Tricks of the Brain

Et le monde devien plus et plus petit...
I'm on the sidewalk now, giving Javier a kiss on the cheek, then Fernando. The last time, and first time, I saw them we were in Nepal... The beginning of the last time I saw Fernando I was walking alone through the mad maze of Kathmandu rush hour, the day after returning to the city from the trek to the Everest base camp. A bit of a low after the high of the hike... The thrill of reaching the destination, then back to the city and I was thinking, "Now what?" and contemplating eating all the junk food I'd seen in the bakeries of Kathmandu over the day and half since I'd returned from the mountains all at once... Just for the temporary endorphin release caused by chocolate that makes everything feel all right for a moment.
It was as I was considering my chocolate downfall that I started hearing things... Hearing my name carried by the hot and crowded air, the noisy streets of the city. "Hilary," at first startled me and then in doubt, I shrugged my shoulders and theorized all the sounds of the city must have coincidentally shaped my name because as much as I wished it was a friend calling, I was in a foreign country in a foreign city at a foreign time... But there it was again, "Hilary." So I turned subtly so as not to let the tricks my mind was playing on me know that I was falling for them. Just to my right, crammed at the edge of the traffic was a man on a motorcycle with a face mask to protect his lungs from fumes of the traffic. "It's Fernando," he said and then I recognized the way his short black hair stood off the top of his forehead. My friend from Madrid that I met on the small airplane out of Kathmandu to the start-point for the Everest base-camp hike. "Hop on," he said, or something like it, so I did and we rode very slowly, hardly moving any, if at all, with the chaos of traffic, cars and bicycles, people and cows, at a stand-still. Eventually we found it was faster to park the motorcycle and scramble on hands and feet, climbing over bumpers of trucks. Somehow we found Javier, who Fernando had lost before accidentally finding me, and the three of us spent the rest of the day exploring the city and closing the evening with pizza at a popular ex-pat Italian restaurant and a bottle of red wine.
It's the warmth of people like Fernando, Javier and their friends that lead me to Madrid in the first place, and it's thanks to them that I'm living in the apartment I'm living in. Fernando grew up with Ines outside of Madrid and I'm living in Ines's bedroom while she escapes Madrid for the summer.
Ines came back this evening to pick up some of her stuff, and I helped her carry it down to the street where Fernando and Javier were waiting in their truck. Out of the truck they bounced and gave me a kiss. They look smaller than I remember. In Nepal they were the size of the mountains and the monuments... Or maybe it's just memories that play the tricks of the movie screen and render it's subjects larger than life.

Actually feeling quite at peace with myself, more than usual, more often than usual... I think I’m having much less trouble adjusting to life in Madrid than I’ve had adjusting to cities in the past, and I’m not sure it has anything to do with Madrid. I think it’s me. I’ve faced this adjustment period so often before and every time, no matter how weird, how alienated, lonely, scrambled, bizarre and misshaped I feel, time creates a level of comfort. This knowledge forms a new level of patience with myself not to be perfect and loved, not to have friends for now. Thus, I feel more secure, sure of who I am... Though I couldn’t describe who I am or realize it on any tangible level...

Himalayan Pizza

I logged onto blogger.com to post a new blog tonight and instead of seeing my blog from yesterday, there was a notice that my blog has been removed temporarily for review and is suspected of violating the terms of blogger.com. At first, I was shocked, annoyed and frustrated, but within a few seconds, a curiosity and satisfaction settled in and I wondered how I managed to offend someone so much, and who. I felt that under the circumstances, my very own blog would become as provocative and popular as previously banned books. However, after a little investigation, I discovered my blog was being reviewed due to the possibility of it’s containing spam, which is apparently an inconvenient mistake made with anyone’s blog quite often. To expose a little secret, I haven’t really any idea what spam is, except for the mysterious canned meat by the same name invented in America sometime in the late 1930s due to limited resources, and still made today for God knows what reason.
I tasted Spam only once, and felt it wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but I probably wouldn’t give it a second try. It was back in November en route to the Everest base camp when I joined a group of six other Americans and eleven Nepali staff who cooked our meals. Our meals were usually very good and once or twice, I went to help out in the kitchen, which was a large tent with some camping stoves, to try to get some of the credit for the wonderful food though I was always asked just to cut the vegetables. One night, after a longer day of hiking than usual, the kitchen staff rewarded us by making a pizza for dinner. Himalayan yak cheese and Spam pizza. After six hours of hiking mostly uphill, over 14,000 feet above sea level, turning down some pizza isn’t done, so I tried the Spam. As I said, it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, and I was so cozy in the big tent huddled next to my fellow mountaineers at a small fold-up table by the light of lanterns and candlelight.
I am sure that within the next few days, my first entry will be found Spam free and re-posted. This entry, however, is all about Spam.

Madrid, and then?

That's the curse of being human isn't it? Never really satisfied and never fulfilled fully in a present state? Tomorrow, quit smoking, less drinking, start running, stop eating five pints of ice-cream then throwing them up. Tomorrow, when I'm 20, 30, 40, when I leave this town that's gotten boring. When I live somewhere long enough to feel at home. Or am I the only one?
Monday night, beginning of my third week in Madrid and the thrill of getting to my destination is wearing off. I'd been traveling since October. Well, depending how I choose to look at it, traveling since August 2006. Then, a few months back I found myself stranded in Copenhagen with zero visibility to the path ahead and dead burnt out on travel. Returning to the place I grew up wasn't an option because that feels farther from home than anywhere in the world, so all I had to do was choose a place and commit. That place I eventually settled on was Madrid, Spain.
Six cities, two and a half months, 1650 miles or 2650 km later I am finally in this city I'd been dreaming of. The first moment of my arrival I felt I had come home. Through a series of coincidences or fate, I landed a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town and as soon as I arrived in Madrid, I headed to a place I could call my own more than any other place in the last seven months. There's a door here I can close when I want to be alone, and my own bed, or mattress on the floor. Regardless, it feels like mine.
Now, just over two weeks after my arrival, already getting restless in a settled state minus the benefits of real friends, connections, traditions, already wanting to look forward to future travel. I wanted to settle and now I want to be on the move. I thought I could be a more whole, complete, self-accepting person once I gave myself the chance to settle in. But so much for that. The only consistent state I've found is the state of procrastination. Tomorrow, I'll be a better person. Tomorrow, I'll feel comfortable in my own skin no matter where I go. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" and no matter how many adventures I have, the petty pace of life finds me, commuting in the metro, cooking dinner every night at home, in my sleep on my mattress on the floor.