Final Vignettes from Tournai

Heading Definitively South

 

Dawn crept slowly into the gray skies over northern France as I made my way south by train. This was the beginning of some 40+ hours of travel, including a 4 hour layover in Bahrain, 13 in Bangkok, which would transport me the other side of the world to arrive in Sydney, Australia on December 13^th. Behind me I have left cold, tempestuous rains, squalling winds, homes which are shuttered tight each night, insulating them from the outside world in ways which I found increasingly oppressive toward the end of my stay. I also left a world luminously decorated for Christmas; white and colored lights adorning La Grande Place, the Belfry and streets throughout Tournai. Special breads for the celebration of St Nicholas have been sold at discounted prices clearing the way for bûche de Noëls. It feels a distinctly more organic marriage than that I have witnessed between Christmas and the land down under; adorned with festive garlands and plastic conifers, the 25^th of December often spent languishing in the heat. It was 104 degrees the last time I spent Christmas there in Brisbane in 1998.

Again this year I will return to the home of my cousins Susan & Rex Addison, who now live in a new home designed by Rex situated on Mt Crosby, 45 minutes outside of Brisbane. Their home was my first port of call after a year and half in Nepal. Their daughter Alice has become a very dear friend over the past many years. We have shared multiple road trip adventures out the Olympic Peninsula in order to appease her predilection for the quintessential American diner and requisite pie. But all that is another story and continent, and now I mean to write of my final days in Europe.

European Christmas Market

Of my last week in Tournai much time was spent helping Caddy prepare goods for the Scleroderma Association stall at the annual Christmas market. A small number of devoted people pour weeks, months into preparation of hand made jams, syrups, cookies, cakes, marzipan sweets, hand sewn bags, scarves, pillow cases, and collection of donated items from friends; from earrings to flower arrangements, shawls brought back from someone who holidayed in Turkey, hand crafted Brazilian games of chess, lace napkins someone found on sale in Brugge. Last year they made about 2000 euros, approx $3500.

I was struck by a number of elements in the process of preparation. Having worked, both as a volunteer and an employee, for a variety of non-profits over my life, I have witnessed so much effort and energy poured into such organizations. Perhaps just as universally, regardless of the cause, there seems to be an intrinsic and continuous struggle to acquire what is needed, the desired resources to create infrastructure, for direct services, to fund research, to continue fundraising. This is certainly the case for the Belgian Association of Scleroderma patients. http://www.sclerodermie.be/ (note this site is in French). While noting the struggle, I simultaneously found my heart warmed to see so much help and participation from the community which support Caddy in her work; some dear old friends, others who have had someone important in their own lives diagnosed and often severely incapacitated.

Caddy articulated her concurrent frustration with the lack of patient participation, the absence of patients actively investing of themselves in the effort, however they are able. She devotes an enormous amount of her life energy, at times I’m sure at the cost to her own health, to supporting & maintaining the work of this organization; providing resources and support for patients with Scleroderma, communicating with physicians conducting clinical research, and involvement in other organizations within Belgium and the larger European community devoted to other connective tissue and auto-immune disorders.

Preparation and unloading for the market was done in good spirits despite very soggy weather. Being the youngest of the set up crew by several decades, I totted the lion’s share of the items up the polished stone steps of the Hotel De Ville, one of many buildings assumedly rebuilt after La Grande Place was demolished during WWII. Over the course of a weekend, the hall is filled with several dozen vendors who sell their wares for the holidays; handmade puzzles and toys, candy, jewelry, hats, baskets of prepared meats, olives, alcohol etc.

During our set up, a gentleman with a rather shiny bald head and an aspiring to be handlebar moustache arrived with an additional folding table, the legs of which I promptly unfolded and made ready to turn upright. “Ey, bien alors!” he responded a bit taken a back (hmmm…how to translate…let’s just say an exclamation) to which Caddy responded, “She’s an American,” as if that should explain everything. We are well reputed in this world, for our ‘volonte’, that rather distinct American verve which wins us both praise for its dynamic initiative and disdain for its arrogance, its potential for recklessness. The market weekend was marked by stormy skies, heavy winds, and torrential rains. Many people in Beglium are struggling with recently increased heating prices and are prioritizing necessary utilities and food to the understandable detriment of holiday purchases. Still, Caddy and their booth did well, netting the same amount of money they did last year despite the sluggish economy which has been the subject of much conversation with the arrival of winter weather in recent weeks.

Gaspard, my now 5 month old host nephew, was with us during the work day both Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Much to the amusement of Caddy and Jean, I engineered a two scarf sling arrangement à la Nepal or Asia or Africa, or the majority of the world where infants are kept close to the human body. For stretches of time when he was fussier I continued with Christmas market preparations or time at this keyboard with Gaspard soothed by the presence of a warm body close by. And I was in turn soothed by his tender presence. Portions of this past week were fraught with the challenges of long distance communication in relationships with some of those most intimate in my life. Palpable in these interchanges were the limitations of the telephone as a vehicle for dialogue as well as the acrid taste of poorly communicated words and concurrent misunderstanding which must then await requisite time zone delay. In the midst of this relatively brief tumult, the immediacy and simplicity of Gaspard’s presence, his gaze, tiny fingers, and soft head felt distinctly precious.

Approaching the Health of the Body

Daily at the breakfast table, I have observed Caddy and Jean each take half dozen or more different pharmaceutical medications. Originally I inquired about the action of each. We discussed them, some of the specific details I’ve forgotten, there were also a lot of not very specific details. While I’m not sure they would use these words, it’s my impression they have both surrendered their bodies to the care of western medicine.

Caddy has felt relief from a variety of symptoms as well as a dramatic slowing of the progression of her Scleroderma with medical treatment. Having retired early with severe hypertension, has a susceptibility to stress induced arrhythmia, and a heart murmur, Jean has struggled more with the efficacy and side effects of medications. He has found a fine line exists between guarding the hyperactivity of his heart without completing robbing him of vital energy to live his life. The day after I returned home from the Hague, he explained he had been experiencing severe pain radiating down his left arm, but repeatedly refused to consult his cardiologist or go to the doctor. He rested much of the week, depleted of his normal vim & vigor. Decades of poor choices regarding nutrition, alcohol, stress, and activity level were certainly not going to be influenced by a few needles, which I offered anyway to little affect. I attentively observed my dear friend and father all week, inquired about the presence or absence of sublingual nitroglycerin or an appropriate equivalent in the home, and reviewed CPR protocol in my head.

I sensed the strong emotional impact of his diminished energy and capabilities. He is accustomed to helping whoever, whenever, with whatever needs to be done, evidently his nature is a contributing factor in the equation. Finally the day before my departure he went in to see his doc and learned that although his hypertension was still reasonably controlled, the peripheral edema in his left leg, which he didn’t mention, was severe and his murmur is much more pronounced indicating significant cardiac fatigue. Translating these recent encounters, I recognize the need to work on my French medical vocabulary. It was a delicate dance to articulate what felt like an appropriate level of concern recognizing all the while that, at the age of 60, Jean seems unlikely to make significant life style changes. He is now being more attentively followed by those into whose hands he has trusted his care.

Threads of Intimacy

Intimacy, while often hijacked to more poetically imply the sexual in our culture, is a phenomenon which I both revere and actively seek out in life. One can intimately experience a gleaming planet in the dawning eastern sky, the late afternoon light in the dangling tendrils of a weeping birch, the feel and texture of hair atop an infant’s head. I also discoverer intimacy in a variety of more formal human interchanges; market interactions such as the care observed by a vendor in selecting and packaging vegetables or fruit, the standard kiss on the cheek greeting in Belgium once, in France two, and in Holland I don’t remember how many. And further in friendship, there are so many levels on which intimacy is shared.

This autumn I have shared a longer period of time with Caddy & Jean than since I first lived in their home 16 years ago, and intimacy has been a very precious part of this chapter. This has manifested in many shared meals after which we have lingered a long while at the kitchen table. Many of our discussions have involved deep matters of the heart, how we live and learn in companionship, how we learn to open our hearts and share our lives with another human being. We have also spoken at length of family, learning, health, spirituality, cultural differences, languages & communication, differences between men and women, suffering present in the world and how we hold it. These leisurely conversations have unfolded in an unhurried manner, and we have returned to many of them over our shared time, peeling away layers of the onion to share more and more deeply.

On a regular, almost daily basis I have massaged Caddy’s legs and feet. This ritual began during one of my visits neither of us remember how many years ago, long before I ever considered entering into a healing profession. Sitting and taking into my hands the feet of another human being is something I have found opens the most intimate of doorways to dialogue, to sharing and it always feels to me like a truly sacred exchange.

These two people are deeply important in my life. While parents in a sense, ours is a friendship not perhaps as encumbered by some of the dynamics present in normal parent-child relations. This is the case not just for me, but for them as well as relates to their own children. Not being blood family, our relationships are less fraught with the deeply engrained and not always so deeply beneficial patterns that evolve, almost inevitably, within families. We can meet and engage as adults. They offer their thoughts and even counsel about my life choices quite honestly while honoring that I’ve managed to make it around the earth a couple times, in a broad proverbial as well as literal sense. At times, we candidly disagree. At other times, I am more easily able to receive insight and thoughts from them than I might from my own parents, who it feels important to note have supported me to soar with fierce independence throughout my life and with whom I also have a very intimate and loving relationship.

***

Shifting of the Winds

When I chose Tournai as my first port of call on this journey, I believe I was directed by a rather intuitive wisdom. There I knew I might rest more deeply than I could ever grant myself permission to do had I remained in Seattle or even elsewhere in the US. The heavy, dark circles that I’ve been carrying beneath my eyes intermittently through grad school have disappeared. This initial chapter of my journey has been a beautiful balance of rest and nourishment along with fresh adventures, particularly during my time in Israel.

My experiences these past two months have also influenced the horizon I see ahead, and one likely alteration of my itinerary. Before leaving the US, I only purchased my tickets as far as India, assured that inter-Asian travel costs remain relatively static within reason. From the beginning of this journey, I have included a theoretical stop in Nepal thinking ‘how could I return to this corner of the world for the first time since my departure and not go?’ And yet it has also remained the biggest unknown. I am unclear what I would find there and how it would feel to return. The health related social service program I worked with discontinued some years ago due to Maoist insurgent activity. Since my departure in ’98, I have had no contact with my Nepali friends aside from the exchange of a single letter. That letter, and its response, were carried by the hands of a friend who happened to be trekking en route to the Rowaling through Simigaun, a village 2 days walk from the nearest road to which I traveled to half a dozen times.  It will likely be a destination when I do make it back to the country.

Just before leaving Tournai, a wave of thought arose, ‘how would it look if Nepal fell off the itinerary?’ I had realized that Nepal is not currently where my heart is. It hasn’t been there since I left almost a decade ago. My heart has been recently quite occupied in the nurturing of a new relationship. Additionally, a portion of my heart is still quite passionately preoccupied with the idea of studying Chinese. And there is a sense inside me, ‘well you’re more rested now, let’s get on with it’.

I have watched myself over these past weeks, the normal stresses of travel on the body and mind, fluctuations in stamina and motive force. I have considered how much energy will be involved in the journey in India. On top of that to add an undetermined period in Nepal feels like looking at a manuscript in need of editing, one too many chapters. If and when I return to Nepal, I would rather it be an intentional, discrete journey, rather than tagged on to this odyssey of mine. And such a journey would be more vital and rich if I could share that extraordinary Himalayan kingdom with Ewan and even additional friends. This adjustment feels like a natural gesture manifesting the consideration of not only my own needs, but of ‘us’. In the simple act of mentally removing Nepal from my itinerary, a great spaciousness has opened up inside. In that opening I feel more energy freed up to carry into Taiwan to explore what is there or not there for me. The horizon will evidently remain dynamic, as it always is; shifting in appearance as we approach closer to a given destination.

En Route

            For the last time for I don’t know how long, this morning I watched a pale dawn emerge over northern Europe.  I left southern Belgium at 7am, boarded a train in Lille for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the sun cresting clouds at the horizon just prior to our arrival.  I am entering into a period of the twilight zone; my relationship to time and space will be enshrouded in the surreal.  I will spend close to 40 hours en route to Sydney, Australia (with stops in Bahrain & Bangkok, the latter of the two being a 17 hour layover).  Perhaps during these many hours I will be able to craft a post recounting the details of my final days in Belgium, my departure from the European continent, entry into the next chapter of the journey.  

Extended Global Family

The Refuge of Tournai

Today, November 30^th, I will board yet another train, this time bound for the Hague, Holland. In my travel experience, one mindset reigns during periods when I completely surrender to living out of a backpack, moving from place to place. There is a distinctly different experience when I have a base from which to travel, a refuge to which I can return; pragmatically a place for excess baggage while traveling with pared belongings, emotionally a place for the mind and spirit to rest and integrate experiences from the road. Even with the sanctuary of my base in Tournai, long term travel is wearisome. As I prepared a small backpack for the journey today, I encountered some internal reluctance, a yearning for stillness, my mind and heart still integrating experiences from my not so distant time in Israel and more recent journey to Paris. The reluctance is rather easily set aside, although I feel it important to honor along with the wide spectrum of internal experiences in the midst of my travels. Having moved out of my shared Seattle rental home the end of August, I have now been ‘homeless’ for 3 months and during this time laid my head in at least 15 different locations. Perhaps homefull is a more appropriate descriptor as I have not once been without welcome from warm, nurturing friends along my way.

One of the phenomena I have observed while traveling is my enduring daily pursuit of ritual and routine. I believe it is an innate human impulse. Maybe it indicates the search for a semblance of control in the midst of a fluctuating external environment. I reckon it is also my ego’s attempt, wherever I am for however long my tenure, to somehow claim territory as my own.

Since my return from Paris, such gestures have included morning stretching and meditation, a certain sensibility around the drinking of tea, shared meals with my hosts, daily swims at the extraordinary Olympic sized pool on the outskirts of Tournai (truly the most beautiful facility in which I have ever had the opportunity to swim laps), portions of my days at this keyboard writing to Ewan and for this travel log. I have folded myself, or more accurately been graciously folded, back into the home and lives of Caddy & Jean. The house is currently a whir of activity in preparation for a large Christmas market fundraiser for the Scleroderma Association. My days have been peppered with errands and work helping. Additionally, in the wake of a childcare collapse for my host brother and his companion, we have had their 4 month old son Gaspar at the house, the inimitable institution of the European family sweeping in to do what is needed.

Global Chosen Family

As I mentioned in one of my earliest European posts, my youth was distinguished by broad exposure to international exchange. In the autumn of 1986, Martijn Snoep arrived from Holland as a Rotary exchange student. He lived with us for 4 months and became an integral part of our global family. A dear brother and friend, we were very close in those initial years. He was particularly influential in my decision to travel as an exchange student. More than a decade ago, my family traveled to Holland for his wedding; a fabulous and intimate celebration of 34 people held in the outdoor courtyard of his parents-in-law home, something in between a palatial farmhouse and a small castle.

Martijn’s and my shared vocabulary decreased for a period later in my college years. Martijn was fervently pursuing a new and high powered career in anti-trust law. Concurrently, I was taking incremental albeit decisive steps away from western culture, amenities, priorities, and spiritual traditions with my first trip to Nepal in a language/culture immersion program in 1994, and my prompt return in 1997 after graduation from college. The platform on which Martijn and I were able to meet during this era seemed diminished. Aside from a fleeting visit in 2004, we have not shared significant time in many years. Despite limited contact, I believe we have continued to hold the other in warm regard with the bond of so much shared history. My parents have carried the communication baton maintaining contact over recent years, updating us on the lives of the other.

now Sunday December 2^nd

As I exited from the platforms toward the front of the Hague’s central station, I spotted Martijn’s face in the crowd. I was struck by how many times we have played that scene, this old friend/brother awaiting me at one of Holland’s stations, me folding a Netherlands visit into my crisscrossing of this continent. Our weekend was a very easy and relaxed time; Martijn, his wife Agniet, and their two children Tjimen (6), Isa (5). My last visit was extremely brief and the home environment was characterized by completely normal toddler pandemonium. This was my first real opportunity to meet the kids. I observed their individual articulation not only in speech, but as they interacted with each other, with their parents, in their bodies, in the world. Martijn and Agniet explained that they have been humbled by the childrens’ increasingly sophisticated ‘lawyerly’ type reasoning, routinely ‘winning’ by their superior argumentation with the parents. Both Tjimen & Isa appeared extremely articulate and engaged with a strikingly beautiful rapport between them as siblings. Tjimen seems a more interior spirit, fond of reading, a bit more reserved in his social interactions. Of Isa’s unique qualities, I was struck by the lithe, gymnastic command of her body mounting the banisters of their precipitous European stairwells, her long legs splayed at right angle to her tiny body, or on another occasion ascending a playground climbing wall. It was a joy to share time with them over a couple days.

After a night of unremitting rain and strong winds, Saturday dawned with clear blue skies, reasonably soft temperatures, and moderate winds. Our morning was spent grocery shopping; produce at the fruit and veg store, fish from the harbour. I was struck, as I have been on multiple occasions since my return to Europe, by the sense of leisure in market interactions. Nothing is hurried, nor have I witnessed impatience with the pacing. People enter the store, take their number and wait. My biased eyes detect or project a sense of care in these interactions, a very real humanity which seems less present in the American haste, typified by larger commercial grocery stores where one needn’t even communicate with a human, but rather proceed to the automated checkout and not make eye contact with a soul.

Martijn, the kids and I returned to the harbour Saturday afternoon for a fantastic, invigorating afternoon walking the beach, large wake crashing into the shore, the air deliciously clean. Windsurfers skidded through the North Sea waters, parasailers filled the skies with their colorful parachutes exploiting the wind to defy gravity in their flight over and amongst the waves. The temperature remained just inside of invigoration without chilling us to the bone, affording us several hours upon the smooth golden sand dotted with thousands of tiny shells, the wind ethereally dressed in clouds of sand skating along the beach.

In the afternoon, per the kids’ request, we had an acupuncture demonstration which the parents are certain will remain their enduring memory from my visit. Throughout the entire weekend, Martijn, Agniet and I shared a great deal of conversation about health care; disillusioning experiences we have all had with conventional medicine, the variety of alternatives including and outside of Chinese medicine, the nature of the insurance systems in the US and the Netherlands, the influence of pharmaceutical companies, and the possibilities I see in our lifetime for greater understanding between healing paradigms and more integrated care. The Hague has a very international population and Martijn was surprised and interested to learn that my training encompassed Chinese herbal medicine. Although he has no personal experience, he has seen Chinese apothecaries in the Hague.

Agniet is an artist with a stunningly whimsical imagination paired with extraordinary graphic design skills. In the recent past, she has developed a particular affinity for insects, explaining that when we see human faces we immediately make judgments based on our life experience and prejudice. It is a very different dynamic when encountering insects. We cannot attribute quite the same characteristics nor project the same biases. In her recent artistic endeavors she has undertaken photographing beetles and casting them as characters; ‘parents’ cooing over a newborn pupa, an assumedly female beetle posed at the entry of a camper wearing pink lace lingerie, two beetles ‘kissing’ before a full moon,. It was wonderful to be reminded of and have a glimpse into the fanciful contours of Agniet’s mind and creative spirit. If you have an interest in her work you can visit the site below.

http://web.mac.com/snoep/Snoep_Producties/Insecten.html

The remainder of our Saturday was leisurely time at the house including a visit from Martijn’s grandfather who I have not seen since their wedding in 1996. Widowed in recent years, he lives close by and remains a regular part of their lives. Martijn, a magnificent cook as long as I’ve known him, prepared sushi dinner for the family, and thereafter we shared conversation reasonably late into the evening.

Sunday held an intriguing multicultural experience; the children’s St Nicholas Day Judo competition. The weather having returned to drenching rain, we packed into a medium sized matted room with fogged windows, two matches held concurrently, all the kids, ages 5 to 7, neatly wrapped up in their white uniforms. Martijn explained there is a reasonably long history of Judo, amongst the martial arts, in Holland dating back to the 1930s, some Dutch having quite successfully competed at the Olympic level. In addition to the normal referees at this sparring, there was one of St Nicholas’ helpers, controversial black Pete, attending each match, providing sweets by the handful to every child. The relaxed spirit of the dojo seemed to be characterized by good will, with all children walking away at the end with a medal for whatever place they took accompanied by a gift from black Pete.

Sunday late afternoon, Martijn & I again parted ways at the station, him waiting, waving on the platform until the train had pulled away. I was struck by an ease and a true sense of meeting in our shared time this weekend which I have not experienced in our interactions in many years. In addition to our long shared history, I feel there is an absence of pretense at this stage in our lives. We are who we are. We share commonality in certain respects and engage in life very differently in others, and all of that is okay. It was a joy to be, yet again, welcomed into the home of this dear brother, to share briefly in the family life he has created for himself.

Paris

 

Not Strictly Solo

In the ‘intention’ for this travel log as well as in my itinerary, I have eluded, although not very explicitly to my companion Ewan. At this writing he will enter more center stage considering that we have just shared 5 days in Paris and are weeks away from meeting again in Australia. Although we have known each other for over five years, each previously partnered, it was only upon our ‘meeting’ at a dinner gathering in August that something very different happened. Since that time, we have both been quite swept up in this very new and vital relationship. The ‘sweeping’ was dramatic. And we have both dedicated a great deal of time and energy nurturing this relationship since my departure from the US.

Back in September, tentative about our shared horizon I simply posited the question, “Do you have an interest to join me somewhere on this grand journey?” to which Ewan responded emphatically, “Yes.” This was evidently not quite a part of my solo plan. And it has been an extraordinary gift in a variety of ways.

As I have done with those who have graced my journey thus far, at the risk of indiscrete gushing, it seems only appropriate to more descriptively introduce Ewan. Born in LA, he moved shortly thereafter with parents to Seattle where he has lived since the age of 2, raised in a scholarly family; father a professor of literature at the U, mother a librarian. He worked in the hospitality industry cooking and later as a bar tender for a dozen years, in and out of school at the U, later he finished his MA in literature from Prescott in Arizona. He now teaches, quite passionately, as adjunct professor of English literature at Bellevue Community College.
Ewan grew up hiking in Washington’s forests and mountains and knows them more intimately than anyone I know. In our relatively brief chapter together before I left the US, we discovered our shared delight in attention to the world’s details; the line of clouds, trees, birds, water, light. He is deeply thoughtful, a poet, a lover of verse, prose, the crafting of thought. For his half of the species (or his species depending on how one views the male population) he is notably aware of what is going on in his internal landscape and remarkably articulate about experiences as they arise.

In examining the possible dovetail of his academic calendar with my proposed itinerary, Ewan responded keenly to the idea of meeting in Europe, particularly in Paris. He has very fond memories of his own travels there while studying abroad in Avignon, France in 1988. And so with some liberties taken in his class scheduling we planned a Thanksgiving reunion in Paris.

Descent to Paris

Word of the French railway strike wove its way to me via email while I was still in Tel Aviv. Having been a reasonably anxious child in some respects, struggling when things didn’t go as planned, during my adult life I have earnestly cultivated a light hearted and optimistic approach in such circumstances. After all, what else is there to do.

I arrived back in Belgium 3 days before Ewan’s & my pending reunion. Those days I spent quite laid up with a rather severe residual cold/sinus infection aggravated by a more than red eye flight from Israel, boarding at 1:30am and arriving at 5. Only moderately recovered, I traveled south by train toting a backpack of groceries to fill the fridge of our rented apartment. Jean, my Belgian host father, explained that in situations of strike all the rules are different. One can board any train that happens to be traveling in the right direction regardless of whether or not one has a booked seat. After all, in circumstances of strike, who knows whether or not there will be another train.

My tendency to hold such situations lightly and with optimism served me well in this circumstance as the strike proved only advantageous. I arrived in Paris even a bit earlier than expected on a TGV other than the one on which I was booked. Upon walking into the Metro from the Gare du Nord, I turned to a young woman and inquired curiously, ‘so we don’t pay…because of the strike?’ And indeed, there was all of Paris brazenly walking through the open turn-stills without parting with a single euro. For quarter of an hour the young woman and I continued bantering casually in French on the platform and in the subway before I descended at the Châtelet. She was in her final year of a philosophy degree at university. As she is not interested in teaching she was deliberating apprehensively about her future prospects. This was one of two lovely conversations with locals more in the know than I, facilitated entirely by the strike. I have not previously fallen so easily into conversations with locals in Paris. The Metro, as well as the suburban train lines, which I traveled upon later to the airport, remained free through the end of the week, a great unexpected blessing.

Paris is not cheap, regardless of how one does it. For anyone considering travel to this extraordinary city for more than a couple days, consider renting an apartment as an alternative to hotels. We stayed in an extraordinary little place in the premier arrondissement on la rue Sainte Denis close to Les Halles. I found our apartment through the website below which has a WIDE range of accommodations

http://www.all-paris-apartments.com/

My return to the public transport system later in the afternoon afforded the opportunity for another lengthy conversation, this time with a young woman who lives in the northern banlieu close to the airport. I have no idea whether or not she is in the area impacted by the riots early this week. Having recently graduated with a BA in Human Resources, she is searching for employment and spoke of how it is impossible for middle class working people to live in the center of the city. After waiting on the platform for 20 minutes with no activity, she steered me to another line where we hopped a train to the Gare du Nord and then were able to pick up the line traveling out to the airport. Such idiosyncracies are entirely a function of who has or has not returned from the strike lines. Under our collective wing, I folded a young British couple also lingering there on the platform. They neither spoke French nor even knew there was a strike, and yet had a pending return flight to England.

Rather than indulge in the intimate details of November 21-26th, I am more compelled to paint Ewan’s & my time together in broad brushstrokes. From our seamless reunion at Charles de Gaulle airport until our separation 5 days later, it was a leisurely, enchanted, reaffirming, precious time.
We were graced with cold, dry weather all but one rainy morning. A waxing full moon sailed through the skies each night bathing the city and the quintessential Parisian rooftops visible from our apartment in a resplendent lunar glow. We passed hours walking hand in hand through the wandering cobblestone streets of Montmartre & Sacre Coeur, the Left Bank, l’île de la Cité. We walked quietly through ancient churches and catherdrals; Notre Dame, La Sainte Chapelle, St-Germain-des-Prés, St Eustaches. Our time was spent sharing more leisurely coffees than museum visits. We delighted in people watching. We feasted visually on the magnificent architectural wealth of the city. We relished the opportunity to share each other’s company, to allow dialogue to unfold in its own timing, to share periods of quiet in the presence of the other. We ate simply, adjourning for all but one of our evening meals to the quiet refuge of the little apartment tucked up beneath the eaves on la rue Saint Denis.

A particularly cherished day for both us was the Sunday, our last shared together, and one which I have taken a humble stab at in the verse below. This rather unpolished portion touches upon my heartfelt veneration for the international institution of the market, be it in Tournai or Paris, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. I absolutely adore walking amongst people doing their groceries in the open air, exchanging not only money for goods, but pleasantries, bargaining, a warmth and depth of human interchange. True markets of produce and cheese, eggs and spices are all the more precious when stumbled upon by chance, as was this one discovered at the base of l’Eglise St Eustaches.

Fed, rested, honey sweetened tea lingering
in the pockets of our mouths, fingers threaded
between those of the other, we set forth into
the late morning Parisian streets of the premier arrondissement.
The freshly washed cobblestones were quite empty,
the city waking slowly but for the bustle
in the northeastern shadow of l’Eglise Sainte Eustaches.

Moving with measured conduct, locals wove
their way amongst each other with canvas bags in hand,
grocery lists in mind or in pocket beside small bills
and centime coins readied for market exchange.
Elongated rabbit, fur intact, lay beside cuts
of beef and duck, the air filled with the rot of soft
French cheese flirting with the perfume of oyster, anemone,
cut of salmon and sole, piles of prawns, quarters of pumpkin,
mound of leek, glow of persimmon and further on
the bread! Yes! Woven braids of olive and onion,
flaked croissant and tarte normande, stacked loaves
to be broken with soup, with game, the sweet,
the savoury, the air so pregnant with their rich flavour
a woman’s hips round at the scent of it all.

We wove amongst the civil throngs, crafting our dinner
along the way before we returned to where the mouth
of Sainte Eustache opens to Les Halles.  There,
turning up the Montorgueil we stopped
and nestled ourselves at a tiny terrace table,
sipped coffee surrounded by French, bathed
in the autumnal sun.  I exchanged silly faces
through the glass with two young children who darted
back and forth from fogging the cafe window
with their young breath to careening into the street.
All the while transpired a leisurely unfolding dialogue
between you and me over coffee and later food,
and later still another coffee before we ventured
back out into the street, by then quite filled
with bodies of midday leisure. 

After depositing our groceries at the apartment in the mid-afternoon, our day continued unfurling with a long walk past the Louvre, through the Tuilleries to Les Invalides and the vast tracts of open grass where we encountered dozens of soccer games in progress. It was a particular delight for Ewan who, having his own fair history with the sport, played his first pick up game in a fair while just weeks ago. We followed the arc of la rue Saint-Dominique west on to the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tour for a breath taking sunset which filled the sky with swathes of apricot and fuchsia. As the light faded, we descended into the Metro, where we paid entry the first time since our arrival.

Shared Path Ahead

We parted on November 26^th in the same terminal of the Charles de Gaulle airport. Days after finishing the winter quarter at BCC, Ewan will board another plane, this time heading west to meet me on yet another continent. Now back and deeply engaged in the ardor of grading and preparing his students for final papers and exams, he might do well to have his head examined for his own ambitious travel itinerary. I am grateful that his head is not the driving force in the present equation.

The title of this particular entry elucidates an element of my travel log not previously divulged. My voice in these writings is that of a solo nomad deftly, I hope, weaving my way into the lives of those along my journey. And yet Ewan has been an integral part of these travels. We maintain, as possible, extensive daily email correspondence. He has been the preliminary audience for many narratives which have later found their way here, some sections pared of particular intimacies, others expanded in detail before posting. Prior to August, I was my own primary axis in the midst of a rather focused and narrow graduate school life. That has changed. Ewan has become an indelible presence and support in the journey.

Reasonably Quiet Life

L’Hermitage Marcel Baudry

            Toward the end of August, my host mother Caddy called me in a rather excited and agitated state, “Amy, we have won a trip to Turkey!  But it’s right when you’re here, we’ll be gone a whole week.”  Considering I am in Tournai for a longer stretch (over the course of two months), rather than being disappointed, I was elated at the prospect of some quiet, reclusive time.  I declined a variety of dinner invitations and took the majority of the week to further slow down and calibrate to my own clock in a way I have not had the opportunity to do in years.  It has indeed been a period of sublime hermitage.  Days have unfolded with simple food, regular sleep, writing, although evidently not much here, reading, daily laps in the local public pool.  The darkened, puffy circles that took up residence beneath my eyes in my first year of school have packed up and gone elsewhere.  I am deeply rested.

 

Long~standing friendships 

            Mid week I traveled up to Bruxelles to share a couple days with my friend Musimu and her family.  Musimu, born in Zaire, the former Belgian Congo, moved to Belgium at the age of 9 in the wake of her parents’ death.  She was taken in and supported by a woman who lived close to Tournai until she finished her studies.   We met here in school.  Interestingly, although we moved in similar social circles, it was only through written correspondence, and my subsequent returns to Europe, that our friendship really developed.  

            In her early 20s, Musimu married a Dane and moved to Copenhagen, where she and her husband Morten lived and gave birth to their children Mathias & Maya.  Eight years ago they moved back to Bruxelles.  Morten is an antitrust lawyer defending corporations against the EU.  Musimu recently finished her studies in Sociology and currently focuses her energy on their family & home.  Matthias & Maya, ages 11 and 10 respectively, are radiant and enthusiastic young ones who move seamlessly between Danish, French and English.  They study at the international school where parents choose the primary and secondary languages in which their child studies.   Matthias speaks animatedly about plans to study and live in the US. 

            Musimu & I spent much of the visit in dialogue, walking.  We walked through the streets of their Bruxelles suburb Uccle; the embassy row of the EU capital.  We walked for hours through the Forêt de Soignes, a deciduous park which stretches some 100k through Belgium, vestiges of the same forest found in scattered parcels in France.  Midday, we shared a beautiful simple lunch at Le Pain Quotidian; a delightfully typical cafe with its three small rooms each filled with one enormous common table, chairs nestled beside each other so that no conversation is truly private.    

 

            Sunday, I ventured into the Belgian countryside, to the village of Ecaussinnes.   I traveled to share time and the midday meal with Matt & Kelly Paradise and their children Megan (15) and Tyler (14).  Matt’s and my family were close during childhood, parents remaining good friends even now. 

            Having recently moved after four years at a naval base in Japan, Matt is now working at S.H.A.P.E., the large NATO command in Mons, Belgium.  The family has settled for this year and half post in a quintessential Belgian farmhouse, solid and elegant in every detail, view out the kitchen window to adjoining fields littered with lazily grazing cows. 

            In addition to getting thumbnail sketches of each others lives over recent decades, we spoke a great deal about the opportunities afforded to learn via travel; speaking a language other than one’s own, adapting to the food and cultural mores of another culture.  It was a joy to share time this week with a number of young people whose eyes and minds appear to be so open to the wonders of this big world of ours.  

 

***

            I am, perhaps, not the best narrator of northern Europe’s quotidian details.  For while foreign, they are also dearly familiar; the smell of fresh baked bread, the irregularity of cobblestone streets which mirror the teeth of many an elder in this part of the world, the idiosyncratic and surprisingly functional traffic regulating device ~ the roundabout, the myriad different architectural styles of door and dormer, window and buttress, all centuries old and lined up beside each other like nestling spoons, the lyrical accent of Flemish vendors selling their eggs and milk at the farmer’s market, the undulating hills peppered with small brick houses, proud rows of poplars, languid cows, heavy mounds of harvested brown sugar beet.  

 

Turning East

            Tomorrow I leave this familiar place and fly to Tel Aviv.  I will spend the first half of my time in Israel with friends Maha & Jamal in Haifa, just south of Lebanon.  Toward the end of my week with them, Maha has invited me to join her on a trip to the Arava Institute, 5 hours drive south of Haifa, close to the Jordanian border.  For some years now, she has been involved in the facilitation of Compassionate Listening workshops which foster peace and conflict resolution between Jews & Palestinians by teaching skills of active and compassionate listening. 

 

http://www.compassionatelistening.org/

http://www.arava.org/new/about_arava

 

            And so I leave the falling leaves of mustard and brown, and the thickened frost of recent mornings for clear skies with warm temperatures in a land completely unfamiliar to me.  Many adventures lie ahead. 

 

 

Gestures of Peace

Friday, 139 people died secondary to suicide bombings in Pakistan. The attacks were directed at former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, recently returned to the country after 8 years in exile. More than a month after the beginning of large scale peaceful protests, led by monks and suppressed by the military junta in Burma, the curfew in that country has been lifted. “It’s not peace you see here, it’s silence,” words of a 46 year old Burmese writer quoted in the NY Times. Also this week, following the US Congress bestowing its highest civilian award to the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government ‘clashed’ (little detail provided) with monks attempting to celebrate in Lhasa.

And I write from a warm brick home situated in a bucolic landscape of resplendent blue sky, a small town in southern Belgium where the air has become crisp, just since my arrival over a week ago, and the leaves have begun to fall. How does one, any one of us, hold the unrelenting violence in this world. I would argue one way is to focus on the crucible of our smallest daily choices and interactions, how we communicate with those we touch, the expression, the intention which we bring to every gesture of our lives. This is part of the reason Zen meditation practice is a part of my daily ritual, that I might cultivate my skills in being present in each moment, each interaction.

 

In my home as a child, we had a small spare bedroom with a prominently revolving door. My mother, being Australian, reeled in visitors from a rather vast web of extended family Down Under. Additionally, we welcomed in exchange students from different parts of Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere, some of whom remain important members of our family. With my first journey to Australia at the age of 4, first trip to Europe a decade thereafter, travel and interacting with other cultures has been the very warp and weft, both weaving the basic structure and providing vibrant color and texture to my life.

Last week, I attended an evening meeting of Tournai 3 Lys, the all male Rotary Club which sponsored my year here as an exchange student. I was warmly received by some familiar and decidedly aged faces. Roget Claeyssens was one such face. Now in his early 70s, Roget oversaw all those on exchange in the region during my time here in ‘91/92. He has maintained close contact with an Australian student who was here during the same period. He recounted being in the hospital some years ago following a thrombosis and picking up the phone to find his Australian filleule ‘god daughter,’ inquiring about his welfare.

In reflecting on Rotary’s global impact over so many years sponsoring cultural exchange (and this evidently applies to not just Rotary, but all organizations facilitating such exchange), he articulated, “They are gestures of peace; every student and their interactions with families and communities.” At length, we discussed the impact of these youthful emissaries; filtering throughout the world as travelers do with enthusiasm and curiosity, propensity for cultural blunders and judgment, wonder and all the other experiences which accompany being away from one’s home. Amongst their souvenirs, I would like to think these ambassadors carry home more open minds and the sensibility that there are, in fact, many ways to live and work, raise children, share food and family and companionship, create art, care for the body, one’s elders, the home, the community.

Tournai 3 Lys continues to welcome new students every year, this year has brought young men and women from India, Ecuador, Brazil, Australia and Japan. With the increased…hmm let’s just say restriction of the American border since 9/11, academic exchange into and out of the US has been significantly impacted. In Tournai, they have only had 1 American over since that time. I wonder what ripples we will continue to see over the coming years as a result of our government’s choices since September 2001.

 

I hold all these thoughts along with the pain and violence of this world. Here I will include what feels like an apropos passage from some writing to more intimate friends and family which I sent out before my departure from the US.

 

I want to mention a recent public dialogue held just after retreat between my teacher Shodo Harada Roshi and Michael Lerner of Commonweal.   Amongst a broad constellation of subjects, some of the most poignant were those addressing the relationship of the individual to the world, the manner in which the suffering of the world is held by and consequently impacts an individual’s health and wellbeing.  They each spoke about the challenges and urgent necessity of remaining present, awake, engaged, and hopeful in the midst of such a deeply troubled era for our world. 

The audio of the evening is available ~

http://www.sendspace.com/file/26zpf4

(2007-09-13.talkWhidbeyInstitute.mp3)

 

            Michael described three distinct narratives of the past 500 or so years of human history.  The first, arguably the most celebrated is that of scientific and material progress.  The second, being the destruction and exploitation of nature, indigenous culture and the feminine. The third in which Michael appears to root his own hope for this world is as follows:

                                                                       

It is a narrative of a movement in consciousness, from despotism to democracy, from slavery to citizenship, from women as property to women as equals, the history of the labor movement, women’s movement,  the civil right movement, the human rights movement, the environmental movement, the animal rights movement.  And if you ask what all of these have in common, it’s an expansion of the respectful consciousness of other sentient beings.  It is an awakening to our mutuality and oneness of all sentient beings which is of course is the teaching of the Harada Roshi…

… what I want to suggest is that the way most of us deal with this {the planetary crisis}, is with anxiety and depression, and a sense of being afflicted, and a sense that this is such a terrible thing…This is not the skillful way to live with this, anymore than it’s the skillful way to look at our personal transformation…I believe that the right way to live with this is the belief that we can turn this around.  It doesn’t mean we will turn it around, or that there won’t be a tremendous amount of suffering…But there is a sense that this great journey of millennia of the human spirit is not destined to have been made in vain.  That we are not destined to be destroyed.  That we are not a mistake in the history of planet earth.  That we carry the dharma, the sangha within us, that we carry a spiritual tradition that we increasingly understand as one within us and that from the axial age of the Buddha and Socrates to the time of Christ to the Sufi masters; our spiritual history is a history of awakening, again and again and again…

 

            If prayer is a part of your days, prayer in the most expansive and ecumenical sense of the word, be it for yourself, an individual in your life, your community, those in poverty and hardship in this country, in the world, those embroiled in Iraq, for the monks in Burma, I would invite you to cast those prayers in an affirmative spirit with images of strength, harmony and vitality. This is not about denial of reality.  It is rather about invoking and orienting toward the constructive, the vibrant, the light.  Perhaps it is best illustrated by Czech playwright Vaclav Havel’s words differentiating hope and optimism. 

 

“Optimism is the belief that everything is going to go right.

Hope, by contrast, is a deep orientation of the soul

that can be held in the darkest of times.”

 

             

Settling into the countryside

Returning ‘Home’

I have called a number of places home over the course of my life. Browns’ Pt, WA, ages 0-18, Tournai, Belgium (where I write from now), Maine (college), Nepal (college and later work), Scotland (college), Australia (travel & visit of my mother’s family). Most recently Seattle has been home.

Since a year spent in 1991/92 as a Rotary exchange scholar in this small town minutes from the French border, I have had the lavish fortune to return a half a dozen times. Over these sixteen years, I have not only maintained but cultivated the relationship with Caddy & Jean Delhove, the parents of my first of three host families from that year. They have visited me on several occasions in the US, shared travels in Europe with my own parents, and we have corresponded initially by handwritten letter, an antiquated and I would still argue sacred form of correspondence, phone and more recently email.

Tournai et la region ~ Local History

Caddy & Jean live in Froyennes, a small village 4 kilometers from the center of Tournai. Brick homes are scattered throughout the bucolic landscape of individual farms. Yesterday on a run, I encountered machinery harvesting potatoes, corn standing witness across the single lane country road, still other fields full of beetroot and other low, green sprouts, plants which I cannot distinguish or identify.

This region being familiar to me, I haven’t such a need to take photographs for posterity. Even if I did, I’m not the most technologically adept (in terms of uploading etc). And so for now, this will be a written narrative and you will have to supplement with the provided websites. The Wiki site has quite good photos of Tournai.

http://www.tournai.be/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournai

The rooster’s call, beginning at 4:30am, is one of many indications that I am far from Seattle’s urban city limits. The history of settlement here dates back 2000 years, with a village, which later became Tournai, established along the banks of the river Scheldt. Vestiges of its long history include the road Tournai-Bavay, an ancient Rome bound thoroughfare, which still runs through the countryside from the hills of Chercq to the village of Saint-Maur.

Tournai is perhaps most noted for its 12^th century Cathedral of Notre-Dame; a rather regal and imposing architectural structure of Romanesque and Gothic influences. Although the town was devastated due to bombing and ensuing fire in 1940, the cathedral endured largely unscathed. Subsequent reconstruction and restoration of the town center took place over the course of a decade (1945~1955). For some years now, the Cathedral has been in a state of perpetual restoration in the interest of maintaining its structural integrity for centuries to come.

Aged Friendship

This home, aside from a face-lift of interior decoration, which brought much needed light and color into it, has remained largely unchanged since my time here in ‘91. The tall, narrow cabinet beside the European size fridge still houses towering stacks of tea cups, the breakfast tray holds requisite jars of jam, nutella style chocolate spread, instant coffee, the little plastic cutting boards on which one places bread, and the sugar bowl, from which, as a punctuation to every meal, Caddy withdraws a single cube and, after dunking once, places it in between her cheek and teeth as she drinks the remainder of her coffee.

The crystal cabinet is filled with a dazzling array of glasses, each having its place and function in the drinking of a particular kind of wine or liqueur. Some things have been recently added to the house since Mami, Caddy’s mother, died of an aneurysm in her sleep 4 months ago yesterday.

In recent years, Caddy has taken to the tending of orchids, an inspiring ambition in the climate of northern Europe. Currently, a number remain in bloom, white and violet, their surreal tropical texture brings a certain vibrancy to the somewhat austere living room.

Caddy worked initially as a primary school teacher and later as the principal of an elementary school until early retirement due to a Scleroderma diagnosis in 1994. In 1995, she founded the Belgian Scleroderma association in order to promote fundraising for research into the disease, and provide patient support and services. She has since become active in the European Scleroderma association as well as an umbrella organization focused on supporting research into auto-immune disease. She balances the demands of her own body for rest and moderation with an intense drive to work for the benefit of others.

Jean worked for decades managing a textile factory just the other side of the French border. He retired early, due to cardiac problems, and has since devoted his time to activities with the local Rotary club and more recently administration of the regional food bank. At the age of 60, they are a couple fiercely generous in contributing their time and energy to local and not so local needs.

It was with this couple that I truly learned French. During the months I lived with them, after many an evening meal, my host sister, Caroline, would adjourn to her room while we remained at the kitchen table, large Harrap’s French-English dictionary close at hand, discussing politics, education, religion, relationships, the state of the world, whatever presented itself on a given day. Over the years, our dialogue has deepened and matured. They might say it has just aged, as we all have, each of us with more grey than upon our first meeting.

It is deeply nourishing to me to continue the dialogue, the development of these friendships. There is an ease and familiarity both to this place and our interactions. When I considered a visit here after finishing school, I felt a rightness about it. Somehow I knew coming here, separated from my life in Seattle and all that that entails, that I could truly rest and recalibrate.

The days since my arrival have unfolded, each with a decided leisure and simplicity; a trip into the farmer’s market and errands in town, a shared meal with my host brother Fréd, his partner Lydia and their new son Gaspar, an afternoon jog through the country everyday, leisurely dialogue after dinner at the same kitchen table, with the same dictionary, although the Harrap’s is not so necessary anymore.

Sunday afternoon, Caddy and I visited the studio and gardens of 70+ year old artist Marie-Josée AERTS. She has worked largely with the nude human form in cast bronze and fired ceramic works. Normally charging a fee for entry, once a year she opens her atelier freely to the public. The gardens weave around her home and studio space with a distinctive intimacy. Wisteria gracefully adorns an arbor which stands beside rows of spinach and leeks, nude figures poised and nestled amongst the greenery. It is a delight to have returned to Europe, to have returned here.