Posts tagged travel
Everything That Breathes

I’ve never seen the rooster next door that crows at dawn. And during thunderstorms. And during the ubiquitous fireworks—this is Oaxaca, after all. In the afternoon, when he’s tired of scratching at the same dirt hoping to find something different, but it’s just the same fucking dirt, he crows a little louder.

“I hear you,” I whisper over the fifteen-foot wall that separates us. “I feel you.”

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A Weekend Away

He had been in Montana for seven days before she got there. He was there with a group of guys—one he had grown up with, the others he had fished with before, on the same river. The house was up on a mesa and they had rented it for ten days. It was her first time in Montana, her first trip away from her children in over a year. She didn’t do any of the planning, but rather showed up feeling as if she was joining in on someone else’s vacation.

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From Bordeaux to Montgomery

“Let’s see what your fortune holds,” my sister Lynn said, brandishing a pack of tarot cards.

A recent college graduate, I was off to France to spend a year as an au pair. She laid out the cards carefully—we were just messing around; neither of us really believed it—and put on a good show. Lynn explained each card with gravitas, knowing nods and occasional sighs. I don’t remember what card came—the naked Star? The Wheel of Fortune?—when her eyebrows jumped up to her hairline and she announced “You will come home pregnant.”

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Fate Knocking at the Door!

August 1973. I had graduated from high school two months earlier and was in Potamia, my hometown in Cyprus, for the summer. Life in Potamia was hard and uncomfortable, and I had never really liked being there. My father was a farmer, and my parents had to work long hours every day on our farm to make ends meet. When we were in Potamia, my brothers and sisters worked at the farm as well. For most of the year, we, the eldest three of the five siblings, attended secondary school in Nicosia (the capital of Cyprus), where we lived with our grandparents.

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Caution: Memories in the Mirror May Be Closer than They Appear

The road unfolds in front of us, a black ribbon of tarmac glittering in the summer heat. It is one of many roads I have taken. The rearview mirror reflects the same view, a yellow dotted line that connects us to the next destination, and the previous. Were we ever there? Over a hill, the road disappears, and I wonder if we too will disappear as we follow it.

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A Traveling Woman

As I’ve grown, so has my desire to see, taste, and experience the world. An unquenchable thirst for encountering newness, you could say.

I’ve become a travelling woman.

Not that I often traverse great distances or see far-off places or spend much money to do so. On the contrary, my glorious little life has led me to find ways of travelling right where I am.

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Flowers

Because of threats and incidents of terrorism, few Americans were traveling in Europe during the summer of 1986.  In spite of that, for reasons not relevant here, my husband and I decided to take a trip to Turkey by way of train from Vienna to Istanbul.                                                               

 

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Finding Myself (Whatever that Means)

I didn’t grow up with a family that had much interest in extensive traveling. My mom says its because we’re farmers, and all we know is to stay in one place. She took me and my brother to Disneyland in California when I was in sixth grade, and we’ve talked about going to Ireland one day since it’s where our ancestors originated, but there just hasn’t been a good time so far. My dad’s side was a little more restless, but it was mostly repeated trips with my grandparents to Pigeon Forge or to a beach in Florida or South Carolina. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining; I’m extremely grateful for those trips and the time I got to spend with my family, but at the same time, I ached to experience something beyond the sand.

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