Skibbereen

Amon had a bad habit of crawling out of the woodwork, much like a slithering centipede except with more deliberation and a bit more creepily. The truth was Amon was no more creepy than you or I, minus his impressive knowledge of all things violent (classic horror films, war, local car wrecks) and his freakishly long fingernails that had begun to yellow and curl under over time.

In reality, he had lots of good things to say. We met in a pub (his word, not mine) while looking over a map determining what our next day’s adventure should be. Neither one of us had any idea of what we were looking for. Our relief map showed us every crack and crevice we couldn’t care less about but told us nothing of what we might.

“May I make a suggestion?” Amon’s rickety voice blurted out over the Celtic fiddles of the pub. I recognized him immediately as the man who, as the innkeeper told us, more or less lived in the hostel where we were staying.  He was the man that caused the girls to grasp their robes tightly to their throats. The man whose roommates must have said “uh-huh” and “that’s nice” and “oh, really?” about a thousand times while being regaled with one of his epic tales. He was the career backpacker and he was frightening for that reason. He was doing what we were all doing and hoped not to be when we were his age. He was our idea of failure in human form.

We looked up to see him standing there in his immutable suit. Gray tweed over a white button-down shirt so old there was no need to press it.  The creases and pleats had memorized their positions. Gray the color of an Irish sky 86% of the time. That meant 86% of the time Amon was practically invisible against his backdrop. A pale green tie grazed his gold belt buckle and his left hand held a weathered briefcase which was bursting with his life’s work: travel guides, bus tickets, maps scribbled on with directions and addresses.

“Sure, why not?” I replied but Amon had already slid in next to us on the booth seat and was tapping his thick, grimey nail on the map.

“You must go to Skibbereen,” he said. The town was several hours southwest of where we were and even further away from where we probably were going. Nonetheless, we sat and listened to Amon tell us about his time spent in the exact middle of West Cork.

“The town’s name means little boat harbor, did you know? “

We did not.

Amon told us how Algerian pirates had caused the town to prosper, bringing in their looted goods from around the world created quite the economy. And how the pirates ran things for some time and on the nights the pirates returned the town celebrated with a pig roasted with rosemary in a drum. He told us about the Great Famine and deaths and where to see the mass graves at the local cemetery. He told us a 12-year-old boy had overthrown his father’s murderous greed to become the town’s founding member and how he met the relatives of this boy and they tried to give him a goat but he refused it on account of not having the proper shelter for such an animal.

Amon’s Skibbereen was larger than life. He showed us maps and newspaper clippings from his briefcase which confirmed his stories but somehow they weren’t as interesting in print. Maybe it was his accent or maybe it was the Guinness, but hearing Amon speak of this place, his country, made me wish I was part of it.

“If you go, say,” Amon said,” buy a lotto ticket. It’s the luckiest town in Ireland you know.”

Early the next morning, our backpacks strapped to our backs, we squeezed down the narrow corridor of the hostel on our way to the bus stop. Amon was already awake, already dressed for his day in his gray suit. We side-stepped past each other in the tight hallway.

Amon tipped his hat and we were on our way.

The Best Part

You go out into the world to acquire all manner of habits and learn all sorts of languages, but the one tongue you neglect most is the one you’ve spoken at home, just as the customs you feel most comfortable with are those you never knew were customs until you saw others practice completely different ones and realized you didn’t quite mind your own-

Andre Aciman

I can’t wait to come back and I haven’t even left. While the planning is exciting and the doing is exhausting, it’s the returning that reveals what the leaving was really all about. It’s after you come back from a journey that you can see what matters, what you remember the most vividly.

It’s always the stupid things. One random walk home after the bars when nothing in particular was discussed. One cup of coffee that you burned your tongue on so badly it prevented you from enjoying dinner. One innocent observation made by a total stranger who knew you only in one context but that summed you up so well you wondered why no one else ever noticed or bothered to ever say it.

You remember how they are different from you. The people you meet or, more accurately, smell. They smell more differently than they really are and it’s this smell that makes them so frighteningly unfamiliar. It’s not that they are any more dirty than you, they are just dirty in a different way. Different toxins secreted at different altitudes is all. But at the end of the day, a pesticide is a pesticide and you smell scary to them too.

When it’s all over, you come home and it feels better than it ever did before you left. Now you’re all cultured and worldly and you cling to your corner of the earth with more ferocity because you see it’s worth defending. The things you scoffed at now seem quaint. The mundane things you do everyday are now sacred tradition. You are no longer a poor, culturally-schizophrenic American. All along, you’ve had what you thought you didn’t and all you had to do was miss it to see it.

You set out to see the world, to learn of its ways and make your impression. As it turns out, its your world that impresses you.

Home

Everyone needs that place. A sanctuary where they can retreat after a day of waiting rooms, conference rooms, classrooms. The world is full of these rooms where things happen and everyone wants out. Everyone needs some place, some place that caresses without expecting anything back. Maybe it’s a big Victorian home with a manicured lawn or a particular bench in the park protected by trees. It could be a king size bed with 400-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets or the bottom of a swimming pool. Just a place to call home.

His was his apartment that he rented with the tips he got from the restaurant. But this wasn’t a normal apartment. This apartment was alive. This apartment breathed life; it had a discernable heartbeat. Her radiators hummed a jazz beat. She had windows like eyes stretched out tall. She had eyes in the back of her head. These eyes faced the street, the alley, and the parking lot. The stories she could have told if she could only speak. The scenery never changed but the stories where always evolving. Stories of forbidden love, bachelor parties, and bad tattoos.

She heard it all and remembered everything. There was no sneaking around with her. There were no secrets. There was no way you could creep in at 2 in the morning undetected. Each and every door slammed with certainty and definition like the punctuation at the end of a sentence, an exclamation point. Every floorboard eagerly announced your crimes. Her hallways were rich with empty words and pipe dreams. Each dent and every nick told a story and only she knew them all. We could only speculate. That dent was from a dresser and that one was a broken promise.

Within her walls had lived starving artists who had no business being artists in the first place. People just trying to get by on their pathetic, little breaks. Now he occupied her. He added to the tapestry like handprints in wet cement. That was the thing about her. Her foundation had been laid a lifetime ago but you could still make an impression.

Sure the stove required the use of matches and the wooden floors were freezing in the winter. Maybe it did take a good five minutes to get water running hot but that’s why he loved her. He probably could have done better. He surely could have been able to afford a cloned apartment where everything smells of wet paint and fresh linoleum. But through that he found nothing. Sometimes it’s worth the inconveniences to be part of something bigger. Sometimes it’s the scars that make you beautiful.

Vancouver, B.C.

It’s not a good thing when your hostel is located directly next door to a strip club. It’s even worse when you can confuse one for the other.

For a split second, I actually thought my well-meaning boyfriend had accidentally made reservations at Vancouver’s shittiest brothel but then I noticed the discrete entrance to the left of the “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS” sign which was blinking pathetically. Like the bunny was about to croak. It was more like “G RLS GI LS GIR S” but you could figure it out.

I’ve never felt sorry for a whorehouse before. It’s not like it’s hard to make sex look appealing. But this place was failing. Miserably. Not to mention the people who actually worked there. I’m sure working in a strip joint is bad enough, but working in the White Castle of strip joints is somehow worse.

The hostel was run by this old man from somewhere else. Somewhere where they pronounce “W”s like “V”s. I only know this because I heard him yelling “Vhere’s my hairdryer!” at some very confused woman who claimed she had already returned the hairdryer. Not that he needed it, anyway.

We took to the streets because frankly the hostel was stuffy and odd. We explored Chinatown, which was within walking distance, in the drizzling rain. There were lots of vegetable and fruit stands. Meat shops which displayed every part of the chicken, not just the favorable ones. Chinese video stores. Each lamp post was adorned with a little red flag printed with the words “Historic Chinatown” as if that somehow changes what it really is: a ghetto. A ghetto that doubles as a tourist attraction. Tricky.

I saw some grass and got excited. But it was so covered with garbage there would have been enough of it to spell out the word “SHITHOLE” so it would be visible from an aerial view.

When we got back to the hostel, I went to my women only dorm-style room, where I encountered my first real hostel friend. I energetically introduced myself and inquired as to which of the bunks were open. She stared at me blankly. It became increasingly clear that no, she was not deaf or dumb. Just foreign. My geocentrism had got the best of me. The whole world doesn’t speak English, after all. I could only imagine what she saw. Some tall, white as chalk dust, red-haired American bellowing her sloppy language and expecting something.

I bet I made her miss home.