gas station where everyone was very friendly and within another 15 minutes we got two different rides - albeit short distances. the person that i asked was from poland but living in amsterdam and only spoke dutch and polish, so we signaled to each other in sparse sentences and gestures where we were going. him and his buddy drove us much farther than the afformentioned 20 km, and when we got to the gas station he told us again in few words, and gestures that he was going to ask a van with polish plates if they would take us.
we ended up with a ride ALL THE WAY TO BERLIN that very same day. we skipped our planned stopover in hannover where we had a couchsurfing arrangement, and rode pretty much in silence all the way to berlin. the driver and i ended up talking in circles to each other, and he didn't understand BERLIN so he kept saying that we were going to poland. by this point, it was dark, around 7:30 and he was saying that he was going on a different road than that which would get us to where we were going so I was trying to get him to stop at a gas station so that we would have a possible chance of getting a ride. at this point we had lined up a place to stay with one of jane's friends (jane, is jojo's mom, jojo is tara's - and now my, friend). we stopped at a gas station and pointed to the map for 30 minutes trying to explain to each other where we were going, and eventually he understood, and said he would take us RIGHT to the road that we needed and drop us off at a fuel station. he didn't want to drive through the center of berlin, but there ended up being no fuel station, so he drove as all the way to berlin until we found one. we got another ride from a very dashing man with his daughter in the back and her and emilie drew pikshers, and wrote to each other in different languages, while i talked to the dad about his favorite travels.
once we arrived via train to where we were going we met up with johanna, who let us stay in her house for the night while she went to a friends' place, and let us eat her food. it was all very fortuitous and now we are staying at her mum's flat because there is an extra room.
it feels all very fateful and wonderful and i feel so enheartened after our experience in kleve.
we walked around the city yesterday and ended up finding this crazy four story house that was converted into a gallery. an ABSURD interactive gallery with the most ABSURD artwork. it's all very inspiring and it is everywhere. we found a sculpture garden, old parts of the city pre-wall. It's such a magical place.
I don't have much else to say other than I've been making art, having exciting fortuitous adventures, missing everyone, and reading about fortuity all at once. it is a good life, and i feel electric.
gútten tag
There is something in the air here, or I am picking up on everyone else's vibe. fabulous.
So our adventure to Berlin started a day late because it took us so long to get out of the house due to hungover Emilie and lazy me. We cleaned up Hilleke's house and embarked on our adventure. First stop to a cafe to buy some mushrooms, where we met a strange fellow who ended up walking us to the right place to go and talking about healing and spirit animals.
After a stint of insanity on the street, some film making, and deciding to stay in amsterdam at a hostel for the evening, we headed to the red light district only to find that all of the hostels were damn expensive. we found the cheapest one around via a booking agent and when we got there discovered that it was a christian youth hostel. the receptionist told us that he has been a christian for four years and it has changed his life. he invited us to go on the journey with him and the rest of the staff. It was like talking to my nana - you have to try verý hard not to laugh in their face.
we embarked the next morning on our journey. we walked to the tram which dropped us off at the city limits, and waited for a ride to take us on what we considered to be a two day long journey. the distance between amsterdam and berlin is 660 km - roughly 400 miles. Within 15 minutes we got a ride from a young guy and his mother. he told us that it was no problem that they picked us up because in a few months that will be him. he is going to australia and bali. he was quite a smiley guy. they dropped us off at a giant gas station where everyone was very friendly and within another 15 minutes we got two different rides - albeit short distances. the person that i asked was from poland but living in amsterdam and only spoke dutch and polish, so we signaled to each other in sparse sentences and gestures where we were going. him and his buddy drove us much farther than the afformentioned 20 km, and when we got to the gas station he told us again in few words, and gestures that he was going to ask a van with polish plates if they would take us.
we ended up with a ride ALL THE WAY TO BERLIN that very same day. we skipped our planned stopover in hannover where we had a couchsurfing arrangement, and rode pretty much in silence all the way to berlin. the driver and i ended up talking in circles to each other, and he didn't understand BERLIN so he kept saying that we were going to poland. by this point, it was dark, around 7:30 and he was saying that he was going on a different road than that which would get us to where we were going so I was trying to get him to stop at a gas station so that we would have a possible chance of getting a ride. at this point we had lined up a place to stay with one of jane's friends (jane, is jojo's mom, jojo is tara's - and now my, friend). we stopped at a gas station and pointed to the map for 30 minutes trying to explain to each other where we were going, and eventually he understood, and said he would take us RIGHT to the road that we needed and drop us off at a fuel station. he didn't want to drive through the center of berlin, but there ended up being no fuel station, so he drove as all the way to berlin until we found one. we got another ride from a very dashing man with his daughter in the back and her and emilie drew pikshers, and wrote to each other in different languages, while i talked to the dad about his favorite travels.
once we arrived via train to where we were going we met up with johanna, who let us stay in her house for the night while she went to a friends' place, and let us eat her food. it was all very fortuitous and now we are staying at her mum's flat because there is an extra room.
it feels all very fateful and wonderful and i feel so enheartened after our experience in kleve.
we walked around the city yesterday and ended up finding this crazy four story house that was converted into a gallery. an ABSURD interactive gallery with the most ABSURD artwork. it's all very inspiring and it is everywhere. we found a sculpture garden, old parts of the city pre-wall. It's such a magical place.
I don't have much else to say other than I've been making art, having exciting fortuitous adventures, missing everyone, and reading about fortuity all at once. it is a good life, and i feel electric.
gútten tag
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
prison break from a german work camp
well, emilie and i escaped from jail with only bruises to the ego.
the last i updated we were in london staying at tara's, but about to depart for germany. we left a little later than expected but still with good time, but i led us too far in the sort of wrong direction due to london's crazy curvy streets. so we got on the overground train at the time when we should have been getting onto the airport train. nonetheless, we made good timing to the airport, to find that our plane was delayed a half hour. in security, they stopped my bag (i always manage to leave scissors or something taboo in a compartment that i dont even remember that i have). i left my wrench and hand sanitizer in my carryon so the security guy started looking through my bag. he was very friendly and asked me why i had this tool and i told him because it tunes my instrument. he wanted to see so i started playing my OUT OF TUNE mbira, which is difficult to tune right now because the only other sort of viable tool that i have is a spoon. he was really excited about it and wanted to ask all sorts of questions after he tested my hand sanitizer but we were running late so i told him not to worry about the hand sanitizer and to keep it. when i said that he good very sour and no longer wanted to be my friend. sad.
so we got on our plane and then took a bus through the beautiful broccoli-esque countryside of germany. i accidentally said NAZI really loudly on the bus...whoops. eventually we reached frankfurt am main (city center...120 kilometers away) and walked around for a while looking for maps, phrasebooks, food, and internet. we had planned on hitching to kleve to see michele that day, but soon realized it was too late to go anywhere despite the BEAUTIFUL sunny weather. so we stayed in the city where my father lived for two years and my brother was born.
big hot dogs are delicious. FRANKFURTERS clearly originate in FRANKFURT. the people of frankfurt are called frankfurters...they are big hot dogs.
we found a hostel after getting directions from two german speaking vegetable salesfolk. he drew us a map, that i later realized looked like a giant breast. no couch surfing luck. people might think we are murderers. emilie says we are.
so we got to the hostel where the person at the desk began staring at our money and when i asked him what he was doing he said "bling bling".
we ended up going out to a quiet german restaurant, talking loudly, and eating steak and mashed potatoes and beer. german beer is really yummy and not that strong like my pa said. the little bit of advice he gave me before i got there was "german beer is very strong"
we walked around the city talking absurd pikshers as always, and visiting a church, eating GELATO amazing.
i dont remember anything else other than seeing TONGUE TATTOOS in a toystore that i promised myself i would buy but then got lazy.
we left early the next morning and began our hitch hiking after a long walk in a big circle due to poor directions but of course, absolute perfect timing, because once we got to the petrol station to ask for a ride, we were greeted IMMEDIATELY by a man with red hair named oliver who said that he would drive us about 160 km north. he said he used to hitch hike when he was younger and we had wonderful conversations. elections, university, OKTOBERFEST.
if i was an ox and they ate me during oktoberfest, what you would see on the chalkboard behind my roasting body, would be "SARAH". that's what i learned.
oliver was a really wonderful person and we all really enjoyed each other's company. he pointed out churches on the countryside, told us some history, told us that we could change our careers if we wanted to when we were older...lots of good stuff. he also said that he doesn't know any of the hospitals in frankfurt because he hasn't had to go there yet to which we knocked on wood.
he dropped us off at a petrol station with lots of high school kids and we made friends with them and they almost took us on their bus that was going to holland to sail, but it was forbidden according to the bus driver. but they told us stories of how last year they took a trip to holland they picked up two hitchers because their driver was a standup kinda guy. i talked to the wavyblonde hair guy for a while and he told me about how he and his friend with the dreadlocks hitch hiked last year to go sailing and got rides with truck drivers. he seemed to have a perpetual humble smile and moved slowly with some hidden purpose. i really liked him.
we ended up riding with a german couple. the man is 40 and is a psychiatrist and the woman is 31 and writes for a housewives' magazine. they asked us if we knew of this popular german hiphop band that sings intellectual songs, but told us we wouldn't understand it since we dont speak german when we asked to hear it. we ended up listening to it anyway and both of us fell asleep in the back of the car. we laughed about the shadiness of that later. in my dream, the song was playing, and the words sounded like english words. i was hearing one song to be about rabbits hopping, and in my dream, we were playing with straws and making them fly up int the sky. not too deep.
one of their other songs had a chorus of MEIN KAMPF and for a minute i was pretty sure that they were singing about the nazi party until i realized that they were just singing about their own lives.
we got out at a big rest stop where we used the bathroom for fifty cents and then tried to get a ride for 40 minutes. a really nice blonde couple let us come with them a little ways down the road and dropped us off at a smaller gas station where the people were friendlier, but we didn't end up getting a ride for more than an hour and a half. but at least the people liked us. one family only spoke german and i'm pretty sure the mother tried to set me up with her 18 year old son. strange. i felt sad when i couldnt understand the father talking in german, but then he couldnt understand me in english, and he looked at me like i was the strangest little thing to walk the earth.
finally, a young guy pulled in and offered us a ride to the train a little while down the road, which would cost us about 20 euros. he gave us time to think about it and just as we were about to get into the car, another bunch of cars pulled up, and the first one emilie asked gave us a ride ALL THE WAY up north, a mere 12 km away from where we wanted to go. they were a pair of dutch men with a child's carseat in the back and we talked about the carribean, and various other things.
they dropped us off next to a salvation army bin, and we saw a teenage boy trying to get his clothes into the shute, but needing an extra pair of hands. i helped him and asked if he was going toward kleve, to which he said no, but him and his sister called us back and said that they would drive us to the train in emmerich where we could take a train for three euros to kleve. we got to the station and found the machine impossible to use. the buttons wouldnt push in easily, and it was in dutch until we figured out the english translation button. REALLY FUNNY. we didnt get a ticket because the only ones we could find were for 35 euros.
so the farm people came to pick us up and we drove back to the farm where we saw michele for the first time in a long long long time. we saunaed and told stories of our year and played a little bit of music. it felt so good to sing with her again. i always forget how much i love playing with other people, and then the two of us get together and it is beautiful and our sounds ring out to the highest most pure overtones.
we sang in the sauna for everyone, and by that point i started feeling very strange about the people who we were staying with. the next day we woke up for morning meeting and got assigned to work with johannes from holland to clear out a lot of soil, greenery, and rubbish from this one area outside so they could make it into storage.
the day was so grey and unwelcoming, and there were spiders everywhere which made emilie feel weird for a little while. it felt good to work though, especially doing that kindof labor which i haven't done in so long. not since the farm. i felt in my element.
johannes was really friendly and he sang us a folk tune, and told me his plans for moving to russia. his ex wife is dying from radiation in kazakhstan, and so he is moving there to work everything out, and to find a new woman. he wants a woman with a large family, so there can always be at least one person in the house at all times, so that nothing gets stolen. in russia, they think he is a millionaire because he travels, so when they get drunk, he says, they go and rob his house. not kidding.
i guess when you get older and you start getting robbed, love becomes very practical.
we switched jobs after lunch to work in the garden with crazy phillip. he is a chemistry/physics/agriculture teacher for secondary school and he is ruddy nuts. but so so so so so nice and friendly and fun to work with. our job was to pull an entire field of thistle weeds. really. an entire field of thistles. REALLY. it was very pointy and sticky and hurtful and i got to wheel the wheelbarrow and emilie's finger still hurts.
but phillip gave us fabulous advice that he lives by in school. as a teacher, he begins the year hating his students, and they love him. as the year progresses and comes to a close, his students begin hating him, and he loves them. he says, this makes the parting process easier, and that we should emulate this in all of our personal relationships. he also said that bok choy wasn't bok choy. this is not clear as of yet, and may never be.
while we were working in the fields emilie and i finally confessed to each other that we wanted to get the hell out of that hellhole. it went a little something like this:
emilie underherbreath: we're leaving tomorrow
sarah: yup
but of course, within the next twenty minutes, we had decided to leave right away and not tell anyone but bring some potatoes along. once we decided this, we laughed for the first time in what felt like ten years, and the sun came out after a weekend of rain. this couldbe taken as none other than a divine sign from god that we belonged not to this german work camp.
so we played music that night, i got my second home video taken of me singing, and michele and i harmonized beautifully. i fell asleep early after trying to tune my mbira with a spoon. emilie and i were going to escape at 7 am without telling anyone other than michele and dima, but michele asked us to wait until morning meeting and let everyone know so that they didnt ask her or put any blame on her. so we stayed. i woke up to a really nice message that reminded me that there was love in the world, and went down for meeting. they asked me to help farm and of course i said yes, because my spine is made of jello when people are expecting things of me, and then told them that we would be leaving but THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK FOR YOU and SPEND TIME HERE...i worded it nicely, but i think they all knew that we thought they were nuts and dysfunctional. emilie then went and told the woman we would be working with (who was obviously bipolar...obviously undiagnosed) that we were leaving right away even though they asked us to stay until lunch and she called emilie a bitch and told her that we were using them, and that we needed to GET OUT to which emilie shouted back GLADLY. so we packed and left. very fast. and once we got off the property the world was full of light and love and possibility again. we got a ride to the autobahn from a german woman listening to american rock and roll. she dropped us off at the median of the onramp to a highway and we got a ride surprisingly fast after singing bob dylan across the road to each other extremely loudly in our best dylan voice.
a german woman and her two daughters on a one day holiday picked us up on their way to the sea and i sat in the back talking to the kids while em talked to the mother in the front. they drove us about 45 minutes away from amsterdam where we ate at a restaurantreststophotel, and made a sign for amsterdam. what we learned here, is that dutch people are SO FRIENDLY. even if they didnt pick us up, they smiled at us and interacted in some way, whereas in other places people prefer to pretend you are not there. this put us in a really good mood and we started doing little dances for people getting onto the highway. then these guys in a big van yelled at us asking where we were going and when we told them they said something as they were pulling away to which i replied YES only to realize that we both thought they were asking "DO YOU FUCK" . it's still not clear but it gave us a good laugh.
AND THEN FINALLY A CAR! oh...a police van. they told us it was not allowed on this street, but that we could go to the gas station a little ways away and so we walked over and ate more chocolate. that's the thing about these rest stops, we end up eating lots of chocolate. it makes the time go by faster.
once again, the people were so friendly, and we ended up getting a ride from a businessman going to utrecht. he dropped us off there and we too pictures with our backpacks in a tiny photobooth. still not sure how we fit. but HILARIOUS. and then went outside where we sat down for two hours and went a little crazy. but we made up good songs and tried to get people to pay us for our music.
everyone rides bikes in holland. more people ride bikes than drive. it's fabulous.
so we commenced walking after sitting like a pair of homeless kids, which essentially we are, and found a gas station where we got a ride within thirty minutes, by a guy in a large van who listened to bob marley, and whose friends drove by on the highway and took pikshers of us to send to his wife.
he drove us right to where we needed to be in amsterdam but a woman on the street said that we had to take the tram so we got on only to find out that we were where we needed to be. the tram driver gave us maps and apologized profusely, and we walked back the grueling two minutes to where we had just been. hilleke, emilie's friend picked us up, and we had a great night laughing and eating a dutch meal of sauerkraut, sausage, and mashed potatoes. in the supermarket, the meat guy started talking to me about hockey, baseball, and his dreams to go to the venues where the new york teams play. we talked about the nyrangers for a while and then he told me that i should say IG BEN MOO to my friend when she wasn't expecting it. it means I AM TIRED. good way to learn vocabulary.
and here we are
with a cat that only drinks when his water is in motion, whose name is dick, which in dutch means fat.
and with a wonderful person, and life is no longer a sad rain cloud.
amsterdam is a fabulous city.
the last i updated we were in london staying at tara's, but about to depart for germany. we left a little later than expected but still with good time, but i led us too far in the sort of wrong direction due to london's crazy curvy streets. so we got on the overground train at the time when we should have been getting onto the airport train. nonetheless, we made good timing to the airport, to find that our plane was delayed a half hour. in security, they stopped my bag (i always manage to leave scissors or something taboo in a compartment that i dont even remember that i have). i left my wrench and hand sanitizer in my carryon so the security guy started looking through my bag. he was very friendly and asked me why i had this tool and i told him because it tunes my instrument. he wanted to see so i started playing my OUT OF TUNE mbira, which is difficult to tune right now because the only other sort of viable tool that i have is a spoon. he was really excited about it and wanted to ask all sorts of questions after he tested my hand sanitizer but we were running late so i told him not to worry about the hand sanitizer and to keep it. when i said that he good very sour and no longer wanted to be my friend. sad.
so we got on our plane and then took a bus through the beautiful broccoli-esque countryside of germany. i accidentally said NAZI really loudly on the bus...whoops. eventually we reached frankfurt am main (city center...120 kilometers away) and walked around for a while looking for maps, phrasebooks, food, and internet. we had planned on hitching to kleve to see michele that day, but soon realized it was too late to go anywhere despite the BEAUTIFUL sunny weather. so we stayed in the city where my father lived for two years and my brother was born.
big hot dogs are delicious. FRANKFURTERS clearly originate in FRANKFURT. the people of frankfurt are called frankfurters...they are big hot dogs.
we found a hostel after getting directions from two german speaking vegetable salesfolk. he drew us a map, that i later realized looked like a giant breast. no couch surfing luck. people might think we are murderers. emilie says we are.
so we got to the hostel where the person at the desk began staring at our money and when i asked him what he was doing he said "bling bling".
we ended up going out to a quiet german restaurant, talking loudly, and eating steak and mashed potatoes and beer. german beer is really yummy and not that strong like my pa said. the little bit of advice he gave me before i got there was "german beer is very strong"
we walked around the city talking absurd pikshers as always, and visiting a church, eating GELATO amazing.
i dont remember anything else other than seeing TONGUE TATTOOS in a toystore that i promised myself i would buy but then got lazy.
we left early the next morning and began our hitch hiking after a long walk in a big circle due to poor directions but of course, absolute perfect timing, because once we got to the petrol station to ask for a ride, we were greeted IMMEDIATELY by a man with red hair named oliver who said that he would drive us about 160 km north. he said he used to hitch hike when he was younger and we had wonderful conversations. elections, university, OKTOBERFEST.
if i was an ox and they ate me during oktoberfest, what you would see on the chalkboard behind my roasting body, would be "SARAH". that's what i learned.
oliver was a really wonderful person and we all really enjoyed each other's company. he pointed out churches on the countryside, told us some history, told us that we could change our careers if we wanted to when we were older...lots of good stuff. he also said that he doesn't know any of the hospitals in frankfurt because he hasn't had to go there yet to which we knocked on wood.
he dropped us off at a petrol station with lots of high school kids and we made friends with them and they almost took us on their bus that was going to holland to sail, but it was forbidden according to the bus driver. but they told us stories of how last year they took a trip to holland they picked up two hitchers because their driver was a standup kinda guy. i talked to the wavyblonde hair guy for a while and he told me about how he and his friend with the dreadlocks hitch hiked last year to go sailing and got rides with truck drivers. he seemed to have a perpetual humble smile and moved slowly with some hidden purpose. i really liked him.
we ended up riding with a german couple. the man is 40 and is a psychiatrist and the woman is 31 and writes for a housewives' magazine. they asked us if we knew of this popular german hiphop band that sings intellectual songs, but told us we wouldn't understand it since we dont speak german when we asked to hear it. we ended up listening to it anyway and both of us fell asleep in the back of the car. we laughed about the shadiness of that later. in my dream, the song was playing, and the words sounded like english words. i was hearing one song to be about rabbits hopping, and in my dream, we were playing with straws and making them fly up int the sky. not too deep.
one of their other songs had a chorus of MEIN KAMPF and for a minute i was pretty sure that they were singing about the nazi party until i realized that they were just singing about their own lives.
we got out at a big rest stop where we used the bathroom for fifty cents and then tried to get a ride for 40 minutes. a really nice blonde couple let us come with them a little ways down the road and dropped us off at a smaller gas station where the people were friendlier, but we didn't end up getting a ride for more than an hour and a half. but at least the people liked us. one family only spoke german and i'm pretty sure the mother tried to set me up with her 18 year old son. strange. i felt sad when i couldnt understand the father talking in german, but then he couldnt understand me in english, and he looked at me like i was the strangest little thing to walk the earth.
finally, a young guy pulled in and offered us a ride to the train a little while down the road, which would cost us about 20 euros. he gave us time to think about it and just as we were about to get into the car, another bunch of cars pulled up, and the first one emilie asked gave us a ride ALL THE WAY up north, a mere 12 km away from where we wanted to go. they were a pair of dutch men with a child's carseat in the back and we talked about the carribean, and various other things.
they dropped us off next to a salvation army bin, and we saw a teenage boy trying to get his clothes into the shute, but needing an extra pair of hands. i helped him and asked if he was going toward kleve, to which he said no, but him and his sister called us back and said that they would drive us to the train in emmerich where we could take a train for three euros to kleve. we got to the station and found the machine impossible to use. the buttons wouldnt push in easily, and it was in dutch until we figured out the english translation button. REALLY FUNNY. we didnt get a ticket because the only ones we could find were for 35 euros.
so the farm people came to pick us up and we drove back to the farm where we saw michele for the first time in a long long long time. we saunaed and told stories of our year and played a little bit of music. it felt so good to sing with her again. i always forget how much i love playing with other people, and then the two of us get together and it is beautiful and our sounds ring out to the highest most pure overtones.
we sang in the sauna for everyone, and by that point i started feeling very strange about the people who we were staying with. the next day we woke up for morning meeting and got assigned to work with johannes from holland to clear out a lot of soil, greenery, and rubbish from this one area outside so they could make it into storage.
the day was so grey and unwelcoming, and there were spiders everywhere which made emilie feel weird for a little while. it felt good to work though, especially doing that kindof labor which i haven't done in so long. not since the farm. i felt in my element.
johannes was really friendly and he sang us a folk tune, and told me his plans for moving to russia. his ex wife is dying from radiation in kazakhstan, and so he is moving there to work everything out, and to find a new woman. he wants a woman with a large family, so there can always be at least one person in the house at all times, so that nothing gets stolen. in russia, they think he is a millionaire because he travels, so when they get drunk, he says, they go and rob his house. not kidding.
i guess when you get older and you start getting robbed, love becomes very practical.
we switched jobs after lunch to work in the garden with crazy phillip. he is a chemistry/physics/agriculture teacher for secondary school and he is ruddy nuts. but so so so so so nice and friendly and fun to work with. our job was to pull an entire field of thistle weeds. really. an entire field of thistles. REALLY. it was very pointy and sticky and hurtful and i got to wheel the wheelbarrow and emilie's finger still hurts.
but phillip gave us fabulous advice that he lives by in school. as a teacher, he begins the year hating his students, and they love him. as the year progresses and comes to a close, his students begin hating him, and he loves them. he says, this makes the parting process easier, and that we should emulate this in all of our personal relationships. he also said that bok choy wasn't bok choy. this is not clear as of yet, and may never be.
while we were working in the fields emilie and i finally confessed to each other that we wanted to get the hell out of that hellhole. it went a little something like this:
emilie underherbreath: we're leaving tomorrow
sarah: yup
but of course, within the next twenty minutes, we had decided to leave right away and not tell anyone but bring some potatoes along. once we decided this, we laughed for the first time in what felt like ten years, and the sun came out after a weekend of rain. this couldbe taken as none other than a divine sign from god that we belonged not to this german work camp.
so we played music that night, i got my second home video taken of me singing, and michele and i harmonized beautifully. i fell asleep early after trying to tune my mbira with a spoon. emilie and i were going to escape at 7 am without telling anyone other than michele and dima, but michele asked us to wait until morning meeting and let everyone know so that they didnt ask her or put any blame on her. so we stayed. i woke up to a really nice message that reminded me that there was love in the world, and went down for meeting. they asked me to help farm and of course i said yes, because my spine is made of jello when people are expecting things of me, and then told them that we would be leaving but THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK FOR YOU and SPEND TIME HERE...i worded it nicely, but i think they all knew that we thought they were nuts and dysfunctional. emilie then went and told the woman we would be working with (who was obviously bipolar...obviously undiagnosed) that we were leaving right away even though they asked us to stay until lunch and she called emilie a bitch and told her that we were using them, and that we needed to GET OUT to which emilie shouted back GLADLY. so we packed and left. very fast. and once we got off the property the world was full of light and love and possibility again. we got a ride to the autobahn from a german woman listening to american rock and roll. she dropped us off at the median of the onramp to a highway and we got a ride surprisingly fast after singing bob dylan across the road to each other extremely loudly in our best dylan voice.
a german woman and her two daughters on a one day holiday picked us up on their way to the sea and i sat in the back talking to the kids while em talked to the mother in the front. they drove us about 45 minutes away from amsterdam where we ate at a restaurantreststophotel, and made a sign for amsterdam. what we learned here, is that dutch people are SO FRIENDLY. even if they didnt pick us up, they smiled at us and interacted in some way, whereas in other places people prefer to pretend you are not there. this put us in a really good mood and we started doing little dances for people getting onto the highway. then these guys in a big van yelled at us asking where we were going and when we told them they said something as they were pulling away to which i replied YES only to realize that we both thought they were asking "DO YOU FUCK" . it's still not clear but it gave us a good laugh.
AND THEN FINALLY A CAR! oh...a police van. they told us it was not allowed on this street, but that we could go to the gas station a little ways away and so we walked over and ate more chocolate. that's the thing about these rest stops, we end up eating lots of chocolate. it makes the time go by faster.
once again, the people were so friendly, and we ended up getting a ride from a businessman going to utrecht. he dropped us off there and we too pictures with our backpacks in a tiny photobooth. still not sure how we fit. but HILARIOUS. and then went outside where we sat down for two hours and went a little crazy. but we made up good songs and tried to get people to pay us for our music.
everyone rides bikes in holland. more people ride bikes than drive. it's fabulous.
so we commenced walking after sitting like a pair of homeless kids, which essentially we are, and found a gas station where we got a ride within thirty minutes, by a guy in a large van who listened to bob marley, and whose friends drove by on the highway and took pikshers of us to send to his wife.
he drove us right to where we needed to be in amsterdam but a woman on the street said that we had to take the tram so we got on only to find out that we were where we needed to be. the tram driver gave us maps and apologized profusely, and we walked back the grueling two minutes to where we had just been. hilleke, emilie's friend picked us up, and we had a great night laughing and eating a dutch meal of sauerkraut, sausage, and mashed potatoes. in the supermarket, the meat guy started talking to me about hockey, baseball, and his dreams to go to the venues where the new york teams play. we talked about the nyrangers for a while and then he told me that i should say IG BEN MOO to my friend when she wasn't expecting it. it means I AM TIRED. good way to learn vocabulary.
and here we are
with a cat that only drinks when his water is in motion, whose name is dick, which in dutch means fat.
and with a wonderful person, and life is no longer a sad rain cloud.
amsterdam is a fabulous city.
Friday, October 3, 2008
We are the HUMANS and if we don't like the animals, we can just genetically modify them, or kill them and eat them!
this whole day of october 3 was tara's birthday.
THE WHOLE DAY
and so we ate soup, salad, bread, brie, and CHOCOLATE CAKE at her house with three babies, three mommies, and three twentysomethings. in the evening we went to the hippodrome theater which has been in existence for many many years in the london equivalent of times square. we showed up half and hour late due to fish and chips, busses, and a rubbish street sign telling us leicester square was in the opposite direction. remember directional intuition.
so we showed up at this burlesque cabaret show in the middle of an act featuring the queen of circus whose act centered around queen songs. FABULOUS. he juggled in time with another one bites the dust, dropping balls at opportune moments. and later on he rode a unicycle down the stairs to the song BICYCLE BICYCLE. the act commenced with WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS...a sing along. and he gave a speech about how the song was about ALL of us, black, white, yellow, red, EVERYONE. and how we are the HUMAN BEINGS. we are the CHAMPIONS. and if we dont like the animals we can genetically modify them. or...we can kill them and eat them
KILL THE ANIMALS
amazing
and a beautiful hoop dancer with four silver hoops, dressed in white, doing acrobalance while spinning.
OH OH
and
a straps performance with a man in a bathtub. no words to describe this other than WET JEANS and MUSCLES
all of this performance has got me thinking about performance art as provocation. The other morning I woke up to EVENING ON THE GROUND by iron and wine and started thinking about a burlesque act involving juicy red fruits and the concept of the garden of eden. It's a seeling of an idea. more later
i realize that women are so sexualized and flaunted in our society, that i've become somewhat desensitized to the display of full frontal nudity. seeing men is more intriguing at this point because it is more novel.
yet we are still very scared of the female body and power.
tomorrow em and i take a plane to frankfurt where my father lived for two years and my brother was born. pa told me the beer is very strong. so i will be needing but a sip to finish me off, with the rate that i am going these days.
i'm ready to be leaving london. i have enjoyed it, and i've loved being with tara and her family but i am antsy to go and i feel like a change would do me good. what is this life?
i was alone for what felt like a very long time, but on saturday i had a companion again and now i have a constant companion. it's really nice having someone around. i have to find a balance for this. i push myself more when i am alone and i like the kind of growth that happens that way. this whole thing is getting out of the comfort zone
i have to remind myself tonight that there is love all around me, and i am loved by so many people. it's easy to feel like a speck of dust in the windcurrents and feel like i dont belong anywhere. but that's a little lie.
people just want to help. they want to make you feel good. they want to make you happy and they want to help you see the world. they want to give you what you need.
and i want to return the favor
THE WHOLE DAY
and so we ate soup, salad, bread, brie, and CHOCOLATE CAKE at her house with three babies, three mommies, and three twentysomethings. in the evening we went to the hippodrome theater which has been in existence for many many years in the london equivalent of times square. we showed up half and hour late due to fish and chips, busses, and a rubbish street sign telling us leicester square was in the opposite direction. remember directional intuition.
so we showed up at this burlesque cabaret show in the middle of an act featuring the queen of circus whose act centered around queen songs. FABULOUS. he juggled in time with another one bites the dust, dropping balls at opportune moments. and later on he rode a unicycle down the stairs to the song BICYCLE BICYCLE. the act commenced with WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS...a sing along. and he gave a speech about how the song was about ALL of us, black, white, yellow, red, EVERYONE. and how we are the HUMAN BEINGS. we are the CHAMPIONS. and if we dont like the animals we can genetically modify them. or...we can kill them and eat them
KILL THE ANIMALS
amazing
and a beautiful hoop dancer with four silver hoops, dressed in white, doing acrobalance while spinning.
OH OH
and
a straps performance with a man in a bathtub. no words to describe this other than WET JEANS and MUSCLES
all of this performance has got me thinking about performance art as provocation. The other morning I woke up to EVENING ON THE GROUND by iron and wine and started thinking about a burlesque act involving juicy red fruits and the concept of the garden of eden. It's a seeling of an idea. more later
i realize that women are so sexualized and flaunted in our society, that i've become somewhat desensitized to the display of full frontal nudity. seeing men is more intriguing at this point because it is more novel.
yet we are still very scared of the female body and power.
tomorrow em and i take a plane to frankfurt where my father lived for two years and my brother was born. pa told me the beer is very strong. so i will be needing but a sip to finish me off, with the rate that i am going these days.
i'm ready to be leaving london. i have enjoyed it, and i've loved being with tara and her family but i am antsy to go and i feel like a change would do me good. what is this life?
i was alone for what felt like a very long time, but on saturday i had a companion again and now i have a constant companion. it's really nice having someone around. i have to find a balance for this. i push myself more when i am alone and i like the kind of growth that happens that way. this whole thing is getting out of the comfort zone
i have to remind myself tonight that there is love all around me, and i am loved by so many people. it's easy to feel like a speck of dust in the windcurrents and feel like i dont belong anywhere. but that's a little lie.
people just want to help. they want to make you feel good. they want to make you happy and they want to help you see the world. they want to give you what you need.
and i want to return the favor
Thursday, October 2, 2008
You Mean You Can Be Relaxed Always?
This is a good life. This is a good kind of existence.
I like waking up and asking myself what my adventures are going to be. I like waking up next to my pal. I like waking up knowing that I can do anything, even though I am brokeass poor and not going to be seeing any income anytime soon. And I like being bright and shiny and making other people smile.
I like that when you are bright and shiny and brave people want to know you so they take you in and help you get the things you need. I like that people have their love glasses on.
I like that after seeing Maya Deren's psychotic dream film at the Tate both Emilie and I were reeling with ideas and started making little notes to give to people about being joyful and making art. I like that Tara joined in. I like that we were all so tired that they stopped making sense.
And I like that I feel good after being creative like that.
I like that doing yoga can put me in the state of BEHERENOWALWAYS and reminds me that I am on a different continent and in fact i am ALIVE and that's grand. I am not only alive, but I am around two very good friends, one of which is traveling with me by a force of serendipity and one who is sheltering us with so much love and joy. I like that I have just enough, and that my parents call me to wish me a happy jewish new year, that my dreams are full of people i miss during the day and then get to say hi to at night. i like that they wear canary yellow jackets and bowler hats in my dream.
i like walking beautiful old london streets and seeing all of the beautiful architecture. i like imagining the people building it and what they were thinking and feeling. how could you not feel absolute one-ness when you are building a grand house of god? even if i dont agree with it. and the westminster abbey
THE WESTMINSTER ABBEY. i could feel it like i was there at the time. walking through the quad halls, feeling the noontime sunlight on my face.
we both felt ghosts all around us.
and i like most of all
that i can find my way around the city
even if i have to ask eight people for directions
i am always walking in the right direction
I like waking up and asking myself what my adventures are going to be. I like waking up next to my pal. I like waking up knowing that I can do anything, even though I am brokeass poor and not going to be seeing any income anytime soon. And I like being bright and shiny and making other people smile.
I like that when you are bright and shiny and brave people want to know you so they take you in and help you get the things you need. I like that people have their love glasses on.
I like that after seeing Maya Deren's psychotic dream film at the Tate both Emilie and I were reeling with ideas and started making little notes to give to people about being joyful and making art. I like that Tara joined in. I like that we were all so tired that they stopped making sense.
And I like that I feel good after being creative like that.
I like that doing yoga can put me in the state of BEHERENOWALWAYS and reminds me that I am on a different continent and in fact i am ALIVE and that's grand. I am not only alive, but I am around two very good friends, one of which is traveling with me by a force of serendipity and one who is sheltering us with so much love and joy. I like that I have just enough, and that my parents call me to wish me a happy jewish new year, that my dreams are full of people i miss during the day and then get to say hi to at night. i like that they wear canary yellow jackets and bowler hats in my dream.
i like walking beautiful old london streets and seeing all of the beautiful architecture. i like imagining the people building it and what they were thinking and feeling. how could you not feel absolute one-ness when you are building a grand house of god? even if i dont agree with it. and the westminster abbey
THE WESTMINSTER ABBEY. i could feel it like i was there at the time. walking through the quad halls, feeling the noontime sunlight on my face.
we both felt ghosts all around us.
and i like most of all
that i can find my way around the city
even if i have to ask eight people for directions
i am always walking in the right direction
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