tuckova

to be of use

I usually wake up first, the first human in any case, and pour the coffee and feed the birds who never talk to me despite my hopeful chirping. I think they are on strike for people they love more than they love me, but I love the same people more than I love the birds. Check the cats, clean the boxes. If I can make myself remember that it's not that cold, I will go outside and walk past homes breathing various forms of suburban life support, ranging from trees-grass, trees-grass to someone who's really pushed the concept and included a little library and multiple water elements. Some people have miniature creeks. Many have porches with pairs of chairs but almost nobody sits on them, much as Czechs rarely seem to be on their balconies, which I also do not understand. There are neighborhood watch signs co-existing with (and low-key contradicting) the "in this house" signs, which I normally associate with what might be called gentrification but probably not in the suburbs. There are turkeys roaming the streets (not streets, but ways and drives and courts), modern dinosaurs, hopelessly misplaced, their horrible necks a shade of blue I'd say was not found in nature and I'd be wrong. They are very ugly and very beautiful and I am aware of being brave when I pass them which means that in addition to being absurd they are a little scary. I similarly pass people and don't know what to do because it is neighborly to say hello but I am not really a neighbor. I nod and make a hello noise. I grew up here, walked down a nearby road to the bus stop for school, down another to the Goodwill where we sorted through trash and treasure with the bored sophistication of the universal teen. I was, in retrospect, a largely useless human then; my memories of myself are of cleaning and childcare but I think I did much less than I could have done for anyone, including myself. I guess it was four or five years, a span of time, and there were several versions of me, based on the photos I've unearthed. Watching my face emerge from a thirteen-year-old's curtain of hair and pink-and-beige make-up to what I thought was ferocity but to my eyes now still seems soft, almost fuzzy. Was I ever of use. I joked with one friend that we provided free therapy so I guess I listened to people, maybe that was good. In the evening we watch movies that remind us as little as possible of the world beyond the sidewalk, which is frankly much more terrifying than a whole rafter of turkeys. Today I worked and tomorrow I will work again, at the job I'm paid for, and this is how it goes. Sometimes I think about home and wonder what I'd be doing there (colder, grumpier) but home is wherever I am which is, for the moment, here. "But the thing worth doing well done/ has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident." I am, truly, for the most part, happy.

 

Southern half

I'm working on maintaining a constant vague smile in the hopes that my face will freeze that way and save me a bundle on plastic surgery but sometimes I forget. Walking along the sidewalks, when there are sidewalks, all in various states of cracked and crumbled so it's more like stomping along the history of sidewalks with my vague smile and in the course of a block I decide I am a minor film star, on holiday and hoping to be incognito but if recognized and photographed would prefer not to be looking grumpy or sweaty or heaven forbid tripping, and so I hold my chin up, hold my smile up, lift my feet up, and this carries me most of the way home. Well a little sweaty is true. 

On one block along the way a Buddhist monk wrapped in orange stops me, smiling, and I also smile, and he blesses me, touching my wrist and his forehead, and some part of me really wants to believe; would I be saved and happy if I just tried harder? He's touching my life line, head line, heart line, maybe saying something I can't hear over the sound of the scooters zooming around us because traffic never stops even if you might be having an eat-pray-love moment, and he ties a red thread around my wrist so that everyone will know I'm a sucker as I walk down the street for the rest of my stay. He charged me about $8 for the experience and I'm not complaining because I have a story and that's cheap for a story but also I can't get the thread off since scissors are a dangerous weapon I don't carry. I guess as long as people think it's a Buddhist thing I'll count my blessings. Get it?

Negotiating or bargaining is hard because people seem simultaneously very good and very bad at it. A taxi from one place to another costs between 2 and 20 dollars. I'm generally inclined to pay what I'm quoted because I'm not poor and haggling bores me but even a hag has her limits. I walked away from a lot of things I would have bought (and I also unfortunately overpaid for some things that I thought were reasonably priced and would have been, had they been what the sellers said they were). I spend time pondering the meanings of fine as in art as in acceptable as in penalty.

This trip has given me a tremendous perspective on history and politics and people and of course also myself. The micro and macro perspectives that any distance gives us: I am so mortal, we are so different, borders are largely imaginary, home is so tiny and far, home is everywhere. I regret nothing, not even the food poisoning. I'm ready for the next place.