Marlene Tukur
Black Velvet Diamonds
Fragments of a life wandering.
I am nothing.
I can never be anything.
I couldn't want to be something.
Yet, I have inside me all the dreams of the world.
- Fernando Pessoa
When I went into what was going to be a six year long retreat I wanted to erase my life somehow. Social media seemed to be a good starting point. (Although, my instagram account seems to still be alive, taunting me with my forgotten password.) I wanted to start over. I was tired of being me, tired of trying so hard to be whatever I thought I should or needed to be.
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Now out of retreat, I wish I could go back into those accounts. But alas, I have erased or forgotten the possibility to do so. I wanted to get back pieces of my past, but my previous intention had already worked its way through and really there was no going back, in a lot of ways. Social media being a poor example. But I also realized I can't just erase my life either. I do still have my hard drive full of the photos, so many photos, I've taken over the years. Photos I love, that I'm proud of. But why do I want to cling to them now, as if I can pick up where I left off? If I did pick up my camera again, what would the photos I take now look like? Would they be different?
I haven't shot a camera for awhile. I did keep shooting during retreat for a few years, but at a certain point I just dropped it. My twin lens reflex left abandoned in a compartment above my bed in my little caravan in France. I wonder if it still works, or perhaps it is now growing mold due to the damp and rain common in that area. And all the undeveloped rolls of film… when will I ever see those images? Will I ever?
I wanted things to crumble and fall apart, disappear or dissolve. I wanted myself to fall apart, and what would I find in the broken pieces? Right now I want to write. I feel like writing. I don't know if I'm any good at it. Maybe I will only write garbage and embarrass myself. Or, it'll just be really boring, boring and uninteresting. Maybe no one will read it. Maybe I should just do it anyways, even if it's pointless. And maybe I can pick up a camera again too. Give a visual friend to my words. It all feels incredibly daunting...
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Osterville, MA // Aug 2024
Stresseman Str. 92
My first house was in an area called St. Pauli, known for Hamburg's anarchy culture. It was haunted and old, and we had these high-quality Japanese mattresses on the ground in the upstairs bedrooms, which ironically made it look like we were squatting. The house had a lot of personality - a bit run down and charming. It was a small house, nestled back and between buildings in the city called a hinterhof (backhouse). I remember there was a single brick stencil painted into the living room wall that a friend of my father's had done when they had too much to drink one night. The living room held the green velvet couches, dark wooden tables, a fake palm tree with Christmas lights wrapped around the trunk and a big painting my great-grandfather had made in Sardegna (he had disappeared to there when my grandfather was just a child until about a couple weeks before his death, arriving back to Germany as quickly as he left) with bold brush strokes of farmers or peasants. My father carried all this through to every house he's lived in after, like a traveling living room replicated through time and place. And it included the incredible amount of books, CDs, records and his record player. The cellar was full of ghosts and my mother used to say she could feel them pressing into her as she walked down the stairs (but that's where they kept their wine), so she got a dog, Benny. Benny used to walk himself to the park my mother took him to which meant he had to use the train system and even switch trains (he could never manage to get himself home though). I remember the glass on the front door was smashed or cracked. There was the bathroom with blue tiles and a white bathtub. I remember coming in to my mother puking in the toilet and my father holding her hair saying, “your mother is pooping out of her mouth,” and she laughed. It all held our soon to be broken family together. It's not there anymore, torn down for new apartment buildings.
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Osterville, MA // July 2024
A poem
I'm yearning
It's like my heart spreads open
And I retract even though
All I want is to pour it out into sky
Into the air
Into you
I'm walking
And I imagine my feet have roots
that climb downwards
To the center of the world
I'm romantic
And I wonder if it's died in everyone else
I wonder
Does anyone feel their heart
The way I do
Will anyone write me a poem
The way you do
​
Osterville, MA // July 2024
Enrico
One of the very first times I fell in love was with Enrico. He was a local boy from Montepiano (meaning 'slow mountains'), a village in Tuscany's Apennine Mountains, where my father had a house. My father had bought an abandoned old farm house named Malferra, a fifteen minute drive up the mountain filled with potholes. It took him almost 10 years to restore, and now that it is finished he has sold it just this summer - much to everyone's sadness I'm sure, and probably as well to my father's relief (the house was a lot of work to keep up). We had become somewhat part of the collective family there in that small village, it's sad to think I may never see them again. But, he did find another house in the south of Italy with a view of the Mediterranean, so I won't complain too much.
Montepiano is a close net of families who had all grown up together - romantically traditional and stereotypically Italian: the old men sitting at the tables at the local bar, gambling or playing games and drinking beer; the homemade Gelato; the old church and little park where the boys used to ask to kiss me when I was thirteen; the butcher shop and bakery and winding roads; the summer festivals with all its wine and food; and the unwavering hospitality and unannounced visits.
There was another little bar run by two elderly sisters in their 90s. It had long been out of business due to their age and probably regulations not coming up to code, but the town kept on pretending that that wasn't the case, unbeknownst or forgotten by the owners - they still opened it daily, and locals would come in and sit, sometimes reading a newspaper without ordering anything. I went in with my father and his band, and saw the two women behind the bar. He ordered a beer that had probably expired in the 1970s and smelt like ammonia when he opened it. It was late afternoon with my father's four piece jazz band and they played their music (they had decided to do a spontaneous music tour around Montepiano's very small restaurant and bar scene). The bar owners were elated.
Enrico was the second person I had sex with in my life. Although, I could hardly call the first time sex, but more like a quick mechanical procedure just to be able check off the lost virginity box. I think I even remember him doing some weird little dance with his hands and singing “no more virginity!”. It was anything but romantic or even meaningful. So I like to think of Enrico as the person I lost my virginity to. I was sixteen, and he was twenty-six.
​
I don't remember how it all started. He was older then the other boys I was spending time with, more of a friend of my father's. He must have driven me home one night and pulled over on the side of the road up along the mountain towards Malferra. This was always the ordeal when my sister or I took a ride home with a boy - inevitably they would pull over and try to get a kiss, or more. But Enrico was very kind, gentle and cared for me. I could feel that. I could still feel it when I saw him years later at my father's birthday party (he always celebrated it at Malferra).
​
We would sneak off at night after being with friends at the bar and go to a small apartment his family owned in the village but no one lived in. Or we would go up the mountain, into the grass and stars and make love outside or in his car. I can imagine I must not have been very good at it as I really had no experience.
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One evening he took me to Florence, which was about a 45 minute drive away. Enrico didn't speak a word of English - I don't think I even heard him make one attempt - and I didn't speak any Italian. So it amazes me that we were able to spend an entire evening together walking around a city. At one point he wanted to get me a gelato from somewhere specific, but the metal gate was halfway closed over it. He leaned down and asked if they wouldn't mind taking one more order as there was an American here who wanted to try. They obliged.
​
Enrico is now married with children, and he seems incredibly happy. And that makes me happy too. I thought of him a lot over the years, and that feeling of his gentle heart has left a mark on me. At the end of the summer of our short lived romance, I was supposed to see him one evening but he wasn't showing up. I was worried I wouldn't get to say goodbye so I left him a note with a friend. He found me later, trying to explain to me that if he said he would be there, he would be. I can't remember what we did that night.
I picked up a bag I had left at his parents place on my last day and we drove out and away to the airport. When I opened a small mirror in my bag, it popped open suddenly and a letter came out. It was from Enrico, written in Italian. At the end it wrote, "ti voglio bene". I wish I still had that letter.
Osterville, Ma // August 2024
Disappointment
We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it, and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do.
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Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.
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Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Opportunities, many times, are so small that we glimpse them not and yet they are often the seeds of great enterprises. Opportunities are also everywhere and so you must always let your hook be hanging. When you least expect it, a great fish will swim by.
OG Mandino
Back in 2015, when I was finishing my photography degree in NYC, I used to go to a bar called Bizarre in Bushwick (Brooklyn), just around the corner from my apartment. They had strange sideshow circus performances, which I loved. I loved that eccentric world of the circus. I managed to squeeze myself into a group of performers who ran ordinary day jobs, and totally bizarre sideshows at night. I had one friend, and I can't for the life of me remember his name - he was a small Russian boy and just as weird as I was. We became close friends. He was asked to be in a play, directed by someone called Etienne, which would be shown in the French Embassy library after a reading and Q&A of a new philosophical book being published. The audience for the most part were older, above 50.
My friend asked me if I wanted to be in it. I of course accepted it, having really no idea what it was about, even as Etienne was explaining it to me. It was all very surreal and hell-realmish. He asked me to play Lucifer, and I was given a hand-made long golden gown to wear. Etienne had a giant paper-mache hand also hand-made, which represented the hand of god, filled with plastic bags of fake blood that, after screaming "fuck you god!", I had to tear through with my own hands on the night of the play. This I couldn't rehearse beforehand.
We rehearsed on Etienne's rooftop in Brooklyn night after night. It was a very eccentric group of actors. And there was one evening that we were having a lot of conflict, so the producer, Harry, asked us all to sit down and passed around a prayer - I don't remember what it was - for all of us to recite together. Years later I realized it was a Buddhist prayer, probably Tibetan.
On the night of the play, in the beautiful French Embassy library, with all its marble and columns, I decided to get very drunk off of shots of vodka in the "dressing room", which was just a very tiny room off to the side. I was nervous, obviously. The reading finished and we started almost immediately, and I didn't realize beforehand that it would be pretty dark with strobe lights - not ideal when you're drunk. After screaming "FUCK YOU GOD!" I managed to rip apart the hand of god successfully, spilling the fake blood all over the marble floor. After that, I would have to somewhat halfway carry my friend off the stage as he moaned and drooled on himself while hunched over. Well, because the fake blood was everywhere and all over marble we managed to do a pretty hard sideswipe fall into the pool, covering my gold dress in the stuff, and only adding to the dramatics of whatever was going on, which I have never been entirely sure what was. Apparently a friend of mine who had come to watch overheard someone from the audience leaving say to themselves, "Jesus Christ..." - I would say that accurately describes the play.
Years later, after I had just "met the dharma" and taken refuge, I was on a small plane to Oaxaca, Mexico with my boyfriend to go see one of his (eventually our) teachers. Most everyone on the flight was traveling for that. As I was sitting down I looked over at the person behind me, I recognized him. "Did you do a play with Etienne?" I asked. He looked at me confused for a moment and then shouted, "LUCIFER!" It was Harry, the produced who had us recite the prayer together during our night of tension. He had been my first tangible link to Buddhism, my very beginning.
​Osterville, MA // August 2024
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how to light gets in
​
Leonard Cohen
Currently I am living on Cape Cod at my grandmother's house in Osterville, Massachusetts. I left Australia and said goodbye to my boyfriend and came back home. It was a clear decision for me. A true 'follow your heart and gut' kind of decision. I was initially staying with my mother at her boyfriend's house closer to western Massachusetts when my sister and I decided to drive down the Cape to visit my grandmother, or Grammie, as we call her. As soon as we arrived she was having vertigo spells and could hardly stand up. She has always been independent and lived alone since my grandfather had passed, always able to do almost everything herself, even at her age of 94 (even still driving!). We sat her down in the living room where she told us about her neighbor who had had a stroke and was now living life like a vegetable, unable to do anything for himself anymore. "I don't want to live like that, that is not a life," she said to us, more times than one. She told us about the gun she had in her bedside table that she was willing to use if it came down to it. My grandfather, her husband, and my great-grandfather had gone in that way - used an old handgun and shot themselves when they knew it was going to be a fast road into illness and decay. My grandfather wanted my grandmother to keep the money for herself, not to waste it on hospital bills that would only lead to his imminent death anyways. Her and my mother were there at their lake house when he did it. I still remember the dress my mother was wearing when she came home afterwards and laid in bed to cry.
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We sat down for dinner and when we finished, Grammie was acting somewhat strange and wasn't able to answer some of our questions. More alarmed than I was, Lilly had me call our mum, who is an emergency room nurse, while she was working. "I'll call you back," she said, and I just said, "ok," and hung up. "Call her back!" Lilly said. So I had to make several attempts to finally get her on the phone long enough to get the message across. I think if I had been alone I would have been far less active about it than my sister. We called 911 and the EMTs came in, with my grandmother in her pajamas and red bathrobe, and told her they needed to take her to the hospital. We followed the blinking red lights through the streets to Hyannis, watching the cars pull over, like Moses going through the Red Sea. At first the doctors thought it had just been a series of very small seizures, and it wasn't until the day after spending the night in the hospital that it was realized she had had a series of strokes, leaving her completely paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak or do anything for herself. Needless to say, it was quite a shock for everyone. Somehow though, it all felt to me like exactly what was supposed to happen. I had no feeling of surprise, in some sense. She had, after all, somewhat predicted this on her living room couch.
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Our time going through this big change has been incredibly interesting and continues to evolve and change. We are all learning a lot through it, specifically about ourselves. My mother went through a period of grief and of course cried a lot. But then, I've been watching her become so incredibly relaxed through it, as she deals with everything and all the responsibility and change she has been forced to face. Its amazing to watch, especially to witness her sense of humor morphing through it all. She has been making me laugh more so now than ever. And the support and understanding friends and family have given us, the peaks into their own lives with similar situations. I start to see what it means to give care to someone who is totally disabled, understanding what that means through every facet and angle. What it means, specifically to me, in my own perception and role in it. And all the details you don't consider when you aren't actually faced with it. And how, they are still just as human as you are, albeit with lesser working faculties. The fear, the neediness, the letting go, the laughter, the sorrow.
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Grammie can speak a little more now, sometimes even whole sentences. But of course, she struggles to get it out. So much so that she'll go into a stutter for so long that makes her laugh, every time, which makes us all laugh too. One afternoon we were all sitting in the living room with her in her hospital bed and she was trying to say something. All of us leaned forward, straining to hear as if it would help her to squeeze the words out somehow. Eventually she managed to shout, "ICE CREAM SUNDAE!" and we all broke out into laughter. She lives almost literally right next to an ice cream shop, so that request was easy. I think she ate almost the whole thing.
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When the EMTs had arrived that first night, they commented on my grandmother's teddy bear sitting in the entrance with Donald Trump's hair. She was a very vocal supporter of Trump, much to my mother's frustration. I think we all learned to tune out that part of her, and seeing her laying on her hospital bed, unable to do anything for herself, you realize we are all totally beyond all these political opinions. We are so much more. But my mum was not going to stay in a house with Trump signs out the front, so she took those down. "I just can't," she said to me, and I laughed. She brought the teddy bear into the living room while Grammie was resting, assumedly asleep. She just kept looking at it and discovered a zippered pouch in it's back, which she opened, and pulled out an American flag, one side sewn in so it acted like a cape. My mum just kept repeating, "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..." while unfolding the flag and wrapping it around the bear, and then turned it around and proceeded to punch it in the face, like an act of therapeutic release of anger and frustration. At this point, my grandmother, who we all thought was asleep, lifts her head and shouts, "you democrats!" We all lost it. I couldn't stop laughing. She fumbled her way through a few sentences about Trump saving our country, and Biden ruining it. "Maybe we should talk about politics more Mum, to get you stimulated," my mum said to her. After we calmed down, we changed the subject and a friend was telling us about some blue mold she found in her garden. My grandmother lifted her head, again, and shouted, "blue mold is democratic!" That was a good day.
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Through it all, I'm so grateful to be here. It feels, finally, that I am where I am supposed to be. For so long that was always a disabling and heavy question weighing on my mind, never sure if I was where I needed to be. I get to see and swim in the ocean every day. I get to walk and be outside and help care for my grandmother when I can, and I am able to find space to be alone. You learn quickly, that while giving care for someone who needs it constantly, that one cannot do it constantly, but find a way to work as a team with those around you willing to help and support. And finding the strength inside you to be there for another human, as much as for yourself. For my grandmother, the process and transformation in her must be largely unaware to all of us, even though it would be the most powerful of all. She is forced into a position where she has to let go of all control, as now she has none. All her rigid, controlling and anal tendencies now need to be worked through. And we watch her gradually decay and dissolve into the next journey, sometimes finding her reaching out towards someone we can't see, someone waiting for her.
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Osterville, MA // August 2024​
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Sarah
Sarah was… wild. She didn't care too much about what other people thought of her. And that was infectious. Some people couldn't stand to be around us both because we would feed off each other’s energy. She had wild, red curly red hair and everything about her was alive.
When I was 24 one of my closest friends at the time died - hit by a car walking across the street in Brooklyn. Straight impact to the head, no pain - immediately she left her body. A coma for about a week. I remember her head blew up almost twice it's size. That was very sad, and I was in Germany at the time, so I flew back to say goodbye to her on life support - they kept her on it long enough for me to be able to say goodbye. At the time of her death, I knew her better than most anyone else. We had been living in NYC together. For two months she crashed on my couch, much to my boyfriend's disapproval, until she found an apartment of her own.
Her favorite word was fearless. She used to say (or scream) it a lot. It was her word. Her boyfriend, who I've known since we were little and who I met Sarah through, gave her a thin gold necklace with the Sanskrit word abhaya written on a small gold plate, which translates as fearless. She was wearing it when she was buried. Probably when she was hit too. I got that word tattooed on my arm.
About ten years after her death my mum and sister saw a median. I don't think for any specific reason, just my mums friend highly recommended this one. I listened to the recording of it.
Of course, they contacted my grandfather and great-grandmother who had passed. My mum even contacted a long since passed friend, Dr. Abawagi, who was from Africa and a king of a tribe there, as well as a doctor in Boston, and who was also very rich and very much in love with my mum and wanted to get married and adopt us kids. It didn't work out, of course, and I have to say I'm a bit sad about that. But he did say his death would have been too hard on us, so it was better so.
Anyways. They met a few passed loved ones until someone came up to the front of the line. I can see her pushing her way through the invisible crowd. The first thing I heard come from the median was, “well aren't you sassy.” I think that one sentence sums up a lot about Sarah. And then, “this girl is funny!” and then mentioning of a tattoo. My sister responds, “ I don't think this one is for me, this is for my sister.” And they spent the rest of the time talking with her. I couldn't believe, especially because she wasn't particularly close with my family.
“Tell her to stop playing the story in her head,” she told them for me, referring to her accident. Like I said, she had no pain when she was hit. And she was fine, great even. She went on to say she was having a lot of fun, wherever she was, whatever realm she was in. She was even going to concerts. “I didn't get jipped,” she said. I can imagine she's having way more fun than all of us on earth.
While this was happening, I was starting a vision quest in Australia, which is a Native American practice of spending four days and three nights alone, in nature, without food or water. Needless to say it was quite intense, and there were drums, singing, a fire and a sweat lodge that felt like my skin would burn off through. When my mum mentioned it Sarah immediately responds, "she's doing that?!" and proceeds to make drum noises, "BOOM BOOM BOOM", because that's how she was! She was always poking and making fun , especially if you took yourself too seriously.
She wanted to tell me thank you for continuing to talk about her, as her family was too sad to do so. She wanted me to know that she's been traveling with me, and likes to mess around with my things as I like everything to be neat. She moves pictures off-kilter or things like that. (Honestly, I hadn't noticed). She wanted me to know that I needed to stop running around and wasting money, that I needed to stop chasing after enlightenment, and that I have everything I need already inside me. She showed an image of what looked like Ireland or Scotland, something to note. Somehow I feel I need to go there someday to find something, see something, meet someone, experience something. She wanted to tell me to stop hiding, but to be in the world. I had been cocooning myself a lot then, too scared to even be caught in conversations. I wasn't doing too well. She told them that I need to write, free write, that she could connect with me through it.
My sister wanted advice on her relationship which was gradually falling apart, and eventually it did. Sarah goes, "I got this," and told her to stop adopting “pound puppies”, which is a beautifully accurate way of describing my sister's last boyfriends and the general type of guys she's been attracted to. And that she “mind-fucks” everything - which my sister agreed with completely. There were other direct and incredibly accurate advice. It was every bit of her that I can remember.
She told them that we were more than friends, we were sisters. And we were, Sarah and I had a very similar energy and look on life and we both wanted to explode into the world. But ironically, I always wondered if Sarah actually liked me outside of the heightened energy we created together. She told my family we still have work to do together. I'm sure I'll see her when I leave this world.
I tried looking for her in off-kiltered frames and misarranged objects, but I didn't find her yet. I think she's still waiting for me to write more. Waiting for me to be fearless.
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I did ask one of my teachers about this, because in Buddhism we are taught that the bardo - or in-between state, the state after death and before your next rebirth - is quite disturbing, terrifying and confusing. Our whole practice is in preparation for this period in our lives, the dying process, or the state thereafter, because it will take a very open and clear mind to be able to free oneself, and not fall into cyclical existence again. The opportunity is so great to cut the ties of existence, yet equally are the obstacles preventing you from recognizing it. So we are given terrifying descriptions, and no doubt, they do happen - but what about the other experiences? The blissful ones, the insight one gains after death that is then communicated through medians or people who have had near-death experiences. How do we view those? With my limited understanding or interpretation - as I was also very nervous at the time asking this question in front of hundreds of people - was that its true, there are both these experiences happening, but that the more pleasant ones also need to be cut through and gone beyond. Terrifying or blissful, we must recognize its nature and go beyond, and return to the inconceivable vastness of the universe (in my own words).
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Osterville, MA // August 2024
May our story be rich to unfold,
at the edge of our seats.
Love is incandescent
and moves through
like water.
Calm, steady, wild
and infinitely alive.
Osterville, MA // August 2024
Antipoetry
I noticed that there are more people ignoring the do not trespass signs for private beaches. They are spreading out over the empty parts of sand, which none of the big houses are using. And it made me happy to see people disobeying ridiculous rules.
We are all back home on the Cape again - my mum, sister and I - and I listen to them talk from upstairs. I join them in the kitchen, where they are sitting at the table. Laughing. Lilly pours herself a full glass of wine while I serve myself dinner, and she calls us the little women. And even though they've already finished eating, it feels like, in these days, for the first time, we are a family. The kind you look forward to coming home to. That feeling is ineffable and complete.
There's so much light in the living room, with the high ceiling and big yellow rug. And the porcelain owls - two of which are lamps. It's fresh and alive, and my grandmother is laughing at the things we talk about, the little women. I can't remember what. It finally stopped raining, and the light pours through.
​
Today the local barber approached me, he must be in his 70s. He told me, if I sat long enough with you, I think I could learn to do that. I smiled, you mean writing? He said, I'm not very good at it. I told him, anyone can do it.
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Osterville, MA // August 2024
The Loop
Lately I have spent most of my days at home, just taking care of my grandmother and mostly just going out to walk to the beach where I lay in the sand and watch my mind spin or be still - day after day. I walk the same route to the ocean, down Wianno Ave and along the beach where I find a spot without people, I change under my dress and jump in the water, climb out and catch the other road home. I'm still going in a loop like I used to in our field during retreat where I'd watch the planes above me, day after day, month after month and year after year (except when covid hit and sky traffic went silent). And I’d wonder where they are flying to. Wonder, what's the outside world doing? Where's everyone going? And some days I don’t wonder at all, and I don’t miss it at all. I circle through into different seasons of flowers, green, falling dead leaves and frost. The frost that sparkles and pretends that it had snowed overnight, and crunches under your feet - the grass frozen in a still image of winter. We wake up to the blue and white colors and the overhanging clouds lifting up into the sky - the view, the rolling hills of the valley that look like islands in an ocean of white fog. I’m still going in circles, round and round, watching my mind. What did I get out of those 6 years? Will I always feel this groundless and uncertain, perpetually finding myself a loop to walk (and hopefully some water to jump into)?
Osterville, MA // Aug 2024
I want to find you
In the pages of notebooks
And ink from a pen I stole from a fancy hotel
Irrevocably
And in hearts that split and broke
And asked
To be mended
Gently
I thought I saw you in a song
That didn't make sense previously
And when I found myself alone and scared
You pressed your hand against the glass
Waiting for me
Patiently
It's allowed to feel
To reach inside your chest
And find in it an empty room
Yet spilling out
Uncontrollably
Osterville, MA // August 2024
I'm just a man, but I know that I'm damned
All the dead seem to know where I am
The tale that began on the night of my birth
Will be done in a turn of the earth
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The Ghost on the Shore by Lord Huron
I'm back.
I am back on the Cape after five weeks of travel. I came so quickly and suddenly that it feels a big part of me is still left over in Europe, and as much as I wanted to leave my heart still seems to be there. That trip included everything, like every joy and pain, that by the end of it I felt exhausted - emotionally and physically. Still, I wanted to keep going, keep going towards what next. But I guess that what next is coming back here.
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As soon as I got back to my grandmother's we put the takdrol - these little blessed pieces of paper that we used to put over dead or dying animals in retreat - over my grandmother, and then there was a big shift, which was not totally noticed by me as it happened as soon as I arrived back, so I didn't have much of a reference. That night my mother was up all night with my grandmother as she vomited, sometimes with blood. And the next day my grandmother started asking to see people - my cousin and uncle - like she wanted to say goodbye. But more in an anxious sort of way - there's a feeling Grammie is still holding on, out of fear I suppose. She feels herself slipping away, and that must be very unsettling. She shakes and scowls in pain and fear and reaches to me and I hugged her for a long while, while she held me close. She doesn't want to be alone, and I think she worries about us all. She's gradually leaving but resists in tension and convulsion. Something is not yet resolved. I tell her to breath and relax. She'll go when she's ready.
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It's an interesting thing, being an observer to death. We have all sorts of intellectual understandings of it, which are not necessarily wrong, but the actual process is much more deep and ineffable and subtle - we are dealing with an energy, and that's not something you can intellectualize. The house is full of ghosts sometimes, my mum says - she feels the pressure of them and some nights has to tell them to get out of her room. "You aren't here for me," she says. "Go in the other room!" Sometimes my grandmother sees someone sitting in the empty chair across from her bed. And I feel them now too, and I often have to get out and away from it all. I take long walks and sit on the rocks by the ocean.
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I can hear my mum and uncles laughing downstairs in the living room where my grandmother stays. They talk about old movies and high school and laugh so loud, especially my mother. I feel disconnected and jet lagged and groundless - some part of me is still trying to catch up with my body. I've been dreaming of Portugal and India and of the people I've met over the past month or so. I don't know how long I'll be "home", but I know it must be temporary. I need to take care of myself for the time being, and then I want to fly. But I also need to be there for my grandmother, this much I know to be true. But it is not easy.
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Osterville, MA // October 2024
I wrote some things while I was traveling - fragments of thoughts or stories - but I didn't have a computer so I wasn't able to post them. My mind is always changing, sometimes so drastically I lose touch with any sort of ground - thoughts, emotions and feelings become so unreliable. They pass through like fleeting tourists that leave no trace or make a temporary indent in my perception. I keep learning a lot, about the world and how to relate to it and, of course, my own mind. So while I don't know if what I've written still holds true for me in the same way (it probably doesn't), I think its interesting to keep it in my collection of words. Maybe it still holds some resonance, and if not for me than for someone else. And then to see how my view of things changes and morphs over time, with or into other experiences. A testament that we can't hold onto anything, least of all our opinions and perceptions, but that, still, everything is included in the process.
Tinder // the art of modern dating
I've never had a bad experience through tinder before. Expectations were never much attached to it for me - I just wanted to have fun: the rush of a first date, a meeting of minds with a stranger. (Although, if I were to be very honest with myself, perhaps there always is or was some subtle underlying expectation or hope. Why else would we use it? I think we're all looking for something meaningful, even if fleeting and even if subconsciously.) The problem though with it is that it's hard to build something off of a meeting like that. You see, we've met through a manipulation, a kind of forcing it. Of course, there's some sort of accident and karma in it. But you aren't meeting through a serendipitous time and place that your own unconscious path has led you, at least less so. It's a bit like trying to build a castle of clouds - it'll look pretty for a time, if there's a connection, but then any little wind will blow it completely out of existence. There's no foundation, no matter how much you like the other person, or think that you like them. I guess that can change, but the situation doesn't necessarily inspire or encourage it to.
It has changed even more so in the past decade, this online dating game. When I was living in New York City ten years ago it was relatively new. I had very interesting dates, none of them worked out for long, if we even met again after the first. I went to two movie premieres with an actor who had a small part in The Newsroom, a series with Jeff Daniels. I wore a black lace top and after seeing the late premier of Whiplash at MoMa, we went to the after party in a beautiful Upper West Side penthouse with some very handsome caterers. When one of the black waiters asked if I'd like red or white wine, what came flying out of my mouth was, “I don't discriminate.” We got to talk to the writer and director of the film which was great. That was our first date. We also went to the premier of American Sniper by Clint Eastwood with Bradley Cooper, which I didn't particularly like. My date wanted to introduce me to Bradley at the after party, but I was too shy. When we first entered they wanted to take a photo of my b-list celebrity date and I said, “oh, I wasn't prepared for this!” with some sort of flamboyant hand gesture only to find out they didn't want me in the photo. After that, we had sex in his windowless loft bedroom where his bed was halfway in his closet. I remember his shirts hanging over me as we awkwardly had intercourse. I don't think we saw each other again after that. He had quite a large head, literally. I remember that.
I went on dates with musicians and watched them play or went to shows with them. On one date I went to a Hispanic men's club and drank $1 budweisers and talked with a lot of the regulars, one of which told me that if he saw me in trouble across the street he would definitely come save me, and then whispers in my ear, “you want my 9mm?” That was a pretty hilarious and memorable night. There was also the filmmaker who I had actually met before, at a party with my friend Sarah, but I didn't remember. We dated for a little while and I got to take photos on some of the film sets he was doing, until I started dating one of his best friends.
After 8 years of no tinder - no many things for that matter, especially dating - I wanted to try it again, as I always remembered having fun. The romance of dating seemed to be gradually dwindling, and in the last decade it seems to have made a further decrease. At least it feels that way. What I found was a bit shocking. I guess in large part shocking because I got totally wrapped up into it.
Firstly, I'd like to point out that I did my part in this whole delusion and secondly, I feel like a total idiot. I knew what my gut was trying to say but I wasn't listening to it, caught by the momentum of fantasy and delusion and dreams. See, this is the problem with modern dating - so much is based on fantasy because we are communicating and living through our phones. We text and text and text… endless texting. The obvious problem with this is that you are only getting part of the person, if that. It's so easy to just fall into some delusion you want to be true and project to be true, convince yourself of or think that if you express yourself in some way it will eventually come true and then fall into believing you are truly knowing the person on the other end of the smartphone and vice versa. It negates to what actually is. Too many words, too many empty promises and declarations. We want to live a fantasy, why wouldn't we? We can be whoever we want as well as imagine the other person to be what we long for. But if we want to be sane we need to have a direct relationship with what actually is, not with what you dream it could be hopefully. Imagining and dreaming is not wrong or bad in itself, it's just that when we believe it too much to be true, we end up with attachment and pain in something that doesn't exist whatsoever.
I want to vomit up this whole experience, get it out of my system, learn and move on and not fall into it again.
I met Joe right before he was going back to Alaska to work on a mining rig for graphite. Middle of nowhere, a “frozen hellscape at the edge of humanity”, as Joe referred it. It was really tough work, on all levels. But Elon Musk graced them with high speed internet, bless his heart. It felt like a modern day 1800s romantic long distance story where the man goes off into the unknown for months, not knowing if he'd make it home alive to his beloved. I would have much rather exchanged handwritten letters, but even the thought of that is totally ridiculous nowadays.
He was a texter, oh my goodness. Never texted with someone so much. Younger than me, about 5 years, which isn't a great number but I guess in this day in age makes a difference within technology and communication. I didn't mind it at the time, it's how we could stay in touch, and honestly, I enjoyed the attention. But I wondered, how it was possible he could find the time and energy to text me so much while he was working? It was clear, he really liked me. And I had so much time on my hands, as I was just home and unemployed and helping to take care of my bed-ridden grandmother. It was an enormous infatuation - I was enamored and swept off my feet. He was energetic, positive, inspiring, passionate, independent - everything I was looking for. And was interested in me and, of course, communicative. I felt appreciated, that what I said had something of value. My energy burst forth in a flurry of hope and excitement. We talked about children, travel, what we wanted out of a partner, what we hoped our lives would be like, our humanness, fears. We talked about what we'd do together, exciting things, including travel. Everything I wanted. But slowly something was digging into my gut… slow down, it said. Don't spin off into oblivion. But it was too late, the wheel caught momentum and I couldn't find the strength or courage to put the breaks on it. Suddenly what felt so real started to feel like an empty act we were continuing to perform without any real foundation or trust. I was lonely, he became more busy. But we were still talking about our fantasies.
Our first meet before all this was to a beautiful beach about a fifteen minute drive from me, where we walked along the private beaches to a small secluded one where boats passed by intermittently as well as teenagers on their way to find a private spot to drink and hang out. We sat and talked and I told him about my retreat and he told me about Alaska. I didn't think too much about that encounter, just that he was incredibly sweet and uplifting with an excitement for life, which is a wonderful thing to be around. And his reaction to my retreat was so positive - which is not always the case. Most people just don't know how to respond. But it was our second encounter that left me somewhat speechless and shocked at how I felt. We didn't plan on seeing each other a second time as he had a flight out to Minnesota and then on to Alaska the next day, but it got cancelled so he came back home for a couple more days unexpectedly. We decided to meet for just a couple hours at the beach I walk to every day, and it felt so open and joyful to be with each other. Perhaps we latched onto that naively, kept trying to keep that feeling going, instead of just letting it be as it was.
We didn't think we'd see each other for 2 months - he'd be away in Alaska working, coming home for a visit, but I'd be away in Europe. But then we'd both be back home around the same time for awhile - how serendipitous. Well, he unexpectedly got word that his role on the rig wasn't needed for a week, so he decided to come home. He told me part of his decision to make that very long trip back was for me, so that we could see each other before I left.
We had 3 days home together before I left for Italy. That was exciting, but I was nervous, because my gut was not convinced. I had grown attached to the high and the dreams, but there was something missing behind it. He slept and rested after the trip and then came and picked me up. We went to the same beach as our first “date”, and walked along to the little secluded section and sat in the same spot. Needless to say, our meeting felt a bit empty, it was a totally different energy. Of course though, because of everything - he was exhausted it seemed, probably in many ways, and because we had built up our own stories and expectations or hopes around each other too much. He felt a bit cold, worn out, or just not really interested in me anymore. This was a low blow, and I was still attempting to ignite something that had probably blown out awhile ago. Even so, I was ready to maintain some sort of relationship, a friendship. I mean, he gave me such light and inspiration - why should I just give that up? But that was even only one sided I think. I expected too much, and reality cut it down unapologetically. I was naive, it was the first time I really liked someone in so long.
I think at the time, especially in the beginning, it was sincere. When he gave me a little empty notebook with a note by him and then a quote by Earnest Shackleton - my childhood hero to my own fascination, of which I've never shared with anyone else before (except my mother). And the set of his own favorite books he mailed to me himself from Minnesota for me to read. The music we shared together, being that we had the same taste, which was such a joy for me as, again, no one else around me I shared that with. The inspiration we shared for adventure and travel, and for writing, and how he enabled me to finally find a habit in journaling, a habit I've been longing to have and struggling with for so so long. And there was that moment when we got the chance to sit together for that second time before he left for Alaska - the one that left me speechless - because his flight got cancelled. He wanted to take the chance to see me again, and it was that moment when we sat on the beach together with the lights in our eyes and he grabbed my hand and we felt like this was all so right, it all made sense - the universe was smiling at us. (Oh boy... womp womp woooomp).
Alas, as time went on the flame simmered and reality was setting in. I kept pushing it aside trying to keep a fire going that was inevitably smoldering away but it was pointless. So what was it? Was it just the natural inevitability of our relationship? Was it the incessant texting? The intensity of the high became too consuming and overwhelming and fake? Was it just a switch in energy, the compatibility died out or was he just exhausted from work and I was just too available and lonely? I'm not ready for a relationship, that's very clear to me now. I wanted it too much, and I'm still in the cross hairs of my own healing process. It needs to happen on its own in its own time, when I'm not completely submerged in longing and easy emotional triggering with poetic fantasies of romantic delusions of grandeur. I am a dreamer.
After those three days here on the Cape together Joe stopped talking to me. I tried reaching out but he ignored me, eventually answering something cold. I got the message. What to do. It was such a huge learning curve that I don't regret it at all - I'm pretty grateful for it actually. It was something I needed to see within myself and within others. What does communication actually mean? I'm learning that most of it doesn't rely on words, on the contrary - it makes things more complicated.
Anyways, the flame of Joe and I went out like a match falling into a dirty puddle, the cigarette left unlit, just hanging limp out of someone's baffled lips. So it goes, I failed whatever test the universe was throwing at me. But how else do we learn? I appreciate my mistakes - its much better then not doing nothing, learning nothing, stagnant.
Goodbye Joe, I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for, even if you don't know what that is exactly yet. And thank you for the things you gave to me, not just the material stuff. I will always be grateful for them.
I went on a tinder date in Portugal recently. He is 33 with piercing blue eyes and braces - very handsome but very European, with his shirt unbuttoned a bit too low and that little shaved bit on one of his eyebrows. He brought this whole phenomena up without my help. He watched his friends get sucked into a spinning wheel of texting constantly - writing hello in the morning and goodnight in the evening, and everything in between. A constant high of communication exchange through texts, only to find the whole fantasy squashed as soon as they encountered real intimacy. His friends would finally sleep with the girl, and then it was over. I guess reality was so different from what they had created in their heads, it freaked them out or just was too much of a disappointment. “Men are really stupid,” he said. I didn't disagree with that. I think another problem of our generation within this frame is that we determine one moment of feeling to the whole of a situation or person - but feelings change constantly and to paint the entire person in one moment or day or whatever of feeling is a bit narrow minded. We are impatient and quick to give up. What if the reality wasn't what you expected, but maybe something better if you didn't immediately back out? It's hard to know. We are too scared, too anxious. I think a big lesson is just that one needs to be very honest, especially with oneself, then if it doesn't work out at least you know you weren't pretending or imagining the other to be someone or something else, and perhaps it wouldn't carry on so long unnecessarily, only to find yourself bruised at the end when they are disappointed. And for the love of God, let's not communicate too much through our phones. Real human connection is built through the real, physical world. You have to feel a person, what it's like to be next to them. A technological dependent relationship is too risky, it's based too much in an energetic world fantasized within you alone.
I am obviously very much not alone in this experience, unfortunately. Which, honestly, makes me feel a bit more stupid and naive, that now I'm pooled in with a group of people falling for the same delusion. I thought my following of my own intuition was stronger. But, at least now I see I knew the answer all along, I just failed at listening to it. And I'm just learning about the world again and how it works, like a child in a classroom - I'm being challenged and tested. I'm finding out what I want, what makes me happy, and what I really don't want or need in my life. It's a big world, and it's not going to cater to my grasping, but keep hitting and shaking me until I finally let go.
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As a close friend of mine said soon after all this, "until you meet what you don't want, you won't know what you do want."
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Alvor; Algarve, Portugal // August 2024
Italy is an energy, as with all places. When one does not have a strong sense of self, you can become enveloped or lost in the feeling of an environment. This is the south, so it is slow and calm. People don’t get overly excited, not even if a blonde foreigner walks through a small village she has no real reason to be in. They look, but it’s not overly curious. I want to do things, but it’s slow here. I take a nap, which I never do. And eat pasta, which I never eat. And go out for dinner at 9pm which to me is way too late. There’s time, time slowly enhances. Time to do nothing. I go for a walk through a small village. People are friendly, they sit outside on benches or you hear them talking in their kitchens. It’s afternoon and everything is closed, and everyone is home. And the air hangs with humidity. The olive and fig trees too, seem to be calm and slow.
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Comune di Torraca; Campania, Italy // August 2024
The cold and rain.
Im sitting at a local bar in a small village in the southwest of France with an espresso and my notebook. There's a woman sitting two tables over from me speaking English with a British accent very loudly but is obviously a local because she knows the owner and speaks fluent French. She switches back and forth from French and English, which surpises me because it doesnt seem to be the type of place with many foreigners. Most people around here only speak French. She passed by me with a half empty Aperol Spritz at 2:30 in the afternoon and said, "bonjour madame!"
I'm tired. Drolma and I drove all day and night yesterday from portugal to get here - we didn't arrive until after 4am. Somehow it took us almost twice as long as it should have, which means instead of 10 hours it took us 17. I felt like I was falling apart, but i just wanted to get here and into a bed. I woke up at 10 am. My sleeping schedule has changed a lot but I welcome it and my desire to get out of rigid schedules. Still, I need some sort of structure.
It is a drastically different energy here than to Portugal, in so many ways. I felt the light of it already falling out of me the day before we left, as if my body was already here or traveling away from the sea and sun. The vitality leaving my eyes. As we drove past the Pyrenees into France, a canopy of purple grey clouds hung over us, greeting or unwelcoming us, luring us in. Goodbye summer, we said. Goodbye my spontaneous portuguese holiday - it has been so unexpectedly beautiful.
It's raining. First day of rain since I arrived in Europe. And I left my boots in Italy at my father's - I dont know if or when I'll get them back, since I didn't leave in a good way. I find my mind clinging to the nostalgia of Portugal's Algarve and the gentle and warm hospitality of everyone and everything. And to dancing in Lisbon's nightlife and to my finally having real human fun without guilt or hesitation. And to the fleeting intimacy I had finally found with someone which I really needed. Everything is so much more alive and interesting when it's unexpected and unplanned. Plans are so restricting, conditioning to a rigid illusion. I just want to move through space freely.
Now I'm in cold, rainy France. The ocean is nowhere near me and dancing and dating are not in the schedule. But, the contrast - as Drolma would talk about - is needed. Everything needs to be included - the sun and clouds, the romance and aloneness. If I could just weave through the stories of my life without holding on… Go back and forth into different worlds, while always finding a home within myself. I am here, I am on Earth, I am alive in the cold and rain and without proper shoes. And I have definitely had too much coffee.
Sainte-Livrade-sur-Lot, France // September 2024
Northern Lights
I went for a walk in the morning
After the sun came up
and I had my coffee
And I could see all the white outside my window
Perfectly white and blue
The snow that came early overnight
And it felt like I was the only one seeing it
Walking through
like a ghost in a dream
I’d like to say thank you to October
To the end of summer
and the yellow leaves
That fell more and more as I climbed up north
Into the mountains
I’d like to write a love letter to October
To the way it brought me back home after I fell apart
With a black eye
and bruised heart
The summer gone and the ocean cold
How it kissed my grandmother goodbye for the last time
And for that night that gave us the sky ignited
Those red northern lights
When I heard your voice for that first time
Like an encrypted message
Calling me back home
To a place I’ve never been
Underhill, VT // October 2024