balkan ghosts

somehow, as summer comes on in earnest, i get a strange longing for the balkans. perhaps because my first trip there was a summer thing. or maybe because of finding husband there oh so many summers ago. but whatever it is, i get a kind of balkan yearning this time of year. so when i can't just pick up and head south, i turn to my bookshelves. this time, to rebecca west's epic black lamb and grey falcon, about the journey she took through yugoslavia in the inter-war period.

tho' there is much to take issue with as far as the orientalism of the book is concerned, largely dame west is open to the experiences she has. she's not that fond of the parts of yugoslavia that were part of the austro-hungarian empire and has more of a soft spot for those parts that were under ottoman domination and this i can relate to, since i feel exactly the same. i've read the book before, a couple of times, but i find that this time around, i'm reading it with new eyes - more european ones. i think i understand a lot more of the subtleties of the references to the growing influence of hitler in germany and what that meant in europe at that time.

but one of the things i'm most struck by on this reading is simply how well-read and intellectual she was. and it makes me once again long to have lived in that era. in 1913, she started a long love affair with h.g. wells and even had a child with with him. by the time of the balkan journey in 1938, she was a well-established novelist in her own right and had settled down and married banker henry maxwell andrews, who accompanied her on the journey. ahh, but she lived such an intellectual existence. i long to live that way (maybe minus the tumultuous affairs, tho' on the other hand, maybe not) - a life of high level discussions and thinking and writing about the events of the day. i tell you, 1913 was my ideal year.

but mostly, the book transports me. many of the political issues she describes are still relevant today and the discussions still thought-provoking. i love seeing the marginalia from my previous readings and adding more from this time around. and i long to live that way and travel that way--on trains winding slowly through the balkan countryside and most of all, to have time to think like that. to really think about things and how they're connected and what they mean and how they impact the world. how have we gotten so far from living intellectual lives?

i need the rhythm of a train journey and the erudition of a literary salon. i wonder if i can find that without being in the balkans. it seems somehow impossibly far away.

last visits

"we own time, but time also owns us."

i will miss the poetry on the streets of oslo.

sometimes when you leave a place, you know it's your last visit, at least for the foreseeable future. when i left oslo a week or so ago, it was with a light heart for that fact. i'd enjoyed the city for nearly two years, but commuting via plane will wear you down. especially if you don't get what you need from those around you when you're there - intellectual stimulation, exciting tasks, being included, being consulted on areas of your expertise, drawing on your knowledge and network, positivity towards your ideas (for which they claimed to hire you), managerial support, belief that you are capable of your job despite your gender, i could go on, but i think you get the idea. so leaving oslo, i felt happy that it would be the last time i would be there, at least for the foreseeable future. sometimes life is like that.

but other places, you don't realize that you won't be back anytime soon. like the philippines. i've been there 16 times since december 2004. so it feels really strange that i didn't go there at all in 2009. and i find myself really longing for it. it feels like something has been missing in this year (singapore was NOT close enough and is definitely NOT the same) because i haven't been there. it makes me wonder whether i enjoyed it enough when i was there last november. did i realize that it might be the only time i ever buy a fresh coconut from a young boy who paddled up on his coconut-laden surfboard? did i fully appreciate the uniqueness of that experience at the moment i had it?

and although i returned to manila many times after my visit there in september 2005 with husband and sabin, did i appreciate how great it was to be there together with them? and did i realize it might not happen again? i don't think so. tho' i loved the experience, i didn't place anything extra in it, thinking it might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. i took for granted that we'd go again. and probably we will, so maybe this angsty feeling is for nothing. and maybe i just have this overwhelming sense of nostalgia  because i keep thinking of that house we looked at on sunday and how sadly frozen in time was.

i know one place that i didn't appreciate enough because i definitely didn't think it would be my last visit and that's Cape Town. of course, there's still a chance that i will go back there at some point, but when i was last there, i didn't realize it would be later rather than sooner.  i didn't realize how very long it would be before i was lounging at moyo at the spiers winery, chatting away on the phone and enjoying a fabulous glass of wine. sigh.

i worry a little bit that the world is changing so much with all of this talk of climate change and that long haul flights (except perhaps to the US), are largely behind me. and i'm changing too. i no longer want to have a job where i travel 150-200 days a year, where i'm away from my home and my family. i want something different from life now. i had great experiences, but maybe now they are just memories. memories of times i wonder if i appreciated enough.

of course, there are places that you hope you don't visit again, despite how colorful and amazing certain aspects of them were. like chennai. honestly, it's quite possibly the most uncharming place on the planet and if i never go back there, i'll be quite ok with that. phuket is another one of those for me. they can keep phuket. tho' i had a fantastic afternoon there, playing in the waves that had so cruelly killed so many less than a year before. it's one of those memories where i was conscious at the time that it was a wholly unique experience that could never be duplicated.

when we left singapore this past summer, husband was quite clear-eyed about it not bothering him at all if he never went back. i feel a bit that way too, since singapore is disneyland with nationhood. tho' if remain in shipping (which i wouldn't rule out), i will likely go there again. but i guess the whole point of these musings is that we never really know what the future holds and where it will take us.