Home smells like nettle tea. Good mail lays scattered beneath the slot: my race pack for the 10K on Sunday, a check. Put on the kettle. Heat up some tatties. Boooong – the computer comes alive. Homecoming emails from Caitcat and Grandpa greet me, make me smile. Charge up the iPod. Update my podcasts; ready for my morning workout.

Our space is empty, cleared out, ready for our departure, but it is full of us still. Our smell is here. The moon is full tonight and coming through the window. I think it will bring us good things.

Glasgow is chilly. Old sweatshirt weather. Tomorrow is work and bank and library. Tomorrow is, “welcome back!” and “how was it?” Tomorrow is not the start of limbo. It is real and I see that now.
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What is the first thing you notice when you come home from a long trip?

Immediately after leaving the over-priced internet cafe that I wrote the last post in, I felt like a horrible jerk for having dogged on Athens in the midst of its national emergency. People’s lives are lost, charred, and broken and all I can do is complain about the dust? What is wrong with me?!? 

I can only chalk it up to the exhaustion that sets in at the tail end of travels. The smoke inhalation didn’t help any, either. Also, we didn’t know what was going on for a while. We had no idea that the fire shown on the ferry boat’s bar TV on Friday night (with a report in Greek, of course) was on was ripping its way across the entire land. We assumed it was one, localized fire. Not hundreds. Saturday we were off to the sights bright and early, without flipping on the tube. It wasn’t until the day went on and smokey ash blanketed the city and armed gaurds filed through the streets in riot gear, that I started to get a little freaked. And a little sick from breathing. Was that fire on TV right outside of Athens? We checked into an internet cafe to look it up on BBC. The fire was everywhere. And my reaction was self-centered and resulted in a terrible blog entry. My apologies. My insensitivity was gross and the good people of Greece deserve better than that.

Anyhow, today as fire fighters from all across the EU fought the blazes, Shaun and I went to the Museum of Cycladic Art to see a contemporary photography and video exhibition. It was curated with such careful thought and the work was fresh and fabulous. One particular piece completely captivated me: True North by British film artist Isaac Julian. If this man’s work tours to a contemporary art museum near you: go see it. You’ll feel clean after. The nestled bits of your brain that have been dozing will wake up.

This time tomorrow we’ll be back in Glasgow. Four more days in our apartment. Then we’re in our friend’s second bedroom, then house-sitting until my contract is up. Lots of real life, grueling stuff coming up. Saw an online posting for a great job in Chicago. Will be applying as soon as we land. This trip has been beautiful. But I’m starting to get antsy: I’ve got shit to do!

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Have you ever had a very public, selfish reaction?

Half of Greece is on fire! 

Roaring flames are eating up this country; first the forrests decided to combust and then a bunch of psychotic arsonists decided to help them. The burning began on Friday. Saturday, the sky over Athens was sooty and nauseating; a perpetual dusk settled over the city. The sun was an angry orange ball. Giant chunks of ash swept through the air. My eyelids grated and stung. I sneezed gray. I got headachy and weird and sick and had to lay down in the hotel as the day heated up, scorching and dehydrating and parching everything. The day was toxic.

Aside from being surrounded by fire, Athens is a mixed experience. The Acropolis and Zeus’ Temple were incredible – we spent early Saturday morning soaking it up, before the day got too hot and while we were still so excited that we all but forgot about the sooty air. We spent today (seriously, from open to near close) in the National Archeological museum, which was amazing. But the city itself is depressing. It’s dirty and covered in graffiti and filth and smells and big dogs and hungry cats and cigarette butts and the heat. Oh, the heat. The heat is trapped inside the city in a bubble of hell, making the tight passageways even more claustrophobic than they would be already. The architecture is just sad: cruddy, ugly, washed out, dust covered 1960′s and 1970′s block residencies tower above, their first floors bearing security cage-covered shop fronts. I can’t help but think that coming from the wide open natural beauty of Crete and Milos is making me extra sensitive to the grit of Athens. Plus, it’s not like we’re seeing it in it’s best light, what with the fire and all. So I’m not being totally fair.

We’re enjoying ourselves, though. Staying indoors as much as possible. (Really – you can’t BREATHE outside.) We went to see a Tarantino movie, Deathproof, last night to escape the toxic air.  It had subtitles in Greek that I suspect were done poorly, as Shaun and I seemed to be the only ones laughing riotously at some points.

All for now. Am sweaty. Be well. Stay away from matches. Send thoughts of comfort and respite to those country men and women of Greece, stumbling through smoke-billowing olive groves, a wall of flames licking at their heels.

Herete! Kali Mara! That’s “Hello!” and “Good Day!” in Greek! Crete happened. Was incredible. Incredible! Ate an octopus and felt its suction cups clinging to the inside of my tummy. Communed with Zeus in his birth cave, where a goat nursed him to boyhood. Splashed a two cent piece into a cave pool and asked for Zeus to bless our our upcoming transitions. Went to museums. Hiked to ruins. Hiked to more ruins. Oh look: RUINS!!!! Ruins, ruins everywhere. You can’t do a thing without RUINS! Minoan ruins, Mycinean ruins, Dorian ruins, Ruins ruins. It is AMAZING and the ones high, high up have crazy mad GOATS crawling all over them. Baa! Baa! Greek goats “baa” higher, like a fretting little girl. Scottish goats “baa” like they are dry heaving. Baa! Baaa!!!! So many museums: Historical museums, MILLIONS of archeological museums, and an absolutly lovely one dedicated to traditional Cretian life.

The ferry to the isle of Milos was smoky. Smoking, smoking everywhere. Hack hack. Came out smelling like soot and filthy lungs. Gross. But the food was great! When’s the last time you had good food en route to a place? NEVER! Except for on the Milos ferry. Mmmmm…Mousaka! Lamby lambs are delicious minced up and smothered in eggplants. EAT THEM NOW!

Milos is hot hot hot. Venus de Milos was stolen by some greedy French people here and given to Louis the 18 as a pressie, which is why I met the purty lassie at the Louvre in Paris. But this is where she came from, found in a cave by a farmer looking for his well. Insane!!! We hiked to the spot it was found in. We hiked to an ancient Roman theatre and the FEELING there, the insane FEELING of ovation, of dignity, of art as something more than a frivolous endevor – a feeling of art, words and performance as intrinsic, a part of us, inside us, as necissary as breath, as old as stone. We crawled through ancient catacombs; the second oldest known in this world.

We swam, we swam, we swam. Swimming with entangelments of the sea. Swimming without touching the bottom. Swimming without scraping a sea urchin, without a slippery something twisting round your leg, making you squeal, giddily panicked, “what was that?!?” We swam in caves, we swam in gorges. We swim so much – at the end of hikes, in the middle of hikes, in the morning, in the night, in dreams – that when I am still, I still feel white capped waves battering me over and over and over. I sway. Swish swish. I’m a fish.

Today we walked across a space where a volcano’s lava congealed and stopped in blurbs and bubbles to form the surface of the moon. It was peaked and hollowed, crazed and impossible. The wind whipped our bodies, making the impossible whiteness of the sun bearable. Grains of sand, of sulfer, of sea stung our faces. Waves howled below. Ravages of a ship wreck lay broken, a left warning twisted round bursting rocks.

Tomorrow we board the ferry for Athens. Museums. Acropolis. Mainland. Home is soon. And when I think of it, of home, I don’t think of Glasgow. I think of home home. Of moms and brothers and Cooks Dairy Farm. Of best friend Brian. Of real home.

People like to ask, “where are you from?” It’s a weird question to answer. We live in Glasgow. Moved from Chicago. Grew up in Michigan. What do you say? “The states, America.” They nod. They smile. “What are you doing here?!?” This place sees Italians, Spanish tourists, families on their holidays. The resorts are full of pink, badly behaved English. Vroom vroom they dart around on motorbikes and 4-wheelers. They are drunk, singing football songs, ready to get warm, get wasted, and get laid. Yikes! Stay away from them! Head for the lost places, the hiking places, the places to eat local cheese and buy wine on the side of the road from the old woman who made it in her garden. Away, away.

The sun has eaten at my brain. All I feel is waves. And this is how I write with the ocean in my ears. This is how I think and spell and am.

Love to you all. And love to Greece.

XO,
Truly

Flight leaves at 7 am. Trying to get to sleep is impossible. Its like trying to sleep on Christmas eve. Only this time, Santa is wearing a toga and bestowing suntans, olives, and myths. Not to mention spicy lamb. Tomorrow, I’ll be lunching in Greece.

Apartment swept/perishable items tossed for a clean homecoming. Trash is taken out. Bags are packed. Toenails are painted and sandle-ready. Camera battery is charging. Now is the hard part: sleep. Lets see if I can manage before we have to wake up at 4.30 am. I try to count sheep, but every now and again one leaps by with a wreath of grape leaves wound around his head. There goes another one with a sheep’s head and the body of a man. And there’s another pulling a chariot. One is named Zorba, I think….

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When’s the last time you were to excited to sleep?

I know that one of my favorite exports from Scotland is going to be this nation’s jaunty, lighthearted references to drinking. No longer will I go out for a drink; but I’ll gladly join you for a slurp. If I have the misfortune of contracting a hang over, I can say that I’m “a bit jaded” the next morning, before admitting that I was “absolutely wankered last night.” Here you can get pished, pissed or steamin’, which seems a lot better than in America, where you can get wasted, trashed or shit faced. You’d think that with those options, Americans would be the heavyweight drinkers in this world; an hour in Scotland would prove you wrong.

Drinking here is more socially acceptable than it probably should be. 14-year old girls drink cheap bottles of rose by the bottle-neck in graveyards, under over passes at night. Old men stagger on sidewalks, muttering to themselves, sweating hopps. Midnight in city centre is a zoo of amazingly drunk women trying to make their way home, teetering dangerously on stilettos. Men move in packs, chanting football songs and reeking of hard cider. My morning run, taken before the street sweeper can clear the ravages of the night away, is an obstacle course of vomit and human shit, strewn about the sidewalk. Oh Glasgee. Why don’t ye know when to quit?

Something that took me a while to catch on to here is that all the real business at work is done after 5, in the pub. If your boss asks you to come along for a slurp, you should go. And don’t be afraid to get drunk. That’s what going for a drink means here: getting pished. Or at least a little pished. If you are like me, unable to cope with hangovers (I’d rather be dead) drink your drink slowly. Let yourself loosen up naturally. Take the liberty of ordering the group snacks when it’s your turn to buy a round. Switch to cranberry juice or tonic after you’ve reached your limit and let them all feel jaded in the morning. You’ve got your morning run to do; you don’t have time in the morning to spend with your face retching into the toilet bowl. But you also can’t afford to not go to the pub, where your boss becomes your friend and tells you all sorts of useful information, the two of you bond, you get all that praise (and more!) that you’ve always wanted, and suddenly you have a stellar recommendation that you need for when you move stateside again. That was my Friday.

Saturday, Shaun and I went to the Edinburgh International Festival — that’s the big theater thing you’ve probably heard of that has a hoppin’ Fringe Festival. We made our way through the throngs of theatre-happy tourists to a staging of Bacchus starring Alan Cumming in drag as Dionysus and a gospel choir of beautiful black women as the Greek chorus. The choreography and songs could have been tighter (yes, it was a musical), and the scripting could have been less expositional (yes, I know this is the style of Greek tragedies, but if you are going to go ahead and make it a musical, don’t be afraid to adapt it in other ways too). Overall though, it was a pleasure to watch. I laughed out loud more than a few times and was wildly impressed with Alan Cumming’s naked butt, which also featured in the play. The butt was extraordinarily muscular – with hearty side divots and everything. It was the kind of butt that takes millions of squats and ceaseless leg lifts. I just hope the rest of the crowd appreciated it as much as I did. I’ve worked out to Tammy Lee Baker’s Buns of Steel video; I know how hard that shit is. The rest of Alan Cumming performed delightfully as well — his comedic timing was perfect and his expressions are priceless. Frankly, I love him. He reminds me of my best-est of friends. I wish he was the man who Americans thought of when they thought of Scottish people; Sean Connery is freakish and I’ve never in all my time here heard anything remotely like that bizarre accent he slurs out of his bear-encrusted mouth.

Today, we threw a little brunch party for friends to come over, sip mimosas, and rifle through our worldly possessions to take stuff home with them. (We’re trying to unload all the books, cooking bits, and other random things unworthy of a trans Atlantic crossing before we move out of our flat). I made a cherry pie and apple/carrot muffins. We laughed non-stop, ate too much sugar, and now I’m farting all over the place from the champagne. Why is champagne served at social functions?!?! It has so many fart-inducing bubbles! Luckily, the giant bloat seems to have a timed chemical reaction that only over stimulates the gastro-intestinal tract about 5 hours after drinking it, and by that time the party is probably over. But just think of how many post-celebration romances have probably been thwarted over the course of history by bloating and gas pains.

I realize that this entire post is getting a bit too graphic, but really I had to write about the farting thing:

a.) Because it’s funny.
b.) Because I don’t want you to feel alone in you’re champagne-induced farting. It happens to the best of us.

Anyhow, my excitement about our Greece trip this Tuesday is now bordering on rabid. I am foaming at the mouth and fearing water. Dispite the hydrophobia, I got a new swimming suit for the trip that I can only describe as Cave Woman meets Bond Girl. It came in the mail yesterday and when I tried it on I lamented that I ever have to wear real clothes at all. Bathing suit only! OOGA!
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How’s your weekend?

OH! I forogt! I ran into a bird today. A hidous pidgeon. You know how sometimes, if you are really unlucky, a bird flutters into you? Well this time, I ran smack into a bird’s meaty belly. A cluster of the mangey things were pecking on the sidewalk that I was running on this morning and when I approached, they all took to wing. But one was particuarly slow and due to a timing miscalculation on both of our parts, I ran my forehead into it’s horrible, germ-infested breast. It’s wing got tangled in my bangs and it’s feathers stuck to my sweaty forehead. I screeched and flapped my arms and about a block later, dry heaved, thinking about how I’m too young to die of Avian flu. Yuck!

MONDAY MORNING EDIT: Ha! This post was obviously a little tipsy (probably don’t need to tell you that). I laughed out loud, scrolling through this morning to see that I’d written that Sean Connery had a “bear encrusted mouth.” HA! Yes. He eats a lot of bears. Raw ones. I mean, how many times have you seen Sean Connery with bear meat and fur just smeared all over his face? Millions. It’s basically every picture taken of him, ever. Including the baby pics, before he even had teeth. Seriously – there’s a whole E! True Hollywood Story about it. Somebody get that man a napkin. HA! Um, no. I meant to put a “d” on the end of that “bear.” Sean Connery has a “beard-encrusted face.” Scratch Smokey; I meant facial hair. Note to self about tipsy blog posts taken.

On the radio today, I heard that Wal-Mart is selling talking dolls that spout Christian scripture. There’s nothing like cultivating an even richer Madonna/Whore complex than selling chaste, holy dolls along side the sex-kittenish Bratz dolls and boob-licious Barbies. Plus, have the manufactures of these dolls ever actually watched a little girl play with dolls? Because when playing with dolls who are modeled after adults, little girls do one of two things:

Option 1:
This kind of little girl gets the doll pretty enough to go on a date with the boy doll. Or, in the absence of a boy doll, the main doll can go on a date with another girl doll – probably the one with brown hair. They go out on a brief date that ends with the two characters smashed together mid-air, making kissy sounds and humping. The little girl strips the dolls and inspects their plastic anatomies before tossing the mangled, raped things aside to move on to another game.

Option 2:
This kind of little girl gives the doll a hair cut. It doesn’t turn out quite right, so the girl thinks it will be funny to just go ahead and shave the doll’s head entirely. The little girl decides that the doll would look better with tattoos – she draws all over the dolls body. The little girl wonders if she can shave the dolls legs like mommy. She uses the pink razor in the shower to cut hunks out of the dolls plastic legs before leaving the mutilated skinhead in the bathtub to go play outside.

Have you ever seen anything different? Just imagine how much trouble you’d get in if you were doing either of those things to the Virgin Mary!

Also, they played a few clips of what the talking dolls said. My favorite was from the Ester doll:

“Go gather together all the Jews who are in Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish. Esther 4:16.”

What kind of freak are you trying to raise if you incorporate fasting into playtime? Plus, kids don’t understand this language! And even if they did, this little snippet is completely lacking in context – you’d never know from that little clip that Esther was really trying to save the Jews. It just sounds like the lady is going on a deadly crash diet.

Also weird, the Mary doll reportedly has a much smaller bust than all the other Bible ladies in the line up. And what’s the lesson here, kids? Boobies are sinful. The smaller your tata’s, the more moral you are. Hate your body! Hate it before it even grows into anything!

If I were a parent, I would be worried that my child has a chemical imbalance if they enjoyed playing with these toys as they are meant to be played with. Can you imagine a child who sedately pulls the string of the Moses doll, just to hear him methodically say, “Thou shalt not kill” over and over? Yikes!

Are the Barbies and Bratz dolls better? No. ‘Course not. It’s all fucked up. I’m just thankful that I was never interested in playing with Barbies (unless I was at a friend’s house, giving them haircuts) and had parents who filled my toy box with stuffed animals, art supplies, and books instead.
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How do you think a real-live kid will react to the Bible dolls?

::Random Tangent::
Yay for the Sunday long run. I ran 7 miles today! I think that is the longest I’ve ever run in the history of my body. Woo Hoo! This graduated running plan is fun. Me like. My friend showed me a fab website to help me keep increasing my milage. It’s called www.mapmywalk.com. It lets you draw your route on a Google Earth map and tells you how many miles it is. Very cool. Although, you can save your walk as a public profile, which baffles me. Hello! Do the people who publish their running route want to get stalked?!? I am very careful to save my routes to a private profile, but I think its handy to show someone you live with or a friend your route, so that if you are unlucky enough to get kidnapped from your early morning run, they know where to start looking for your corpse. Ha! I don’t really think this way, but you just have to watch your back when you have a vagina in this world. Especially if you preffer to run by yourself. Anyhow, that’s my tip of the day, passed from a friend to me, and from me to you. Have a good Sunday!

I am clinging to routine, to my running schedule, to perfectly balanced meals devoid of junk, to my new vitamin regimen, to quiet days, to nights holed up in our flat with books. I am storing my energy and stockpiling balance. I am meditating. I am soaking up all the calm I can now, because after next week, our lives will spiral into a true koyaanisqatsi.

Next Sunday, I’m throwing a brunch party for all of our people to descend on our apartment and adopt our stuff. Potted herbs, a years worth of paper backs (and for two hungry readers, this is a lot), OS hiking maps, comic books, shampoos I tried and wasn’t a huge fan of, spices, shoes I hate, and other bits of randomness that aren’t fit for a trans-Atlantic crossing need homes.

On the following Tuesday we’re off to Greece for two weeks. We tossed around weather or not to take this trip for a while. But a part of what we wanted from this year abroad was to travel, and although we did get two amazing weekends in Brussels and Paris, we were itching to do a proper, long holiday. We rationalized that Greece will never be closer. We are unlikely to see as favorable of an exchange rate as our pounds have to the euro (the US dollar is weak, weak, weak). It would never be as cheap. We will probably never again have European employers who allot billions of paid days off for us to enjoy a vacation without wondering how rent was going to get paid. Plus, we’d been paying taxes here in Scotland – both local and national — and found out recently that we weren’t supposed to have been. While the phat reimbursement could have gone to paying off our credit debts, it could also fund this trip of a lifetime. What can I say? We were seduced.

We are going first to Crete for a few days, to hike/ride donkeys to the cave that Zeus was born and raised by a goat in. We will also pet Minotaur. Then we’re off to Milos, an island riddled with amazing volcanic formations, caves and haunted by the endangered Monk Seal. A few days later, we’re off to the mainland to kick it in Athens and steal away to worship with a man I found online who thinks he’s an oracle and has direct communication with the sun god Apollo in Delphi. It will be hilarious.

Four days after we return from Greece, our lease is up and we move to the guest bedroom of our good and remarkably generous pals Dan and Bryony. Two days after moving in with them, I run my 10K race. After the race, I step up my training for a 1/2 marathon and kick it with Dan and Bryony for the 20 remaining days of my work contract before saying farewell and heading stateside. The last week before we go is also particularly insane for me, as I’ll be in Dundee for a big chunk of it, as that is where the conference that I’m on contract to market is taking place. When I get back it’s a good bye party at work, then by a good bye party with friends, followed by a good day set aside for that monster hang over before we board a plane.

Where are we going? No idea. What will we be doing next? No idea.

First stop though is MI for two weeks to visit family and attend my mom’s pirate wedding in Mackinac. Then, we move…somewhere. Not MI, though. The unemployment rate there is astounding and the job listings are dismal. Shaun is in the latter interview stages for his dream job in NYC. He is also in discussion with a San Diego company who he has a strong relationship with. My applications are out, but I’m not torqued about any of the prospects and Shaun is. I’m applying to jobs – he’s applying to positions he is passionate about. So if he gets something, we’ll go to whatever that is. Do I want to move to San Diego? Not particularly, but we’re not really in a position to turn our noses up at anything. And we don’t have to stay anywhere forever.

Naturally, we have debt. Most of it is Shaun’s student loans; we now both can pay homage to our education in monthly installments. A relatively small, but never the less present, amount is credit debt incurred from traveling. We expected this. We accepted this. Actually, we expected a bit more than this and I’m pretty damn impressed with our restraint. I’m not worried about the money stuff. We are always very responsible about paying things off; we make games of scrimping and saving. Poverty isn’t so bad when you have a plan out of it.

Anyhow, now entering August without any real idea what we are doing yet, I am trying to keep things simple. I am trying to go one day at a time. There is no cause for alarm. Panic and anxiety are useless emotions. At bedtime, I tell myself stories of us to keep my mind from racing:

We moved from Chicago with no contacts and no jobs. We moved to Glasgow with no contacts, no jobs, and an exchange rate that meant we also had no money. What do you do? You get an apartment. You find a job. You pay the bills. You keep smiling, keep moving. Once you are comfy enough, you chase your dreams once again.

If Shaun manages to get a great job before we actually leave Scotland – that is amazing. But transitioning from one dream to the next is so lucky. We can wish for it, we can work for it, but we can’t be too surprised if it doesn’t happen. In that case, we just pick a place to move, re-group, dust our selves off, and start chasing dreams again.

The trouble is, my partner seems to be under a crushing pressure to make things seamless, to have something concrete in place before we go back. While I appreciate his wanting to make good for our future, I’m also perplexed. We’ve done the “wing-it” thing before and it’s always worked. It has to – it’s sink or swim! If things work out, great, if not, great. I’m excited to see what’s around the corner regardless, even if it is a scary monster. We chose to have big balls in this world, and now we have to bear the brassy weight of them. (Ha! I crack myself up.)

I suspect he is also grieving this transition – this has been a pretty sweet year for him. He dedicated his days to his art and was surrounded by a community of talented writers. I imagine the prospect of having to go back to lame office work (which in his mind, seem to be most things that are not writing or editing), might feel like total, soul sucking regression. He’s just going through something, I guess. I am too, but I think I have better coping mechanisms. He’s a brooder, a state I’ve never truly felt. I just get things off my chest, have a very loud, dramatic melt-down, and get over it. Or if my big, messy life reaches a particularly hairy point like it has recently, I simplify things. I break the challenge down into steps, maintain a healthy awareness of the larger picture but absorb myself in the task at hand. I’m not saying I don’t get emotionally weird every now and again in the process – I’m not perfect. And for all I know brooding could give you loads of insights that I trim out when simplifying. So I guess there is no better or worse way of dealing. We deal how we deal. We’re only humans.

Anyhow, this post is getting long and the whole point of it began with me wanting to write about my trip to the Isle of Cumbrae today.

With only a few free, non-crazy weekends left here in Scotland, I wanted to try out a fun day trip that my work friends recommended to me: the Isle of Cumbrae. A short 1-hour train ride + a little ferry trip + a small bus ride gets you from Glasgow to Millport, the only town on this wee island. There, you can eat loads of ice cream and fish and chips. You can also rent out bikes, which is what I did since I already had a delicious ice cream at the port town we left from while I waited for the ferry. Shaun stayed at home to get work done (he’s currently revising his novel for an interested agent and that must be done before Greece).

The Isle of Cumbrae is small and flat and pretty, with one whole side protected from the cold winds whipping off the Atlantic. I biked at an extraordinarily leisurely pace around the whole island twice in about two and 1/2 hours. I listened to my ipod, sang along when no one was around, and laughed at the madness of my life. I read my book on the train and wrote in my journal at a bar waiting for my Glasgow-bound train back home. I’m tired now. Too tired to think. Too tired to do anything but love the other human I share my life with. Because at the end of the day, we are just people trying to do our best. And that counts for something. That counts for everything.
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How do you cope with life when it gets messy?