Lessons from Budapest

In Budapest, there’s a whole network of Open Mics that happen every night of the week, into which I stumbled. Music, as it turns out, is more universal even than English. Musicians, music-lovers, visitors transfixed by the performance— the artists, to be sure, would play with or without an audience, entranced in the music. I was welcomed immediately by a community of improv and covers and encouraged to perform away my stage fright. Bodies kept time while musicians kept in key, patrons’ souls moved and the musicians felt the foot-tapping in the floorboards as life. We were all open, all lost and found in the music. My first week passed in Budapest by night as in a dream.

My cousin had scheduled to blow through town on his brief tour of Europe. I set out to meet him and his friend on the evening of their arrival, eager to show the Budapest I’d come to know. There was my cousin, standing in the streetlight in confident, green-haired glory, unapologetically himself. This was his first international adventure, but he stood handsome and demure as if he knew something of the world, as if he’d been traveling all his life. We wandered that first night through the streets that had embraced me over the previous week, in search of new things.

Green hair was enough to set our little trio apart. Throughout one short weekend, the reactions from passers-by ranged from benign to entertaining. People pointed and whispered, even complimented my cousin on his look. But in the evenings, the treatment turned sinister. On multiple occasions we had grown men, bulky and drunk, sidle up beside us and shove into my cousin’s shoulder. They stood postured for a fight. Each time that we were able to pass quickly into another crowd or establishment, it felt like we’d made some narrow escape.

My cousin’s experience of Budapest was a lesson for me in privilege. There are rose-colored glasses through which I tend to regard travel. I carry privilege beyond an American Passport. I’m “racially ambiguous” by appearance, which means that today, my looks don’t come across as threatening in most of the environments I’ve visited. I don’t sport any statement style additions. I’m reminded of the doors open to me, of the often unexpected and chance-based circumstances that have gotten me here, and of the limits appearances can put in place or break down. Traveling alone, I only have this one set of experiences and this one perspective, and I don’t always have to see things through someone else’s eyes— the insidious nature of privilege, unfortunately.

So I see you now in a new light, you the people travelling under appearances, by choice or by chance, that put you at greater risk to violence. And you whose appearances put you at risk in your own hometowns, I see you. I laud your bravery, and I hope that I can be an ally to you in some way. I hope that one day you too can travel carefree and welcomed in the same way that I can.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

Urban Interlude

There’s a short hike right in the middle of Edinburgh, a dormant volcano called Arthur’s Seat. We began as the sun set, a group of four from the hostel, boots laced and bodies bundled into our winter coats.

As we climbed, the elevation muffled the city sounds. We left the sun behind, let it dip below the horizon and with it, time, as we rose above the city. Only the wind was left to hush us rhythmically along.

In the dark, we peeled off coats like they were trappings of our urban selves and climbed and climbed with empty minds, sweating bodies along sweating earth.

Timelessness was a dew on the rocks, and we lay at the top and coated ourselves in it. The city lights winked at our achievement, Bravo, you’ve made it.

Edinburgh noodling

Edinburgh’s January sun sets by 4:30. Overcast skies and the sound effect of shoe soles on cobblestone exaggerate the slumber of winter. The streets are dreamy and tired. Insulated. Historical castles, squares, alleys, bridges, walking paths that go below the city streets and weave their way from center to suburbs, all grey and green and grey-green and new to me.

Do you understand potential energy? I remember the lesson in images from 12th grade physics class: a girl holding a ball, a car on a hill, an arrow in a flexed bow. The energy possessed by a body by virtue of its position relative to others. A pressure like water boiling in the muscles, restless energy that builds in the thighs, the calves, and the feet.

I’m in a hostel with dozens of other young travelers. We’re not sure what we’re looking for, but potential energy is what we find. Potential energy, when we ask ourselves why we keep moving, a matter of time and space from precipice to body at rest.

Observations from Commercial Drive

Sunny and Dance carve totems to sell on the sidewalk. They get drunk progressively. It typically takes the day or at least the morning. The sharp tools and hand thrusts unnerve certain passersby, but Sunny and Dance always smile up from their sidewalk slouches. My sister has a fox carving she commissioned Sunny to make for the baby a few months back. The baby has two teeth which is one more than Dance now. Sunny and Dance drink and smile and drink and smile along Commercial Drive.

The Drive. 21 blocks from Venables to 13th Ave. Eclectic! Bohemian! Vancouver’s Greenwich Village! It’s bucking the trend in North America towards homogenous shopping and dining experiences! –Commercial Drive Business Society

I arrived a few weeks ago. I’m teaching my nephew to walk, but mostly he’s teaching himself. As soon as I put my hands out, he grabs and pulls and gets moving.

A brief family tree: My sister’s a white American who subsists off her student visa and studies lesbians and natural disasters. Her Japanese wife is the one who managed to get a Canadian passport. They had a son with a Canadian donor who rescues ferrets with his girlfriend.

During last week’s date night, my sister and sister-in-law were seated by an older couple. When the man asked for the check, the waitress replied, “Sure thing,” and brought it promptly. When my sister asked for the check, the waitress asked, “Together or separate?”

I noticed that BC street-side signs show Coast Salish languages under English city names. I’ve never seen street signs in America with Native American language translations. As a kid I thought Native Americans didn’t exist anymore and imagined reservations as living history museums.

Headlines from the Vancouver Sun say Soaring aboriginal prison population a barometer of systemic racism and Vancouver is the most ‘Asian’ City outside Asia. What are the ramifications? and Foreign students make a big impact on Vancouver. We’re mostly all outsiders here.

cities make more scents: an exercise of the olfactory epithelium

The back exit of the Thai restaurant burps coconut curry and sweet peanut breath. Manufactured “musk” and “tropical paradise” cling to the freshly showered morning commuters’ laundered blazers. Unwashed fabric fumes on homeless clothing, boots, a backpack and a moist leather bracelet with a metal clasp–– I can smell it all. The iron scent of sweat, cigarettes by brand, misted pavement and piss on the concrete corner. The sweet sometimes sickly florals that creep in. Lavender and magnolia and daphne. Pine, sap, the mossy underside of a tree limb in sweet rot on Belmont and 43rd, and me and 10 million scent receptors and the city.

My neighborhood

A cartoon about the Belmont neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

[text] My neighborhood has two used bookstores & seven coffee shops that I’ve found so far. That’s a lot of Instagram material.

The writers’ organization seems to be closed until September, which is a bummer. I climbed a creepy staircase to find it.

The trees are all sorts here, not like Texas, and there’s a park! Some mornings, I go there with my sister, & we take turns pushing my niece in her stroller.

Last night, I went to a DJ show nearby, some kind of Brazilian, Indian, African fusion. Heavy percussion. I danced my ass off, and only two guys said weird things to me.