Jaded Traveler

George Whitman, R.I.P.

George Whitman, the owner of the fabled Parisian bookstore Shakespeare & Company died yesterday. His bookstore was the haunt of Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Samuel Becket, Lawrence Durrell as well as a later generation of struggling Beat poets, from Ginsberg and Corso to William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Mr. Whitman was known for his Sunday literary soirees in the tradition of Gertrude Stein, where brilliant minds bantered over tea and finger food.

Many years ago, I thought I might be able to chat Mr. Whitman up in a way that would reveal my latent literary talent, and thereby score an invitation to one of his tea parties, my entree into the rarefied world of my literary heros.

As we entered the bookstore, Livi, my 12-year-old daughter, made a beeline for the back shelves, while I lingered outside, perusing the bargain books piled haphazardly in cardboard boxes. I searched for something deep and weighty, and I found it in an old hardback with a cracked spine: James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Perfect, I thought, having already read it in college — and for only seven francs. I took a deep breath and entered the store, where I feigned interest in various books until I saw that he was alone at the cash register. I quickly strode up, and lay my book on the counter.

“Great book, eh? Not a bad price for the greatest biography ever written in the English language.”

“That will be 52 francs,” he said without looking up.

“What?”

“I said 52 francs.”

“But I got it from the bargain box out in front, the one that says seven francs!”

Exasperated, he opened the book and pointed to the price written in pencil on the title page. “Right here. See. 52 francs.” His hand shook with agitation.

“The box said seven francs.”

“It’s not my fault some idiot put it out there, and it’s not my fault if you can’t read the price that’s right in front of your eyes.”

He stabbed a couple of keys on the cash register — de-ding — as the drawer popped out.

“Nevermind,” I said. “I’ll put it back.”

I turned to head out the door, my imagined literary future shattered.

“Not out there!” he shouted. “I told you it doesn’t belong out there. Jesus.”

I glumly handed the book to him, and turned to leave just as Livi approached with a book in her hand.

“Can you tell me how much this costs?” she asked. “I don’t see the price.”

Wagging my finger and shaking my head, I tried to get her attention, to warn her that the pricing of books was a sore subject with this cantakerous old man. Instead, he took the book from her, and as he lovingly turned the pages, a big smile stretched aross his face.

“Ah, The Little Prince. What a wonderful story.”

“Yes,” said Livi. “I’ve always wanted to read it.”

“As everyone should. I tell you what. I would like you to have this as a gift. A special book for a special person.”

“Really?” said Livi. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he replied. “And by the way, we are hosting a tea party this afternoon. Why don’t you join us.”

January 16, 2012  Leave a comment

Mi Querencia

I push with my feet, pressing my back against the wall, chimneying up between two sandstone monoliths, inching upwards. Drake and John are below, looking for another route up. The sun is just above the rim, and we don’t have much time. Despite the harnesses, rope, and spring-loaded cams, it’s taken longer than we thought to reach this precarious bench below the final 40-foot climb to our goal — a perfectly rendered spiral petroglyph — wondering all the while how its creator got up here in the first place.

I’ve been trying all year to get up close and personal to this petroglyph. The spiral itself is not that uncommon to anyone who has spent time in the desert, even if its meaning remains enigmatic. Transcendence? Infinity? A symbol for water? I’m not concerned with that. I’m more interested in the power of its setting, in standing where a man stood centuries ago, inspired by this sublime view, hoping some of the mystery of this spot might rub off on me. Far below flows the muddy Colorado, cutting through aeons of rock, except where the Moab Valley sweeps through, a broad concave basin intersecting with the shimmering river. It’s enough to take your breath away.

I’ve been coming up here months before I knew about the petroglyph, climbing an old cow trail up to a plateau that rolls out to the river, just to sit on a boulder next to an ancient juniper, finding solace in the timelessness and indifference of nature, to try to quell my fears and gather strength for whatever lay ahead. It has been a bad couple of years, cancer invading our lives. Through the radiation and surgeries, the soul-breaking pain and heartache of it all, this is where I would come to find some peace, a place to wrestle with my fears, and contemplate those big questions we all face and which only have one answer, questions about love and fate and eternity, hoping to find some glimmer of meaning to it all. Though my questions were never answered — I never expected them to be — whenever I left this place, I felt strengthened.

Then one day while Jil was up here, she spied this spiral high above, chiseled on a seemingly unreachable spire. Evidently, we weren’t the only ones who felt the power of this spot.

The Spanish have a word for this power of place: Querencia, a physical space from which you draw energy and strength. It’s derived from a bullfighting term. The querencia is what the bull looks for upon entering the bullring, and once he finds it — an imagined circle of power — he returns to it again and again, to gather his spirit and courage. The matador will never approach a bull in his querencia or else risk a certain goring. The only way to kill the bull is to lure him out with cape work and guile.

Like the bull, I think something similar is at play here. We all have our querencias, places we return to over and over again, drawn by the comfort and insight they give. They’re not marked on any map, nor can you search for them. Instead we discover them serendipitously, and therein lies the magic. For me, it is usually found in the wild, most often in the desert: in a slot canyon pressed by soaring fins of Navajo sandstone, on a flat promontory overlooking a hidden valley, or deep in a shady alcove, places where you suddenly feel at peace with the world, places where the terrain matches some inner need or yearning, which, when aligned, create the geography of hope and wholeness.

Not surprisingly, in many of these querencias, you find that others have been here before you. Look around, and you might spy rock ruins, arrowhead flakes, or cryptic petroglyphs like the one that Jil discovered high above this particular querencia, and which at this moment lies just a few tantalizing yards away.

As the sun hits the rim, John and Drake are calling it. It’s too late to set a final pitch to reach the petroglyph. I’m still wedged up high, high enough to see the spiral burnished by the last rays of a dying light — so alluringly close. I suppose I could make a mad leap and reach a handhold that would allow me to hoist myself up to the petroglyph, just as the person who created it must have done. But I could also slip and die. And while that would answer the questions that have been knocking around in my head, I’m not that desperate. I’ll let the mysteries lie for another day. Far below, my querencia beckons.

 

July 11, 2011  Leave a comment

Been There, Done That

As we popped out of the tube at Hyde Park Station, bags in hand, we stared with wonder at those wonderfully silly double-decker buses, the kids’ first real proof we were no longer in Utah. As the light drizzle glazed the cobblestones, we took shelter under an ancient monument to fallen soldiers. Around us stalked the ghosts of Pope, Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and I knew right there it was a losing battle. In order to pull our kids from school for an off-season trip to the United Kingdom, we had promised their teachers we would stick to their mundane lesson plans, which included studying a century’s worth of history – Utah’s.

The next morning we dumped the curriculum and enrolled our kids in the School of Life, tuition-free I might add.

They quickly learned there is no circus at Picadilly (though the clowns were loose), Beefeaters can be vegetarians if they wish, and when people say “Cheerio,” they aren’t advertising a General Mills product.

As we walked the streets, I pointed out the classic architecture, and it wasn’t long before the children could tell the difference between Doric and Ionic columns, which they referred to as Dork and Ironic, confusing anybody who happened to see Dashiel point into a crowd and yell “Look at that Dork,” or heard Olivia reply “Isn’t that Ironic?”

We learned about the royal ravens at the Tower of London, which, according to ancient prophecy, if they ever flew away, the “Tower would Tumble and the Monarchy would Fall.” To a 13-year old animal activist, this becomes a game called Make the Ravens Fly Away. Fortunately for the Monarchy, these birds have had their wings clipped, a procedure the Queen has also approved for certain members of royal family.

One day while walking the streets, we actually saw the Queen. I knew it was the Queen because it looked like a flying saucer had landed on her head, trying to disguise itself as a hat. Only a Royal would be allowed to wear such a thing. She rose from her Rolls Royce, was greeted by a solemn dignitary, and quickly disappeared through a doorway. She never waved to the crowd, or even looked our way, and the crowd just loved her for it.

We did our best to imitate English mannerisms and etiquette. The kids learned to say “lovely” and “brilliant” instead of “cool” and dude.” And we drilled into them that quintessential English proverb, “Children are to be seen, not heard.”

As it turned out, we could hear our kids more often than we could actually see them.

“DAAAD. CAN WE GO IN HERE?” would come a warbling cry from a block away. This would bring everybody on the street to a complete halt, as they stopped to see who DAAAD might be, and how he would handle this emergency.

“NOOO,” I would yell back though cupped hands.

“WHY NOT?” would come a distant reply.

It didn’t bother my children to be loud because where we live in the Utah desert conversations are routinely carried on at a range of 100 yards. I should have brought walkie-talkies to avoid flinching with embarrassment every time their shrill voices pierced the air.

Over the course of a week, I began to exhibit paranoid behavior.

“Why does everybody look like a school librarian?” I’d ask Jil.

“It’s just the way they dress,” she’d reply.

It was time, I thought, to visit the countryside.

•   •   •

As we broke into open country, roaring down the motorway, I kept my eye open for anything of educational value.

“Look,” I said, “That must be a cement plant!”

“Dad,” said Dashiel, rolling his eyes without bothering to look up from his book. “Cement doesn’t grow on plants.”

Kids have different priorities when traveling. In debating whether or not to visit Plymouth, my wife read from our guidebook: “Plymouth today has all the charm of a theme park and the sincerity of a giant shopping mall.”

“Scratch that,” I said.

“No way,” came the back seat chorus. “It sounds perfect! Let’s go!”

As it turned out, we discovered plenty of educational value in Plymouth.

“Look, here’s where the Pilgrims left from,” I said as we slipped down the tide-worn stairs that disappeared into the inky water of Plymouth harbor. I gave them a quick lesson about the English Reformation and religious persecution, but the kids found greater insight into the Pilgrim psyche by reading the children’s names etched on the historic plaque: Humility, Desire, Resolved, Remember, Wrestling — these were concepts, not children.

“Why would anybody name their kid Wrestling?” asked Dashiel.

“Probably as in ‘Late one night, I wrestling with my conscience, but it turned out to be Martha, and nine months later a child was born.’ You have to remember, these were high-minded people that first settled North America. We come from cerebral stock.’

It was exactly this kind of high-mindedness I hoped to instill in the kids, mostly by visiting museums, which I kept track of to impress the teachers back home.

In England, they have a museum for just about everything, and, as this was the off-season, most of the smaller ones were closed, which had several advantages. One, it was easy to find parking. Two, we’d save lots of time, not to mention money. I’d hoist the kids up to peer through a window, add it to our growing list, and we’d be off.

Our days fell into a pleasant routine in pursuit of ancient cairns, lighthouses, castles, and thatched roof cottages — to heck with Utah history. And with England being so small compared to the American West – back home, we drive four hours just to watch our children’s soccer games — we thought nothing of roaming the Dartmouth moors in the morning, driving halfway across the country to visit the Roman remains in Bath, and spending that evening watching a Shakespeare play at Stratford-Upon-England.

At night, we’d search for an authentic B&B, always a real window into the English soul: a bit fussy but uncomplaining, and always eager to do our bidding, whether running out to buy us a newspaper or ironing our clothes – and those were just the guests. The owners too hovered over our every need, every morning cooking us a Full English Breakfast, then standing back to watch our reactions. Since everyone in our family would rather donate a body organ than actually eat one, this led to many awkward moments.

Though unable to adapt to deviled kidneys or blood pudding, as a family we were beginning to change in other ways. I first noticed this while gazing at the veins under my children’s pasty white skin. Later, I spooked myself looking in the mirror, my face drained of all color. I thought it might be a vitamin deficiency or rare pigment disease until Jil put things into perspective.

“When’s the last time you’ve seen the sun?”

She had a point. Every morning, we’d watch the same forecast on TV. The weathermen, who evidently serve an apprenticeship in the mortuary sciences, would talk somberly, as if reading a eulogy: “Today a general depression continues to stagnate over most of the country. Raw in the north, soggy along the coast, dismal in the central districts, with dense clouds practically everywhere, a very dull day indeed.”

With the off-season weather keeping the throngs at bay, our days were anything but dull, as we had many places to ourselves. Stonehenge, for example, where, despite the lack of crowds, a yellow rope kept us from approaching any closer to this magical circle of stones.

“For what we paid, it’d be nice to have a more personal relationship with the stone,” I said to the park ranger.

He shook his head. “A million visitors a year, and they all want to touch the bloody rocks.”

“In Ireland, they let you kiss the Blarney stone.”

“Sir, This is England.”

•   •   •

With a week to spare, we decided to ride the ferry over to the Emerald Isle, where we drove randomly through the Irish countryside, never knowing what we might run into. We stopped to witness what looked like a form of sectarian violence where the combatants wore uniforms, but it turned out to be a rugby match. Later, we crossed paths with a foxhunt. As we careened down muddy roads in our overloaded Opel, trying to keep pace with the jodphur-clad riders, the kids leaned out the window, shouting, “Stop! You’re going the wrong way. The fox is over there.” And of course we sampled the pubs, one where our kids weren’t just allowed in, but serenaded by a lass playing spoons.

The Irish have an affinity for Americans, and it was never hard to strike up a conversation, especially if you approached it on the right tack. In England, for example, the icebreaker is to ask people about their dogs, who will run in neurotic circles, wrapping their leashes around their owners’ ankles while they proudly exclaim, “Yes, this is a Dandie Dinmont. Over the past three centuries, every last ounce of intelligence has been skillfully bred out of them. They are strictly show dogs.”

“Just like the Royal Family,” you might feel like saying, but this would be a mistake. Jokes about the Royal Family, coming from an American, dissolve rapidly into icy stares. In Ireland though, any kind of Royal Family joke is a great crowd pleaser. If that doesn’t work, you just put a serious look on your face, and proclaim, “What my country needs now is another Jack Kennedy!”

No visit to Ireland is complete without kissing the Blarney Stone. An attendant was there whose job was to keep you from plunging to your death as you leaned out backwards to kiss the stone. He didn’t charge anything for this service, though you tipped him roughly ten percent of what you thought your life was worth.

“It’s nice that you let us get intimate with your monuments.” I told him, dropping a pound into the box. “At Stonehedge, they won’t even let you touch the stones, let alone kiss them.”

“Just don’t fondle the rock, sir. That’s all we ask.”

I had an ulterior motive in having my kids kiss the Blarney Stone. The legend is that upon planting a big smacker, you will be blessed with the gift of eloquence. Given that we had totally blown off Utah history, I was hoping for a Hail Mary here, something to impress their teachers back home, but I warned them not to expect miracles. If eloquence was as easy as a kiss, we’d all be Shakespeare.

It didn’t work, as far as the gift of eloquence goes. Yet on a deeper level, what they learned over the course of three weeks no textbook could teach, especially in exposing them to the essential kindness of strangers. (In our afflicted world, taking your kids traveling is the best inoculation there is against bigotry and prejudice.) When we get back to Utah, I’ll have some explaining to do with the teachers, but I wouldn’t change a thing — except next time we’ll bring the walkie-talkies.

 

June 29, 2011  Leave a comment

Of Maps and Men

Maps were invented for one reason: so men won’t have to stop and ask for directions. But maps also have one great weakness: they aren’t much help if you don’t know where you are to begin with. After jumping off the toll road in search of a less expensive way to Burgos, we are lost in a labyrinth of unsigned country roads.

“Why don’t you ask that guy over there?” says Jil, pointing to a tough-looking Basque loitering in front of a cantina.

Not a chance. But as soon as the Basque sees me puzzling over my map, he saunters over.

“Do you need help?” he asks.

“Yes,” says my wife, who tends to ask for help prematurely. The day before, as I was struggling with the balky gear shift lever of our rental vehicle, she asked a complete stranger if he could show me how to put a car into reverse.

She doesn’t understand the complex human interaction these situations necessarily impose. If I tell this stranger that I want to go to Burgos, he’ll tell me to take the toll road, forcing me to confess that I just got off the toll road because I’m a cheapskate, information I prefer to keep to myself. To sidestep the issue, I cleverly choose a village on the map that will put me on the right road to Burgos.

“I’m trying to get to San Simon,” I say.

“Do you know anybody in San Simon?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then why do you want to go there?” His eyes narrow with suspicion.

“Just to visit.”

“You do not want to go to San Simon. It is ugly there and the people are rude. You must go to Aran instead. I was born there,” he says, thumping his chest.

I hand him the map through the window. “Okay, where is Aran?” This will at least give me a clue to where I am.

You can tell map people by the way they hold one. That, and by their ability to refold it back to its original dimensions. The Basque holds my map upside down, running his finger back and forth over southern Portugal. He is not a map person.

“Aran…is here!” he says, jabbing his finger somewhere in the Atlantic, then crumples up the map and pushes it through the window onto my lap.

“But you do not need a map,” he says, and launches into a litany of right- and left-hand turns to take. My wife scribbles it all down. Does she really plan to make a pilgrimage to this man’s birthplace?

My wife thinks men suffer from what she calls the Custer Complex, a refusal to take advice, let alone ask for it. But in his defense, Custer knew what all men know: as much as we hate asking for directions, there’s nothing we love more than giving them – even when we don’t know what we’re talking about. That’s why I put my trust into maps, recognizing their limitations.

I suppose I could buy a G.P.S., those electronic Cassandras with their disembodied voices, designed as they are to remove us ever further from the serendipity of travel. But they have their limitations as well, for there are places no G.P.S. can ever take us, which is why I’ll continue doing things the old fashioned way: honest human interaction.

“Look,” I say, interrupting the charades. “I just want to go to Burgos.”

“Burgos? The toll road is behind you!”

“I know,” I say, exasperated.

“Then why do you want to go to Aran?”

“I don’t!”

He shakes his head and mutters a few angry words before stalking back to the cantina.

“What did he say,” asks Jil.

“I think he just told me to go to hell.”

“Well,” she says, “Did you get the directions?”

June 16, 2011  Leave a comment